Compromise

1.Eventually, the designer is compelled to seek Compromise. What will the majority of users want? What do users like about the suggested features, especially the ones they did not at first anticipate or understand? How do these desires and needs change over time?

2.In his 1996 article "Culture: The Missing Concept in Organization Studies," MIT professor Edgar Schein explores limitations in the scope of communication theory. He notes that most concepts in early organizational psychology dealt with properties of the individual and were clearly derivative from psychology (229). He partially blames the discovery that organizations were mean to people (230) for this narrow focus on individuals. Johnson is perhaps making a similar mistake; better put, designers who read Johnson and let the Swiss Army Knife syndrome run amok are definitely making the same mistake in an effort not to be "mean to people."

3. Usability testing is a good first step toward compromise. As Steve Krug points out,

[t]esting one user is 100 percent better than testing none. Even the worst user will show you something that you can do to improve your site (qtd. in Weinman p.27).

But even Johnson denies that he is suggesting that users are the sole or dominant forces in technology development. He wants to include his users in his negotiated process of technology design, development, and use (32, emphasis Johnson's). His terminology comes into question, though, because he still works from the perspective of a "user," or even "users," but places their contextual environment, their culture, their community, on the fringes of the system. Schein calls this sort of view an oversight when he says [w]e viewed the organization from the bottom up and took the employee's point of view rather than seeing it as a complex system consisting of many conflicting points of view (p. 231).

4.These points of view call for Compromise. The most dangerous prospect of a Consensus approach (user-centered-ness run amok) is its tendency to overwhelm the designer(s). Consensus is a contingency model, based on "what if this type of user...?" or "Bob says..., Lois says..., Doris says..., Jeff says...." At some point, it becomes unfeasible to manage all these points of view, or the site being designed becomes crufty and unmanageable in its size and complexity, or vulnerable to unforeseen exploits. In "The Myth of 800 x 600," James Kalmbach ultimately suggests Compromise in number nine in his list of techniques for fluid design: techniques [...] can be combined to arrive at unique solutions for a given situation.

5.Sometimes those techniques need not be particularly democratic or egalitarian. Schein reminds us that short-run productivity was just as high in groups run autocratically as in more democratic groups over the long term for the sake of creativity and productivity (p. 231). Sometimes creativity must be sacrificed for productivity; similarly, sometimes the user as an individual must be abstracted or idealized or even ignored for the sake of the group.

6.Key to compromise is identifying the problems or needs of the group and limiting them according to abilities and resources. In part, this is like selecting a thesis for a paper (something I've struggled with during this whole composition). But it also requires significant cost/benefit analysis. Sometimes costs decrease based on a need not to test, and that's what this paper is really about: finding ways to determine when it's better not to test, or as Michael Day has put it, a combination of pragmatics and aesthetics (Humanities). Lars Pind suggests prioritizing goals:

Focus your energy on the problem that you're most likely to make a contribution towards solving. Stop thinking that you're going to actually solve it, as in "Solved. Done." Stop believing that you can squeeze in an "oh, and by the way, I also solved this really hard engineering problem that IBM and Oracle and Microsoft Research have been banging away at for years." You can't. (Which Problem?)

7.Designers must internalize the iterative nature of Web design, community building, and usability testing. Designers must also recognize the nature of Internet communication forms as a continuum, and that users may or may not move fluidly from their role as audience members to producers of messages (Morris and Ogan p. 42). As Schein says, one of the central conditions of organizational health [is] the ability to cope and adapt (p. 235). Designers must be fluid as well, exerting Control at times when productivity is vital, seeking Consensus when time permits and effectiveness requires it, and knowing how to Compromise. Key components of Compromise are community (users, culture, and context), interface, and technologies.