User-centered design
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In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use an interface, but to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of an interface to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.
The chief difference from other interface design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to bend and structure the functioning of a user interface around how people can, want or need to work, rather than the opposite way around.
UCD approaches
- Cooperative design: involving designers and users on an equal footing. This is the Scandinavian tradition towards design of IT artefacts and it has been evolving since 1970. (reference: Greenbaum&Kyng (eds): Design At Work - Cooperative design of Computer Systems, Lawrence Erlbaum 1991)
- Participatory design (PD), North American term for about the same, inspired in Cooperative Design, focusing on the participation of the users. Since 1990, there is a Participatory Design Conference, bi-annually. (reference: Schuler&Namioka: Participatory Design, Lawrence Erlbaum 1993 and chapter 11 in Helander&al’s Handbook of HCI, Elsevier 1997)
- Contextual design, “customer centred design” in the actual context, some ideas from PD (reference: Beyer&Holzblatt, Contextual Design, Kaufmann 1998).
External links
- EServer TC Library: User-Centered Design (http://tc.eserver.org/dir/User-Centered-Design)
- UCD methods (http://sunrize.nada.kth.se/usor/jml.cgi/list.jml?graphics=true)