Thoughts on Elements of User Experience: Chapter 1

Jesse Garrett's book starts with an accessible introduction to user centered design. Although he focuses on commercial applications of good web design, its fairly simple to draw correlations between that and instructional design.

Garrett does provide a gem in this chapter.

"...something funny happens when people have trouble using complicated pieces of technology: they blame themselves." Emphasis mine

Countless times, when someone asks me for help, they heap abuse upon themselves while failing to blame the culprit: the software/hardware's design. I bet everyone reading this has experienced both sides of this technological blame game. And yet, I've leveled many mental flagellations upon myself when I struggled with a bit of technology. I can tell you exactly when it happens: when you perceive the person you're interacting with (complaining to, more likely) is comfortable (aka. "smarter than you") with "x" piece of technology. Now with web pages, which Garrett keenly calls "self-service," most people are getting beyond the point of blaming themselves and properly channelling any frustrations towards design. Why? Most folks today have surfed the web, conducted business on the web, and even attempted to make a simple web page themselves. However, as for the Web of 2005/2006, I think more people are comfortable with it and are blaming the designers than they were when Garrett wrote his book 3 years ago.