User-centred design

Introductory articles

  • Accessibility and user-centred design
    A brief introduction, with linked resources, for those unfamiliar with accessibility and/or user-centred design.

  • Introduction to usability and user-centred design
    With more and more business being conducted online rather than face-to-face, it is important that we build websites and applications that are easy to use. Poor web usability can result in loss of business, frustrated clients, staff errors, and increased demand on helpdesks and call centres. If the idea of conducting or supporting business online is to introduce efficiencies and/or extend the reach of your business, then building highly usable web sites is a must. This presentation introduces the concepts of usability and user-centred design. It contrasts user-centred design methods with traditional development approaches, and provides an overview of how user-centred design methods can be introduced into web development projects. A case study of a user-centred web redesign project is discussed.

  • Lather, rinse, repeat - a user-centred design approach
    A user-centered design approach can create successes by merging business and user objectives to deliver a service that users value, while generating a benefit for the business. In fact, studies show that with a user-centered eesign you could realize returns of $10 to $100 for every $1 you invest in making your site easier to use.

  • What is user-centred design?
    User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to design that grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. UCD processes focus on users through the planning, design and development of a product.

  • User-centred design and web development
    User Centred-Design (UCD) is a philosophy and a process. It is a philosophy that places the person (as opposed to the 'thing') at the centre; it is a process that focuses on cognitive factors (such as perception, memory, learning, problem-solving, etc.) as they come into play during peoples' interactions with things.

Discussion articles

  • 3 is the magic number
    Three articles, all written this week, that have an underlying theme of questioning the value of UCD and those who provide expertise in it.

  • Accessibility humanised: a user-centred approach to accessibility
    Most web developers act in blindness when they design accessible websites, since they know next to nothing about disabled people and the technology they use. Accessibility guidelines and validation tools don't provide this insight. Accessibility for disabled users should be approached from a user-centred perspective.

  • Accessibility in the user-centred design process: overview
    This resource is designed primarily for usability professionals who know User-Centered Design (UCD) processes and techniques, including the principles of usability testing, and have a basic understanding of accessibility. Design team managers, ergonomists, human factors professionals, advocates for product accessibility, accessibility practitioners, and marketers might also benefit from the information in this resource.

  • Adapting the design process to address more customers in more situations
    While user-centered design (UCD) is a commonly used process for designing mainstream hardware, software, and web interfaces; design for accessibility is relatively uncommon in education and practice. As a result, the scope of users and the situations in which they operate products is not as inclusive as it could be. Designing for accessibility does not require a whole new process. Accessible design techniques fit well into established UCD processes for designing a range of products, from a handheld device, to office software, to a government web site. By integrating accessibility into the design process, designers can efficiently create products that work effectively for more people in more situations.

  • Adopting user-centred design within an agile process: a conversation (PDF)
    eXtreme Programming and other agile processes provide a middle ground between chaos and over-elaborate processes sometimes referred to as 'death by documentation'. A particular attrtactive aspect of the agile approach for many teams is its willingness to accomodate change no matter how advanced development might be. However, this very flexibility can cause user interface design issues and ensuing usability problems. Adopting a user-centered approach to user interface design can address these issues, as the following simulated conversation between a user-centered design consultant and an XP team leader will explain.

  • An introduction to user journeys
    "User journeys are a method for conceptualising and structuring a website's content and functionality. These journeys allow us to shift away from thinking about structure in terms of hierarchies or a technical build. Creating a user journey places a strong emphasis on personas and also merges the creation of scenarios and user flows. However, unlike user flows, hierarchies, or functional specs (which explain the interaction between a user and a system’s logic and processes), user journeys explore a user's mental and lived 'patterns, processes, and paths' and translate these into web-based experiences."
    (Jason Hobbs)

  • Another -ability: accessibility for usability specialists
    This paper discusses in depth the relationship between accessibility and usability in product design. It presents a definition of accessibility and introduces the concept of 'usable accessibility'.

  • Art, science, and magic: what really happens during user-centered design?
    One of the great debates in user-centered design (UCD) centres on whether UCD is an art or a science. If one were to examine the research literature on how concepts are formed, some surprising insights emerge with respect to this important dilemma.

  • Being user-centered when implementing a UCD process
    For those who are interested in usability--whether long-time advocates or newly introduced--this is a good time to introduce a user-centered design process. But introducing a new process, even on a small scale, can be a challenge. The goal of user-centered design focuses on the actual users of the product, but the users of a process are the members of the product development group itself. It is too easy to see them as the 'enemy'--the people who have failed to serve the needs of users. The problem is that such a combative attitude rarely succeeds in the long run. A more positive approach is to treat the implementation of a user-centered design process as a user-centered design problem, applying its approach and techniques.

