User Centered Design

Human Centred Design

Approach to systems design and development that aims to make interactive systems more usable by focusing on the use of the system and applying human factors/ergonomics and usability knowledge and techniques

  • The term “human-centred design” is used rather than “user-centred design” in order to emphasize that this part of ISO 9241 also addresses impacts on a number of stakeholders, not just those typically considered as users. However, in practice, these terms are often used synonymously.

  • Usable systems can provide a number of benefits, including improved productivity, enhanced user well-being, avoidance of stress, increased accessibility and reduced risk of harm

Diversity of Users

  • Goal

  • Domain expertise/job role

  • Technical skill

  • Technical background/experience

  • Population diversity

    • Age, gender, language, culture etc

  • Cognitive ability

  • Physical ability

  • Vulnerability

    • Elderly, children etc

4 Stage Model

  • Research

    • Understand the users' needs, preferences, and behaviours

    • Collect data through methods such as interviews, surveys, and observations

  • Requirements

    • Define requirements

    • What problems and pain points will be solved for the users?

  • Design

    • Create solutions based on requirements

    • Create wireframes, mock-ups, and prototypes

  • Evaluation

    • Test designed solutions with real users

    • Identify usability issues and improvement areas

Personas

Used to represent users

  • Archetypes of target users

  • Tool to help us put ourself in unfamiliar shoes

  • Help us empathise with user

    • Contain details to help us connect - compelling characters

    • Contain details to help us design - relevant to what we are creating

Scenarios

  • Put personas in motion

  • Clear examples of how a system is used

    • Typically concise stories

    • More about the user and their mental models, detail of design unclear

  • Need to make clear:

    • The goal of the user

    • The context of the user

    • How to system is used

  • Similar to use cases and user stories

    • More about creating empathy and user understanding

Storyboarding

  • Walkthrough of a scenario

    • Higher fidelity version

    • Interactions/actions

    • Context/people/places

  • Representation is pictorial

    • Helps us think about design in more detail

  • Prototype features not finalised

    • Some details included

Sketching Ideas

  • Start to focus on interface

  • Low effort/fast to produce

  • Help with ideation

  • Not prototypes, seed elements

  • Draw attention to elements of the system being prototyped

Prototyping

Iterations of design of the interface, functionality and finally look and feel

Advantages

  • Cost/time of implementation

    • Lock-in syndrome

  • Identify problems early in the process

  • Identify desirable features

  • Rapidly evaluate multiple design iterations

  • Usually interactive

Rule
Types

Soft

  • Underlying hardware exists already

  • Best suited for mobile apps, web pages, applications etc
    Hard

  • Shares a fuzzy boundary with product design

  • Underlying hardware doesn’t exist

  • Hardware prototype is required to validate/prove a certain theory

Pitfalls

  • Quantity over quality

  • Iterative learning

  • Learn from mistakes