Identifying and exploring design trade-offs in human-centered design

Abstract

Human-centered design should not only be grounded in understanding new media and technologies in terms of productivity, efficiency, reliability, and from economic perspectives, but it needs to explore innovative socio-technical environments contributing to human creativity, gratification, enjoyment, and quality of life. It represents a wicked problem with no "correct" solutions or "right" answers; the quality and success of design solutions are not only a question of fact, but a question of value and interests of the involved stakeholders. Design trade-offs are the most basic characteristics of design. They are universal and they make us aware that there are "no decontextualized sweet spots". In contrast to design guidelines, they widen rather than narrow design spaces by (1) avoiding simple solutions to complex problems and (2) by identifying and exploring interesting new approaches with the objective to synthesize the strengths and reduce the weaknesses of the binary choices defining the trade-offs. The paper articulates a conceptual framework for human-centered design focused on a design trade-off perspective. The framework is inspired from a brief analysis of design trade-offs in large scale developments (self-driving cars, sharing economy, and big data). Based on our own research activities, it is elaborated with specific design trade-offs (context-aware information delivery, meta-design, and cultures of participation) and further illustrated with the description of the Envisionment and Discovery Collaboratory, a socio-technical environment to frame and solve wicked problems in urban planning.