  • Can you purchase wisdom?
    When buying enterprise software, companies need to do more work to understand users' goals and tasks.

  • Clean cutting edge UI design cuts McAfee's support calls by 90%
    "When McAfee Inc. recently introduced its ProtectionPilot software--a dashboard-type management console for its Active VirusScan SMB Edition and Active Virus Defense SMB Edition suites--the trial downloads were fast and furious: In the first 10 weeks after release, more than 20,000 users went online to get a copy. Those 20,000 downloads of ProtectionPilot over a 10-week time span generated only 170 calls to McAfee's support lines--approximately one-tenth the volume that the company would expect, according to McAfee software development manager David Ries. And, roughly a third of those support calls were actually pre-sales questions."
    (Bruce Hadley)

  • Client centred design
    Although a website development team generally includes a usability expert, user centered design is the responsibility of every single member of the team, programmers no less than graphical designers, database wizards no less than usability experts.

  • Customer focus: first rule of scientific content management
    "Your website is there to serve your customers. Everything must revolve around your customers. They must come first. If you don't put your customers at the very center of everything you do, your website will fail."
    (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

  • Delivering expected value to users and stakeholders with user engineering (PDF)
    The success of a product or service depends on how well it is received by its intended audience. Usually success results from a systematic design process that involves the intended users. The user experience consists of how a product or service is perceived by users, and the goal is to make the experience consistent and supportive. User Engineering (UE) is an evolving discipline that focuses on designing the total user experience, from initial awareness and acquisition of a product or service to first use, then day-to-day use, onward through the life cycle of the offering. UE goes well beyond User-Centered Design by adopting software engineering approaches and tools.

  • Design by or for the people
    Rather than adapting to more varied subjects and activities, user-centred design has to a large extent lost its ambition and been supplanted by one of its elements: the relatively conservative concept of usability.

  • Designing for the 'average user'
    "We all were average users at one point. We still are when it comes to working with a new program, product or website. The difference between us (IT professionals) and the average user is that we have learned sophisticated coping strategies for figuring out software and the web."
    (Frank Spillers - Demystifying Usability)

  • Effective use of participatory design methods
    "Participatory design (PD) is a design framework and related methods which advocate user involvement in design, and a political stance advocating worker rights. It originated from Scandinavian software development practices in the 1950s and inherits some of the social democratic intentions of that area. This essay is not intended to dissuade researchers from using PD, nor to support traditional non-human-centered software development. Rather it seeks to provoke an honest discussion about both the advantages and disadvantages of PD theory and methods. Frameworks such as PD can be inherited without critical review, which hinders positive evolution, application, and adaptation of existing PD and user centered methods."
    (Jeff Axup - Mobile Community Design)

  • Game-like elicitation methods - a new approach to user research
    "Many market research methods focus on understanding what people want. The typical method is to ask people directly - through surveys / or focus groups. Asking people directly has its uses, but it's not a good way to understand people. Additionally much of human thought lies below conscious awareness and it's important to use methods that tap into the subconscious."
    (Rashmi Sinha)

  • Get out of your lab and into their lives
    "The proliferation of usability labs is a sign of success for the field of user-centered design. Whether it’s a low-rent lab comprised of a couple adjacent conference rooms, a video camera, and a television, or a fully decked-out space with remote-control cameras, two-way mirrors, an observation room, and bowls of M & Ms--more and more companies are investing in such set-ups. Conducting user tests in labs is probably the most common means of getting user input on projects. That’s a shame, because standard user testing practice is remarkably out of sync with reality."
    (Peter Merholz - Adaptive Path)

  • HCD harmful? A clarification
    "I believe that we should increase our focus upon the tasks and activities to be accomplished and reduce the focus on these cute but design-empty scenarios and personas. If I truly understand the task, if I truly understand the mixture of tasks that together comprise an activity, and if I truly understand the interruptions, ill-defined nature of most people’s approach to their activities, then I can provide far better support than if I focus upon the training, age, or personality of the individual people who might use it."
    (Donald Norman - uiGarden.net)

  • How product teams benefit from usability
    "Product teams can leverage usability in three simple ways. First, usability can disambiguate requirements. Second, it can push a product closer to perfection with a small investment. Finally, usability helps product teams inform the organization about potential and expected support issues."
    (John Rhodes)

