This post annoyed me so much that I actually left a comment!
<.< A nugget rarely comments on design blogs, for some reason...
It's a nice, ranty comment, so I've reproduced it here, for my Rant Museum! ^_^
This article kind of annoyed me, possibly because it’s too general, hyperbolic, and somewhat preachy.
It’s all well and good to say:
We will design processes, not screens.
We will design systems, not individual pieces.
We will design less “using,” and more getting results.
But…
How do you propose we ‘design processes’, WITHOUT designing the screens, assuming that the medium is digital, on a screen?
How do you propose we ‘design systems’, WITHOUT designing the individual pieces?
How do you design ‘more getting results’ without LOOKING at the ‘using’ process?
It’s all very well to say, users just want things to magically happen!
Sure they do.
But only in very narrow fields, or very very wide budgets and fields
(self driving cars, container automation, subway train scheduling) can
you implement something that allows that kind of responsibility-free
magic, while absolving users of responsibility.
In many fields, we still REQUIRE the user to go through the process,
interact with the product, perform myriad actions, because the onus of
responsibility and decision must lie upon them. Because the interactions
aren’t simple, and may cause harm. (I currently work in enterprise
healthcare software.)
For me, as a designer, what I’d love to see more of (and to work on
more of) is the ‘supportive’ system. A good example of this is
computer-aided Chess Grandmasters. Where the sum of the two is superior
to either one alone, even if the goal is still ‘winning’.
Computer-assisted healthcare professionals, with the goal being
better patient care and outcomes. Now that’s something I want to see
happen, but it’s still going to involve work on the part of the user, as
well as the computer (the supportive system). And that’s the way it
should be.