| Human-Centered Computing Work-arounds, Make-work, and Kludges (2007) | |||||||||||||
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| Paradigms are often defined partly in terms of what they are not, or in terms of what they are reacting against. The paradigm of human-centered computing is no exception. In response to an essay in the Jan./Feb. 2002 Human-Centered Computing column “The State of Cognitive Systems Engineering, ” 1 we had a lengthy discussion on the question, What is a user-hostile system? The following quote is from that essay: The road to user-hostile systems is paved with user-centered intentions on the part of the designers. Even smart, clever, well-intentioned people can build devices that are fragile and hostile, devices that force the human to adapt and build local kludges and work-arounds. Worse still, even if one is aware of this trap, one will still fall into it. We decided that the terms kludge and work-around, and also the related concept of make-work,have yet to be clearly defined for the intelligent systems community. Human-centered systems are different from user-hostile systems as well as from systems based on a designercentered approach. 2 In this essay, we try to clarify the senses of these three terms and suggest ways we might study work-arounds, make-work, and kludges as an integral part of human-computer systems—rather than as embarrassing necessities that are best swept under the computing research rug. | |||||||||||||
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