Transcript of interview with Matthew Stephens, co-founder of deviantArt

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deviantArt is the Web's biggest social network for artists. I conducted this interview with its co-founder Matthew Stephens on 4 August 2008, as part of my research for  User-centred design and the user-driven web: Is a UCD process suitable for social interaction design?

matthewlarn: hi Nicolas
i’m really busy most of the time, but if you ask the questions one at a time, i’ll answer as i can

Nicolas: Hi Matt, that’s really nice of you
okay here goes
Before development of deviantArt, was any research conducted on the target user group?

matthewlarn: Not really.. At the time, I was barely 18 and the idea of user-centered design and research was a foreign concept to me...
However, as the design was constructed, it was constantly tested by the early users

Nicolas: so the testing was done when it was a functing website? not on semi-functional prototypes?

matthewlarn: that’s right..
but every new version since then was done with the proper prototyping and user testing we definitely learned our lesson on that

Nicolas: and how did you gather the original testing group?

matthewlarn: well.. again, it was a learning process, but basically we simply asked the community for feedback by giving volunteers beta access

Nicolas: did you create personas and scenarios, maybe without realising, when creating the         original public version of the site?

matthewlarn: definitely. we had an idea of who we expected to use the site, because we used other sites, like deskmod.com and skinz.org so we knew what had worked and what hadn’t based on our experiences on those sites and we knew the types of people we’d be catering to

Nicolas: and would it be fair to say that, as well as designing for others, you were designing for yourself?

matthewlarn: absolutely

Nicolas: as in, you and scott wanted to use something like deviantart for yourselves?

matthewlarn: i was the one who came up with the idea, because it was something i wanted so badly

Nicolas: what were the main things that were so lacking in the other sites?

matthewlarn: basic interactions were done poorly.. and the social networking aspect..
i knew that artists were, by their nature, emotional beings so we did our best to give them an outlet for their creativity in as many aspects as possible which is why we added the journal, favorites, user comments, etc

Nicolas: that’s very interesting. The opinion I’m coming to my dissertation is that user-centered design is very useful, but that the ‘you can’t design for yourself’ axiom isn’t always true, because most web 2.0 sites have been that way - the designers’ needs turn out to be very similar to the user’s needs
would you say that’s true?

matthewlarn: i would agree with that. it all depends on who the end user is if you are designing for a team of engineers your UI will be very different than a design for children or stay-at-home moms
neither of which are likely to be the same as the designer

Nicolas: some people have criticised user-centered design for letting designs be too distracted by individual’s specific demands rather than a single coherent designer’s vision and also for narrowing down a single type of person too much
what’s your personal take on user centered design?

matthewlarn: a good designer should be able to take feedback from multiple users and turn that into a single, coherent vision
but yea, it’s up to the designer to make that happen. it’s not the concept that is wrong.

Nicolas: Okay and finally, you mentioned that deviantArt learnt it’s lessons and user testing became a key part in it’s evolution
could you roughly outline the process used to evolve it?

matthewlarn: before each new version, we spent more time testing and asking users to help out with the process...
i left before i could perfect it, but i wanted to get more non-community members involved

Nicolas: okay i think that’s it. I could ask plenty more questions of course but that’s all the ones I really wanted to ask of you. Thanks very much once again! It was exceedingly helpful and I really appreciate you taking the time to help me out as I know you must be very busy.

matthewlarn: :) no problem
good luck