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Creating user interfaces that meet the user's needs and expectations requires careful consideration of the actual context of usage. Especially in complex software or web designs it is hard to predict all user requirements and make specifications without thoroughly analysing the context of usage and visualising possible design solutions.
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 optimize the user interface around how people can, want, or need to work, rather than forcing the users to change how they work to accommodate the system or function.
UCD Models and Approaches
Models of a user centered design process help software designers to fulfill the goal of a product engineered for their users. In these models, user requirements are considered right from the beginning and included into the whole product cycle. Their major characteristics are the active participation of real users, as well as an iteration of design solutions.
- 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’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)
All these approaches follow the ISO standard Human-centered design processes for interactive systems (ISO 13407 Model, 1999).
User-centered design according to Donald. A. Norman
The book "The Design of Everyday Things", originally called "The Psychology of Everyday Things" was first published in 1986. In this book, Donald A. Norman describes the psychology behind what he deems 'good' and 'bad' design through examples and offers principles of 'good' design. He exalts the importance of design in our everyday lives, and the consequences of errors caused by bad design. However, his approach has been criticised for being overly functionalist by proponents of a critical design methodology where the experience of the user is considered beyond mere utility.
In his book, Norman uses the term "user-centered design" to describe design based on the needs of the user, leaving aside what he considers to be secondary issues like aesthetics. User-centered design involves simplifying the structure of tasks, making things visible, getting the mapping right, exploiting the powers of constraint, and designing for error. Norman's overly reductive approach in this text was redressed by him later in his own publication "Emotional Design". Other books in a similar vein include Patrick Jordan's "Designing Pleasurable Products" by Patrick Jordan, in which the author suggests that as well as traditional definitions of usability different forms of pleasure should also be admitted as being part of a user-centered approach.
Other topics of the book include:
- The Psychopathology of Everyday Things
- The Psychology of Everyday Actions
- Knowledge in the Head and in the World
- Knowing What to Do
- To Err Is Human
- The Design Challenge
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Related concepts
"User-centered design"