user centered design

WHY USER CENTERED DESIGN

in user centered design it is important to look at both the needs and wants of clients, by considering the user you can compete more efficiently to allow a larger market share, meaning you can sell more, this is helped by research and development. designers often follow ISO 13407 for usability, which covers full account of users, change is user centered with iteration, all user experience is considered and many different skills work on one project

good design utilises the iterative process, a cycle of prototyping, testing and evaluation, building of feedback

need wants and values are often researched into before designing a product, common themes looked into are :

market research - looking into existing products to spot possible design problems, parts that could be improved or gaps in the market that can be filled by certain USPs, you can select the best features and also look at weakness that can be exploited to gain a larger market share

interviews and focus groups - by talking directly to the target demographic you can gain more insight in possibilites for your product and gain feedback on prototypes when developing an idea this infromation allows a group of users to give a range of views. interviews can also be commonly done before starting to find more problems that you design can help/solve for requirements

human factors - looking at the psychology and physiology of humasn allows you to see exactly what you ned to cater for and how the product will need to work for it to be used easily by humans

product analysis and evaluation - after prototyping you can review your idea and look at possible ways to improve it, usually during iterative design cycles. the evaluation can also be completed after reviewing the product with a focus group or ergonomics testing

ergonomic and anthropometric data - looking at numerical data of human measurements and how a human inetreacts can help you make a well scaled product or look at how to make the user experienvc better. anthropometrics is the study of the size and proportion of the human body, certain data sets are used depending on who the target market is. often only the 5th to 95th percentile is used, but other can be used for adjustability or adaptability

secondary research - research can also be done online looking at existing products or deisgn moememnts, by looking at histroical influences and looking at materials you can start to visualise what your product needs before designing

INVESTIGATION

sometimes products can go wrong causing a negative spiral where bad reviews cause a bad reputation, causing moeney to be lost loosing mmarket share, this is often due to the product being uncomfortable, hard to use or unsafe

to avoid this design development is done using the iterative process, models are often produced using cheap materials or via CAD CAM, prototypes can then be tested and evalauted for betterd development before the product is released into the market. during prototype testing, quality control measures are also checked