I'm not fond of the retina-frying red of their splash page design (or the need for that), but the latest issue of the Design Philosophy Papers has some interesting articles related to UCD.

Here's the background for the issue:

While professionally, user-centred design can be a useful counter to ego-driven or aesthetically fetishised approaches to designing, and while it often focuses on important practical issues, much goes unquestioned. For example, needs are regarded as self-evident and inherent, while certain (very low) levels of ability or dexterity are taken as normal; likewise attributes like convenience and automatic operation are typically regarded as beneficial. But more significantly, positing users as the privileged source of design problems and solutions, obscures the bigger picture of how designed things actually design those who use them, inscribing needs, attachments, physical and mental habits, and, more generally, making up entire, and entirely familiar, worlds of dwelling and their accompanying capacities, competencies, expectations and much more.

The titles for the articles don't do them justice, and the framed site makes it hard to excerpt and link. So if you're into UCD, just take a peek and see if they might strike your fancy.

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