Product-friendly User Design: A Critical Discourse on User-centered Methodology

User-centered design risks becoming user design; turning people into users. The more successful the design, the quicker and easier we adopt the model of a user that the design evolved around, and uncritically embrace behavior and preference patterns scripted in this model – often unconsciously by the designers themselves. This research generates a critical discourse from a literature review. It discusses the conceptual models about ‘users’ that designers design around, challenges design preconceptions of ‘user-friendliness’ and explores experimental approaches that embrace the unpredictable complexities of real-life experiences as creative possibilities.