  • How to avoid being blinded by your own design: seeing the forest for the trees
    "User-centered Design (aka UCD), combines a set of methods, techniques and approaches that creates more objectivity in design by leveraging user data, user needs, user issues, user insights and user advocacy."
    (Frank Spillers)

  • Human-centred design considered harmful
    "Human-Centered Design has become such a dominant theme in design that it is now accepted by interface and application designers automatically, without thought, let alone criticism. That’s a dangerous state--when things are treated as accepted wisdom. The purpose of this essay is to provoke thought, discussion, and reconsideration of some of the fundamental principles of Human-Centered Design. These principles, I suggest, can be helpful, misleading, or wrong. At times, they might even be harmful. Activity-Centered Design is superior."
    (Donald Norman)

  • Innovation through people-centred design - lessons from the USA (PDF)
    The mission aimed to investigate the impact of user-centred research in the design process, with a particular focus on new technology including computer hardware and software, mobile phones, and technology services. The group was interested in the ways in which user-centred research becomes integrated into both the product design and development process as well as embedded within organisational culture and long-term strategic thinking. In sum, mission participants emphasise that people in their social context rather than task-centric users should be considered a fundamental source of innovation.
    (DTI Global Watch Mission)

  • Interaction design meets agility
    Notes from Jeff Paton's tutorial on practicing collaborative usage-centered design on agile software development projects.

  • Interior design versus product design
    "Automobile design still seems designer-centered. This type of design wins prizes, gives great attention to the individual designers, and often gets displayed in museums. Great for egos, great for the art world, great for advertisements. But for the customers, the people who use the products: Bad, bad, bad."
    (Don Norman)

  • Iterative development in the field (PDF)
    In this paper, we describe Iterative Development in the Field (IDF), a user-centred design approach for developing interactive applications. This approach is characterised by repeated evaluation and redesign cycles that are carried out throughout the product life cycle, from initial discovery and gathering of requirements to beyond deployment in the field. The evaluation is based on the use of interactive prototypes and is performed by actual users in the field. We describe how IDF has evolved over the past 13 years through the experience gained from four major projects and offer a set of guidelines for successful IDF that we illustrate with examples from our experience.

  • Learn from your customers for usable web applications
    Usability consultant Paul Englefield takes you on a journey to demonstrate that listening to your customers is the only way to provide the ultimate usability when designing an e-commerce site or web-based applications. Through examples, the article weaves user-centered design techniques into the steps of designing an effective business site, focusing on gathering data about your customers' (and their customers') usage behaviors, offers two design models, and demonstrates how to integrate customers' input into the testing and evaluation process.

  • Making customer-centred design work in the real world
    Advocates of customer-centered design often come face-to-face with resistance from their company and co-workers when they try to introduce it into the organisation. There are strategies and tactics that work to shift organisations toward customer-centered design. Recognising what works--and that it takes time to shift an organisation's thinking and culture--is a key to success.

  • Making the customer CEO
    "The Web empowers the customer more than it empowers the organization. The implications are enormous."
    (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

  • Notes from "User Interfaces for Physical Spaces"
    "Notes from a one-day workshop and field trip co-produced by MAYA Design and the IA Institute. The day was essentially an extended case study of the work MAYA did with the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, applying methods of user-centered design and information architecture to the design of physical spaces."
    (Peter Merholz)

  • Planning for user research success
    "Planning is crucial if you want your user research efforts to be effective. You need to think about what information you need to gather, and why, before embarking on any research. Good planning, well communicated to the client or project, and followed by careful implementation will ensure your research is effective."
    (Daniel Szuc, Gerry Gaffney - Apogee)

  • Rapid user-centered design techniques: challenges and solutions
    "Organizations are challenged today to shorten and simplify processes but also want to get customer data into the development cycle. This is especially the case when development follows Agile development methods such as Extreme Programming (XP). Development teams often contend that developer intuition, expert user advisors, and lightweight usability testing is enough to collect user needs. But these techniques although quicker do not ensure a high quality product or application that work for the people who will use them. The user-centered design community is challenged to develop techniques to infuse in-depth user data into a design and development process that can fit with short time frames, limited resources, and the 2-4 week iterations of XP. "
    (Karen Holzblatt)

  • Reflections on the user centered design perspective in research on wireless applications
    In order to play an influential role in research and practice, UCD communities should implement new methods and tools into current practices and advance the boundaries of the field.

  • Reduce visual clutter to improve usability
    A modern home page often includes a barrage of information. We need to reduce this visual clutter or we risk overwhelming site visitors and making it difficult for those visitors to find what they're looking for. There are several contributing factors for this trend. One factor is designers who work on large, high-resolution monitors and don't adequately test their designs on smaller monitors at lower-resolution settings.

