Introducing User-Centered Systems Design - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 9

1.2.4 What Happens If You do not Take Proper Account
of Users, Tasks, and Context?
The Kegworth Air Accident (see the Appendix for a detailed account) was, like
many air accidents, the result of several events. Many of these events happened in
a short space of time, but some were more distant both in time and in space. From
the point when a problem was detected with one of the engines, to the point at
which the plane crashed took less than 8 min. Table 1.1 lists some examples of the
types of things that went awry and contributed to the accident and the lessons you
should note.
This topic will help you to understand the underlying issues, and show how you
can analyze them. Once you understand that these issues arise at different levels,
and how they can interact, you can start to take appropriate steps to make sure they
are prevented (or their effects are at least mitigated) when designing systems.
1.3 The Benefits and Costs of Understanding Users
Assuming that your users are just like you can be described as a fundamental
attribution error of design. This error is essentially the inverse of what is called the
fundamental attribution error in social psychology (described in Chap. 8 ) . In the
fundamental attribution error you assume that people are not like you when, in
fact, they are.
In the fundamental attribution error of design, you assume that your users are
like you when, in fact, they are not! Users often can't use the systems as well as the
designers because they do not know as much. Sometimes the opposite is true.
Users can to be quite resourceful and innovative, and will often use technology in
ways that the designer had never fully contemplated; for example, spreadsheets
were originally designed for use by accountants, but many people now use them
for processing all forms of tabular data. Similarly, the short messaging system
(SMS) was originally designed to help engineers debug mobile phone communi-
cation systems, but now it is widely used by everyone with a mobile phone as a
means of general communication.
If you understand your users and take appropriate account of them when
designing your system, there are three main types of benefits (or payoffs) that can
result: more usable products (which can lead to wider adoption and more accel-
erated adoption rates), cost savings, and safer systems. There are some caveats,
however, which can be seen as costs: understanding and taking appropriate
account of the user in your design does not necessarily guarantee success, and
knowing how much you need to understand about your users is a hard question to
answer. We discuss all of these below.