Sunday, November 18, 2007

What's User-Centered Design?

"User Centered Design" (UCD) is an approach used in the project, where the end-user or target audience is at the center of the design & development of an application or product development.

This approach makes sure that all the design & development is done based on the end-user inputs, their requirement & feedbacks taken into account while researching, using either of the popular user-centered design methods ; to make sure that the application-in-the-make meets all or maximum possible expectations of the end-user from the respective product / application intended at the specific target user group.

ISO 13407:1999 - a section for Human-centered design processes for interactive systems, specifies the steps for an ideal UCD process which actually begins at the very early stage of the project / product design & development. This stages are inter-dependent & their usage in the actual practice varies based on the project it applies to, as well as the amount of efforts that has been put in.

These steps can be briefed as follows:
  • Understand and specify the context of use

  • Specify the user and organizational requirements

  • Produce product design / solutions

  • Evaluate designs against requirements

This also can be explained with the help of below-given graphics:



If this product design meets the user requirements, this leads to the final product development.

We will discuss more about the "User-centered design" in the part 2 of this article.

1 comment:

Min Namgoong said...

User-centered design is important because if Web site is not useful to users, users will not visit the Web site. Web site must meet users’ needs and users must find information when they visit the site. Designers must consider who the users of Web site are, what information users need, and more.