What is User-Centered Design?
User-Centered Design Principles
User-Centered Process
Cost of justifying ease of use

  
 

What is User-Centered Design?

 How do designers come up with an interface that's not in your face? That just does what you want, and doesn't make you waste time doing what it wants? Easy-to-use software doesn't just happen. It requires focusing on the product's potential users from the very beginning, and checking at each step of the way with these users to be sure they will like and be comfortable with the final design. The User-Centered Design (UCD) process starts by forming a multi-disciplinary UCD project team. This team will work with the product's users throughout the design process and beyond. So the first thing that the UCD team must figure out is: Who will be using the product?

Once this target audience has been identified, representative users can be recruited to work with the team. These users help establish the requirements for the product by answering questions such as:

  • What do you want the product to do for you?
  • In what sort of environment will you be using the product?
  • What are your priorities when using the software? For example, which functions will you use most often?
The answers to these questions start the process of user task analysis.

Another important set of issues concern the product's competition, which includes not only other products but also any other means the target users have for completing their tasks. Again, users are consulted to help designers understand how to make their product competitive:

  • How are you doing these tasks today?
  • What do you like and dislike about the way you've been getting your tasks done?
When the users' task requirements and the competing methods are understood, the design can start to take shape. A trial set of objects and views is designed to support the main user tasks.

To test the design so far, the team puts together a preliminary version called a prototype. Prototypes can be as simple as pieces of paper with proposed screen designs sketched on them, or so developed that they look like finished products, but most prototypes fall somewhere between these extremes. A prototype may not have all the function that will be in the product, but it has enough to test some part of the design. Test participants recruited from the target audience try out the prototype, and their task performance, reactions, and comments help the designers decide what to keep and what to change about the design. The design goes into a cycle of modification and re-testing until it meets functional and usability criteria.

At this point, a pre-release, or beta, version of the product may be constructed and distributed to a restricted set of users for their evaluation. Unlike the test prototypes, this version should have all the function planned for the actual product. It also can contain extra software to record usage information, such as how often the users refer to Help or run into problems with the product. The information gathered from users of the beta release can help the UCD team fine-tune the product for its formal release.

Finally, the tweaking stops and the product is released. But the user input doesn't end there. Users participate in benchmark assessments in which the product is rated against both the users' requirements and its competitive products. Customer service also records and tracks any problems reported by users. The problem reports help the designers know what to improve in the next iteration of the product.

Throughout the entire development process and beyond, users play a critical role in the design of easy-to-use products. After all, who knows more about which products are easy to use than the people who use them?

*Source

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