Actually disagreeing with somebody isn’t easy. Pointing at somebody and calling their opinion stupid is easy. Being stubborn is easy. But disagreement takes effort. When you disagree with somebody, you are saying that you understand their thought process and their logic to a point, but the last step is not correct. You would come to a different conclusion based on the same information. In order to do that you have to have a relationship with the person you are disagreeing with. You have to empathize with their situation and see things from their point of view. And that’s not easy to do. However, it is something that needs to happen in order for harmony and compromise.
Disagreement
Disagreement has lots of implementations, and I keep it in mind whenever I am brainstorming, designing, or even chatting with friends. Disagreement comes up a lot in user-centered-design. Because of the time, effort, and, frankly, tension of disagreement, I feel like people see this as a negative aspect of UCD. But, as you may have guessed, I think that disagreements are awesome.
User-centered design is all about building relationships with the users. Not every user is going to agree with your design, layout, or execution. You have to understand why they think and act the way they do. If you just make the changes they explicitly say, you are not building an understanding; you are not building a relationship, you are not being empathetic, and you are not creating harmony or compromise. You are force feeding them their own words. To being out truly delightful designs, you have to come to a disagreement.
The most important part of disagreements, it getting past them. If you take the time to have built a good enough relationship to reach an disagreement, then you also have the tools to resolve it. Empathy and trust are the keys to compromise. As social beings, we are hardwired to compromise and find solutions. As much as we tend to argue and find points of contention, we also enjoy finding creative ways to revolve our differences. In the end, we are solutions looking for problems.