A brief essay from Jim McGee that wanders along the personnel involved in the existence and usage of buildings and systems and how systems can be usable. I like the notion that highly flexible and highly focused systems and buildings work for their inhabitants. The challenge for the sponsor and the architect is to decide where to go and not to stop in the middle.
I’d suggest to further deepen the empathy on the architects side more ethnographic analysis, iterative engineering, intergration and design would improve.
Improving Systems: Forget Architecture — Look at the Buildings: “One characteristic of both architects and systems designers, not shared by ordinary users, is the ability to imagine spaces that do not yet exist. This makes it difficult for them to empathize with the typical user who operates in a much more concrete world. The challenge is helping people do their imagining in more effective ways, without taking them through the same years of training and experience. For designers, the solution is to ‘go native’ and spend substantial time living in the operational world of the users to develop the necessary empathy.”
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