User-Centered Design / 7.1 /
User-centred design (UCD)
User-Centered Design / 7.1 /
User-centred design (UCD)
The fundamental principle of UCD is that understanding the needs of the users is the key to designing the best products and services. A designer must consider the needs, wants and limitations of the end user within every element of the design cycle. The ability to identify how users will interact with a product, service or system is vital for its success. To achieve this, designers must be able to acquire and analyse valid data without making assumptions about how the product may be used.
A designer must consider the end user's needs, wants and limitations within every element of the design cycle. The ability to identify how users will interact with a product, service or system is vital for its success. To achieve this, designers must be able to acquire and analyse valid data without making assumptions about how the product may be used. The ability to put aside one’s own ideas and biases is essential for UCD. Designers must act with integrity and not project their own ideas of what the user requirements are when trying to create technological solutions to their problems
User-Centred Design (UCD) is a design process that pays particular attention to the needs of potential product users through the involvement of users at all stages of the design process. It considers how users are likely to use the product and tests products with actual users. Sometimes called “empathic design”, the user-centred approach puts the design team in direct contact with the people they are designing for, that is, to empathize with potential users and gain a better understanding of their thoughts, needs, values and beliefs. The design team often includes anthropologists, ethnographers and psychologists to advise the creative designers.
When following a UCD approach to the design process:
A design is based on an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments.
Users are involved throughout design and development.
The design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation.
The process is iterative.
The design addresses the whole user experience.
The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives.
UCD answers questions about users and their tasks and goals first, then uses the findings to make decisions about development and design.
Who are the users of the product?
What are the users’ tasks and goals?
What are the users’ experiences and expertise with the product and products like it?
What functionality do the users require of the product?
What other stakeholders will be impacted by the product?
Why is the product being developed?
What are the overall objectives?
How will the product be used?
How will it be judged a success?
What are the technical and environmental constraints?
What functionality is needed by users?
What are the typical scenarios of how and why users will use the product?
What are the usability goals?
How important is ease of use and ease of learning?
How long should it take users to complete their tasks?
Is it important to minimize user errors?
Are there any initial design concepts?
Iterative design is designing through creating or “learning by completing”. Perhaps most importantly, an underlying principle of the iterative method is that until you have actually built what you are designing, you are not going to be able to fully understand it.
When presenting sketches and ideas to users for feedback, you are effectively asking them to imagine how the product will work, to prototype it in their mind as it were. Then provide feedback on what they imagine. It is impossible to control and fully understand people's imaginations, they may have a completely different view of the product than the designer. Iterative design prototypes at every stage, and therefore you can get more reliable feedback.
UCD is User-Centered - The purpose of this principle is to ensure design teams involve users in all design phases; not just by running a focus group at the start and administering a survey at the end. UCD emphasises that user involvement needs to be ‘active’. You don’t simply demonstrate the design to users, you engage them in the design process. You can achieve this with field studies early in the design phase, and usability testing once you have a prototype people can interact with. They are then actively involved in the evaluation stage before the product launch.
What is the relation between user-centered design and student-centered education?
User-Centred Design requires an explicit understanding of the user, task and environment of a product or system. Designers must understand the full context of use. I.e.:
Understand the user's needs, abilities and emotions.
Understand the exact task the product or system must aid in, and
Understand the environment the product is used in.
Each of these elements needs to be carefully considered (and researched) in order to achieve:
Good usability - the ease of use and learnability of a product, system or service.
Good user experience (UX) - a person’s perception of the usability of a product, system or service. This can modify over time due to changes in usage and perceptions.
User experience covers a number of areas such as perceived ease of use, simplicity, intuitive logic, organisation, low memory burden, visibility, feedback and affordance (properties that guide use).
In UCD the concept of 'user' is broad. A user is anyone who interacts with a design or is directly or indirectly affected by its function. The purpose of user group studies is to identify the needs of all who interact with the product at different stages. User groups could be:
End users - the person who will buy and use the product.
Co-users - people affected by the use of the product, without being a direct end-user.
Maintenance workers - people who maintain or fix products when they break.
End-of-life users - people who are involved with dealing with the product when it is no longer useful - recyclers, disassembly etc.
User group studies focus on users, their activities, and their social and cultural context. Most often the studies use a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches. They are either looking to physically measure something, or gather users' feelings from interacting with the product.
The purpose of user groups is to gather measurable, usable and actionable feedback on a design. Ideally the real product is tested in its normal environment but a mock-up or controlled environment can be used.
UCD Proposes the use of multidisciplinary design teams. This is because, as stated before, UCDn requires an explicit understanding of the user, task and environment of a product or system. Designers must understand the full context of use. This can mean involving the following disciplines:
Anthropologists treat human society as a field of science and want to know why things happen. They tackle big human problems, such as overpopulation, warfare and poverty. Anthropology considers how people’s behaviours change over time, and how people in seemingly dissimilar compare and contrast.
Ethnographers have direct interaction with people to collect and record data about human culture and societies. There are various methods ethnographers employ to study different sub-cultures of society. They often need to find patterns in and understand issues facing a wide sample of people with diverse backgrounds.
Psychologists specialize in the study of mind and behaviour or in the treatment of mental, emotional, and behavioural disorders. They are concerned with how and why people do certain things and behave in certain ways.
UCD has 5 major steps that form part of the design thinking process. These steps ensure that the designer is focused on the user, the user’s task, and the environment in which it is used, to ensure the outcome is well considered.
Research: Learning about the people that use, or are going to use your product, and the context in which they will use it. It can include ethnographic techniques such as shadowing, diary studies, interviews, usability testing, benchmarking, and focus groups.
Concept: Examining the needs of your users and of your business, and coming up with innovative solutions to those needs.during this stage, the visual design team work on different concepts. The visual and interaction ideas come together for concept testing sessions with target users.
Iterative Design: Designing and usability testing mock-ups of your product through a series of repeated cycles. There's interaction design, information architecture, visual design, and content to be worked through in detail. The result of each cycle feeds into and refines the next, ensuring the final user experience is simple and delightful.
Implementation: The development team often need quick interaction solutions when they encounter unexpected technical restraints. There is also accessibility checks and testing to perform, and a final usability test of the working product.
Launch: The rollout is managed to ensure the users experience a smooth transition from any legacy products. Once the product is out, it’s important to gather feedback and metrics. This can include further usability testing and ethnographic work, along with web analytics.
UCD focuses on better mainstream solutions for everyone rather than providing different solutions for different user groups ('special needs design'). Inclusive design ensures there that there is a sufficient market for a product and increases its feasibility as an innovation.
Demographic change is a major challenge for designers. There are already over 130 million people over 50 in the EU alone. This means that one in every two adults will be over that age. The rapid ageing populations and growing numbers of people with disability are having a profound effect on new product and service design. Designs that include the needs of marginalised groups of people is regarded not only as socially desirable but also as a commercial opportunity. If you design products for people with no difficulties, you are then excluding a large portion of the population. It makes no commercial sense to do so.
Inclusive design requires designing universally acceptable products, including those with physical, sensory, cognitive and other challenges and impairments.