Last year, Don Norman wrote a couple of articles (Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful and HCD harmful? A Clarification) critically examining what is called user-centered or human-centered design. Instead of being human-centered, Norman says design should be activity-centered. The following is a short interview with Norman on the use of personas and activity centered design.

How does (or should) the thesis of your article, if accepted, affect a group's use of personas as a design tool? Should we forget about personas (except as a communication tool) and concentrate on activities as the driving forces behind product design?

Don: Well, we got along quite well without personas before they became popular. I do not think they are important for the intelligent, observant, designer. As I (and you) said, I think they are useful mainly in communicating the decisions to other people.

I think the emphasis on activities is the key.

Is there perhaps too much growing faith in the power of personas at the expense of in-depth understanding of activities and their associated problems?

Don: Absolutely. The persona still says nothing about how to design.

Is a focus on activities perhaps too mechanistic, and blind to all the nuanced subjectivities of experience that contribute to a product's success or failure, that are better captured between the lines of a persona narrative?

Don: No.

Any single prescription runs the risk of being accepted mechanically. But if you have only average designers, then mechanical solutions are apt to be pretty good -- better than they might produce otherwise.

Is a persona centered design approach even a user centered design approach? Or are many of us simply seduced by ease and economy of them compared with studying actual people?

Don: If you don't study real people, then you can't produce sensible personas! A persona is, after all, a distillation of the knowledge gathered about numerous individuals.

What is a comfortable balance between understanding people and activities in terms of designing better products? Your articles hint at an answer here.

Don: In no way can you understand activities without understanding people. An activity is the set of actions (perceptions, thoughts, decisions, and actions) made within t he context of a set of goals. One cannot separate activities from people. Activities are goal-driven, and goals exist only in the heads of people. A major support need is to handle changing goals, and interrupted goal-driven activity -- and this involves people.

John Trenouth has a masters in design from Carnegie Mellon University and over a decade of experience designing interactive products and systems in both telecommunications and healthcare. Currently he blogs at niblettes and runs a boutique design firm Spire Innovation specializing in product innovation and design research.