User Centered Design in Practice - Problems and Possibilities

In this project, all of our users (other than the teacher) were children, and although
we did implement many of their suggestions and treat them with respect, we also assumed
and accepted our roles as adults with little critical reflection. The nature of childhood
implies a power imbalance between children and adults that is widely recognized and
accepted. In contrast, views about relations between men and women vary crossculturally
as well as within cultures, and are often the source of great debate. Although the
way we think about the relations between men and women may vary depending upon a
number of factors, just as in the school project described above where we took our
relation to the students in a sense for granted, we may, as women and men on UCD teams
take our roles for granted. This in turn may favour the implementation of some user
suggestions over others. In the school project, members of the design team had power in
relation to our student users because we were adults in a world that grants adults more
power than children. The project described here suggests to me that in order to ensure that
empowerment accompanies user participation and that UCD design teams do not replicate
power imbalances found elsewhere in society, we must bring more critical reflection
about the range of power relations that influence the design process to UCD practices.
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