User needs collapse
A stub for a working definition about user needs being collapsed into tasks, features, content requirements, policy aims or organisational convenience.
Stub
User needs collapse is a working term for the failure mode where the distinction between a user need and another design, policy or delivery concept breaks down.
A user need stops being treated as what a person must be able to accomplish, understand, decide, access, maintain or resolve, and instead becomes treated as a task, feature, content requirement, user story, policy aim or organisational priority.
Why it matters
When user needs collapse into delivery artefacts, the work can still look user-centred while losing the discipline that made user needs useful in the first place.
Link to Civic Design Intelligence
This is lightly connected to Civic Design Intelligence because the system depends on keeping different knowledge objects distinct enough to reason with.
To develop later
- review and sharpen the definition
- distinguish collapse from drift and erasure
- add carefully chosen examples
- decide how much of the design grammar belongs in public