There's been quite a debate over at Andrew Dillon's blog Infomatters about the failings of "UCD". Andrew (backed up by Jared Spool, it seems) argues that the whole phrase "User-Centred Design" should be scrapped. He rests his argument on three main pillars - first, that too many people are claiming to "do" UCD without actually practising it properly. Second, that the measures and methods we use have too much scope for bias and fall prey to poor execution by unsophisticated practitioners. And third, that the current definitions used in usability and UCD are too narrow, and that the rich, digitally enhanced and augmented experiences that we seek today are very hard to measure and quantify.

The comments on the post are actually more interesting and insightful than the post itself , as some industry heavyweights have been weighing in with their thoughts. My thinking? Well, in many ways I'm with Randolph on this one - just because people hijack your buzzword doesn't mean you should abandon it in disgust. Do that, and in 18 months I guarantee that you'll need to find a new buzzword, since they'll all catch on again and start jumping on your bandwagon. (Why do you think we have moved from User-friendly through Usability to UCD to UX in less than decade?)

But let's not be too pessimistic here. Sure, there are plenty of people saying they "do" UCD when we, the blessed adherents of the One True Faith, know that they are mere heathens praying to False Prophets (or should that be Fast Profits?).

That's just too extreme. Firstly, anyone who's been in this industry as long as Bias, Spool and Dillon have, has to admit that things are a *lot* better now than they were, even 5 years ago. And secondly, even if UCD isn't done perfectly, the fact that it is done at all should be grounds for guarded optimism.

The other point I want to make is that, sure, we could spend our whole lives complaining about how project planners and stakeholders don't understand what we do and don't factor in enough time or budget for us to do our jobs perfectly. But where will that get us? Unfortunately, what happens in the real world - the one where someone is paying you by the hour for your work - is that only artists and monks (and maybe academics with tenure ;-) ever get all the time they need to do their job as perfectly as they'd like.

For an industry that makes money telling others how to make their products to fit with user needs, I find it both ironic and rather sad that our *own* products often seem so poorly fitted to the needs of *our* users. Instead, we complain that stakeholders don't use our products in the ways that we would like them to. Sound familiar?

So what's the answer? Surely it's to understand our own users better, and then iterate a few new ideas until we find something that works. The issue of what we call it is irrelevant. We all understand what we are talking about here. The goal is to bring real evidence from real users into the design process. Jared touched on this in his , comment and I agree - way too much of what gets done isn't "user-centred design", it's "opinion-based design". By this I mean that it relies on the opinion of someone, (the designer? the stakeholder? the marketing dude?, the UCD expert?) and not on evidence from real users, in real contexts.

At my company we've been on this path for a while and call it "evidence-based design". Sure, it's another buzzword - which brings me right back to where we started - but I don't care. I see it as our job to develop the tools that allow us to bring evidence from users into every stage of the design process. It's a tough job sometimes, but that's why they pay us, and that's why I love it.

Call it whatever you like - but keep the focus of your attention on meeting the needs of *your* users. You know - the ones who pay you for your work?