I don’t like to quote Jakob Nielson too often, but he does have a great response to this one. He says:

‘To design an easy-to-use interface, pay attention to what users do, not what they say. Self-reported claims are unreliable, as are user speculations about future behaviour’.

One thing I’d add to what you’re saying though is that even user performance isn’t quite enough (in my opinion). Maximising and improving the overall user experience is what I think UCD is all about. Performance is certainly part of experience, but there are lots of other more ‘touchy feely’ aspects to experience that I think are really important to product success in the long run.

Getting Real doesn’t qualify as UCD (by my memory of the methodology… it’s probably time I re-read it), because they don’t do any work to understand who their users are and what they want up front, and although they *do* generate a lot of feedback on their products, the changes they make are still based on what they, 37 Signals, think is best – which doesn’t really equate to the most requested or most loudly requested features.

Some might argue that 37 Signals design for themselves (along the lines of the Apple argument – they only have one persona, Steve Jobs), but I tend to think that once you put your product out into the market, you can’t really run with this argument any more.

37 Signals *do* have a very thoughtful and apparently collaborative approach to their design though. The design of their products (as with Apple) is a key part of their product differentiation. I think that these are the key factors in their success. And, as you’ve mentioned, they do stay close to the people who are using the product, which would give them powerful insight into their users.

All of these things combine to make their design comparatively successful.

Here’s another one: “My modal user is a 38-year-old college-educated male IT professional with 15 years of experience with computers who hopes to be promoted to management some day.” Fractional credit. User attributes tell only a little about how to design to maximize user performance. Task or activity details count much more. Environmental characteristics matter too.

Okay now to the model of UCD. Leisa, what do you think of the ‘getting real’ model proposed by 37Signals, which seems to put Launch before Implementation, getting a Beta version up for users to generate use and usability data?