![]() ![]() While high-tech solutions appeal to engineers, Young makes the case that low-tech solutions like the split hook are often more effective for users. “It’s more important that we get to live the lives we want, with access to the tools we need, than it is to make us look like everyone else.” ![]() Designed by people Young characterizes as “well-intentioned engineers,” these technologically dazzling hands try to recreate in all its complex glory what Aristotle called “the instrument of instruments.” Young, who is working on a book about the prosthetics industry, was in the first cohort of toddlers fitted with a myoelectric prosthetic hand, which users control by tensing and relaxing their muscles against sensors inside the device’s socket. A quick search on the IEEE Xplore Digital Library tallied less than 2,000 papers (out of 5.7 million) on “user-centered design.” Five papers bubbled up when searching “user-centered design” and “prosthesis.” While user-centered design is a long-standing practice in Web development, it doesn’t seem to have expanded deep into other product-development practices. So when I read this month’s cover story by Britt Young about using a variety of high- and low-tech prosthetic hands, I was surprised to learn that much bionic-hand development is conducted without taking the lived experience of people who use artificial hands into account. And we took onboard their experiences and designed a site and a magazine based on that feedback. We queried them about what they liked or didn’t like about how our content is presented. Retrieved August 3, 2010.Before we redesigned our website a couple of years ago, we took pains to have some users show us how they navigate our content or complete specific tasks like leaving a comment or listening to a podcast.
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