Author of “Breakthrough Products”, former IDSA president, and former design professor of mine Craig Vogel shared his thoughts over email on activity and personas in design.
“Experience design and activity design are the same. But knowing a person’s preferences is also important because a functional solution should be complimented with lifestyle attributes.
Norman is a psychologist and not a designer. His focus is on human activity which is fine. I think there is more to products than [just the] action analysis but it is an essential component.”
Sounds like Vogel is saying a study of activity is necessary, but insufficient; where Norman says that a study of activity is not only necessary and sufficient, but other realms of user study (like persons) could ultimately be distracting and therefore result in poorer product designs.
Of course Norman could be showing his phsychology bias here. In the integrated new product development process outlined in “Breakthrough Products” Vogel says that good product design results in products that are useful, usable and desirable. Norman appears to be focused on usable at the expence of both useful and especially desirable. And from a phychological perspective Norman’s may be an entirely appropriate reaction. However, from an iNPD perspective his reaction is a bit narrow.
It is hard to ignore the truth of Normans criticisms, that too often the reality of persona development is that it is improperly done and becomes a resource distraction.
Hmm. Sounds to me that Vogel is correct. This Norman guy seems over-simplistic. Hmm, maybe the people putting words in Norman’s mouth are being a bit simple.
I may be biased, but I think Norman is actually deeper than that. Hell, I bet Norman even agrees with Vogel!
But, as I said, I’m probably biased.
Don Norman
Ha! perhaps you might be a little biased.
I suppose this is one of the dangers of being an oft-quoted figure–the frequent quotations and references tend to over-simplify an otherwise large body of nuanced work. And then your name becomes a metonymy for the over-simplification. And this is where, I think, the problem is. We used your name a metonymy not for your larger body of work, but rather to refer to your position that perhaps activity centered design might be a better approach than user centered design.
Given much of what you wrote in Emotional Design I suspect you and Craig agree on an awful lot in terms of product design.
(Part of it could also be my clumsy transcription from my phone conversation with Craig blunted his points–where I corresponded with you over email, making transcription much easier and more accurate.)