Week 6: User Centred Design

What is User Centred Design?

User Centered-Design (UCD) is a philosophy and a process. It is a philosophy that places the person (as opposed to the 'thing') at the center; it is a process that focuses on cognitive factors (such as perception, memory, learning, problem-solving, etc.) as they come into play during peoples' interactions with things.

UCD seeks to answer questions about users and their tasks and goals, then use the findings to drive development and design to improve on the user needs. User do not know what they want and therefore, we're there to help find what suits them best in order to gain an ergonomic design that best fit the targeted users.

UCD seeks to answer questions such as:

• Who are the users of this 'thing'?
• What are the users’ tasks and goals?
• What are the users’ experience levels with this thing, and things like it?
• What functions do the users need from this thing?
• What information might the users need, and in what form do they need it?
• How do users think this 'thing' should work?
• How can the design of this ‘thing’ facilitate users' cognitive processes?

UCD can improve the usability and usefulness of everything from "everyday things" (D. Norman) to software to information systems to processes. . . anything with which people interact. As such, User-Centered Design concerns itself with both usefulness and usability.

Even so, there are still a lot of complains and unsatisfactory from the users. Why is that so? Although the research is done based on the targeted users, not everyone is exactly the same. They may have different preferences as to how and it should look and work. For example if you design a game console and it's meant for boys to play but it's PINK in colour, do you think your game console would sell? Well, yes maybe it would but it definitely wouldn't be the in the top sale list although your game console design is the best of all kind.

There are also problems when interviewing users. The user may not give the best answer to you and some are shy to answer because they do not know what they want. Users are definitely not a designer. They just use your products and if they find it nice and comfortable to use, they might recommend it to their friends and family. The word of mouth is the one that make your product sell well but the process to do that isn't simple. You can also observe your user under natural condition and controlled condition to get the best result.