Different Solutions Through User Centred Design
If you have ever used a product and found that it doesn't quite work the way it was advertised
, or tried to read the instructions on how to assemble that new bicycle you bought for your child and found it less than user friendly, and said, "I could have done better than that", you know the importance of user centred design.
User centred design, commonly abbreviated to UCD, is a design philosophy that is based on you the user, not just the end product. It involves people in the process of designing documents, products, new technologies, and even services. It takes into consideration how you interact with the product, what you use it for and what your needs are that are not being met at the moment.
Users are the reason that products are made in the first place, yet in the past they were casually considered as engineers designed products for the masses and distributed them to the market. Now, with user centred design, people are becoming the forefront of design and technology development. Companies have realised their mistake of not taking the end user into consideration in the design process. Now they have, with the user increasingly being part of the design process from start to finish.
You may have noticed that software has become more user friendly over the years. That is because of user centred design. The engineers who design our software made people part of the design process and learned from them what their products needed, what applications to design, and how people interacted with the software. During the process adjustments were refined until the finished product was produced.
There are numerous tests and questions that must be answered during the design process such as; what are the user's tasks and goals they need to accomplish? What kinds of functions are necessary to make the user's task easier? And how do the users view the product and how do they think it should work? These are just some of the questions raised during the design process and engineers do take them into consideration. Effectively the engineers who design the products and the users are equals in the design process.
User centred design is here to stay because it is much more feasible to design a product around the user than trying to design a product without them in mind. So the next time you come across a product that has ease of use, functions as advertised, and performs multiple tasks just the way you think it should, remember user centred design is probably behind the product. It sure makes life and work a lot easier when products do what they are supposed to do for the people who use them, and that is what user centred design is all about.
by: Strahan Leonard
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