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Reduced empathizing skills increase challenges for user-centered design

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William HudsonAuthors Info & Claims

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Pages 1327 - 1330

https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518901

Published: 04 April 2009 Publication History

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Abstract

User-Centered Design is surprisingly difficult. One of the biggest issues, certainly for those with no HCI or usability experience, is a lack of appreciation of how users think and work. Their assumption is that users will approach and solve problems in the same way as the designers and developers of an interactive solution. Extreme examples of this self-as-user outlook is the belief that interaction problems are either the direct fault of users or the failure of users to follow instructions (the 'RTFM' syndrome [9]).

This paper explores a psychological explanation of the self-as-user outlook through Empathizing-Systemizing theory, including a large-scale study (n = 441) of men and women working in the Information Technology field. The study found that men whose role was technological had significantly lower empathizing scores. The results of the study help to explain the self-as-user outlook and how it needs to be overcome in the design process.

References

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Baron-Cohen, S., Richler, J., Bisarya, D., Gurunathan, N. and Wheelright, S. (2003). The systemizing quotient: an investigation of adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Lond. B, 358(1430), 361--374.

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Vetrivel SSowmiya KSabareeshwari VArun V(2024)Navigating the Digital EconomySocial Reflections of Human-Computer Interaction in Education, Management, and Economics10.4018/979-8-3693-3033-3.ch010(184-216)Online publication date: 21-Jun-2024
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Jansen BSalminen JJung SGuan K(2021)Data-Driven PersonasSynthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics10.2200/S01072ED1V01Y202101HCI04814:1(i-317)Online publication date: 5-Feb-2021
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Index Terms

Reduced empathizing skills increase challenges for user-centered design
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Interaction design
    1. Interaction design process and methods
      1. User centered design

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Published In

CHI '09: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

April 2009

2426 pages

ISBN:9781605582467

DOI:10.1145/1518701

General Chairs:
Dan R. Olsen
Brigham Young University
,
Richard B. Arthur
Brigham Young University
,
Program Chairs:
Ken Hinckley
Microsoft Research
,
Meredith Ringel Morris
Microsoft Research
,
Scott Hudson
Carnegie Mellon University
,
Saul Greenberg
University of Calgary

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 04 April 2009

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CHI '09 Paper Acceptance Rate 277 of 1,130 submissions, 25%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 6,199 of 26,314 submissions, 24%

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https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3693-3033-3.ch010
Jansen BSalminen JJung SGuan KJansen BSalminen JJung SGuan K(2022)Using Data-Driven Personas Alongside Other Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) TechniquesData-Driven Personas10.1007/978-3-031-02231-9_8(187-205)Online publication date: 8-Mar-2022
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-02231-9_8
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Optimizing agile user-centred design

A study of the role of user-centered design methods in design team projects

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