  • Selling user research to the reluctant
    Researching the users of your product is extremely important in making it more popular, more profitable, and more compelling. But companies make products, not user research teams. A company needs more than data about its users; it needs to be able to take that knowledge and act on it. Unless the benefits and techniques of user-centered design and research are ingrained in the processes, tools, and mind-set of the company, knowledge will do little to prevent problems.

  • Senior managers, you can't keep ignoring the web
    "Most websites are not managed. They are, at best, administered. These administrators "put up" stuff on the website that they are told to put up. This approach quickly turns your website into a dumping ground. Many administrators know this but they have no real power or authority-it's often their bosses who tell them to put up this unnecessary content."
    (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

  • Strategies for sizing UCD projects (PDF)
    "Sizing UCD projects presents special challenges to usability practitioners and consultants. Each project and UCD methodology comes with its own set of variables that makes it difficult to accurately estimate resource requirements and completion times. The goal of this effort is to discover best practices for effectively sizing UCD projects."
    (Janice James, Carol Righi and others)

  • Success with user-centred design management
    "At conferences, UX professionals typically hear about the process of user-centered design or how to design a particular type of product or feature, but rarely hear about how to facilitate the inclusion of design management in the product development cycle and successfully ship a well-designed product."
    (Jeremy Ashley, Kristin Desmond)

  • The evolution of user-centered focus in the human-computer interaction field (PDF)
    We offer a historical perspective on the development of the human-computer interaction (HCI) field over the last 20 years. In that time many changes have occurred in how we think about making use of data gathered from users of technology to guide the process of designing and developing new hardware and software systems.

  • The greatest skill of the 21st century
    "In an age when technology is everywhere, those who understand how technology works are easy to find. Those who understand how people work are much harder to find."
    (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

  • The secret of managing a successful website
    The web is about self-service. To achieve success in self-service you need to really understand how your visitors think and behave. If they are to serve themselves they must feel comfortable and confident. That requires getting to know their needs in a comprehensive manner. It requires an ongoing conversation with them.

  • The user-centric design trap
    UCD complements the process of designing and optimising a site for conversion, but it was never conceived to address the intricacies of building a persuasive system.

  • Two tracks to UCD
    One commonly held objection to developing a superior user experience, is that it takes too long. The argument goes that, if you wait to get it right then you'll be late to market and the opportunity will be lost. In this short white paper, we present an approach which allows you to do both in a controlled and reasoned fashion--move quickly to respond to market demands, whilst developing a superior user experience.

  • UCD for different project types, part 1
    Today's software applications need to be both useful and usable, supporting simple and efficient completion of tasks by the intended user audience. Much has been written about methodologies for designing software that meets user needs. But little emphasis has been placed on what types of activities are truly essential in achieving these goals. Here in part 1 of this two-part article, the authors tap into their 30+ years of combined experience in applying such techniques to boil the design of useful and usable software down to its essential activities.

  • UCD for different project types, part 2
    Today's software applications need to be both useful and usable, supporting simple and efficient completion of tasks by the intended user audience. Part 1 of this two-part series on user-centered design defined the essential activities of useful and usable software. Here in part 2, Lynn Percival and Jack Scanlon describe the applicability of these core activities across a range of development project types--selection and possible customisation of a vendor application, evolution and rewrite of an existing application, and creation of a new application.

  • User-centered design (UCD) - 6 methods
    "User-centered design (UCD) is a project approach that puts the intended users of a site at the centre of its design and development. It does this by talking directly to the user at key points in the project to make sure the site will deliver upon their requirements."
    (Tim Fidgeon - Webcredible)

  • User-centred design standards
    ISO standards related to usability can be categorised as primarily concerned with the use of the product (effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a particular context of use); the user interface and interaction; the process used to develop the product; and the capability of an organisation to apply user centred design.

  • User-centred research: a status report
    During the past twenty years, user-centered research has become an increasingly common and important part of contemporary product development. The origins of this approach to design and development actually stretch back to the beginning of industrial design in America. A careful reading of the current literature reveals three key conclusions about user-centered research in contemporary product design: The definition and goals of user-centered research are widely understood and defined;User-centered research is regarded as an integral part of the design and development process; The methods employed to conduct user-centered research are well defined.

  • U.S.E.R. - secret sauce distilled
    There's an assumption that consultants have some sort of secret sauce. And consulting firms often go to great lengths to uphold that assumption--witness the bevy of trademarked proprietary methodologies touted by firms big and small. However, when it comes down to it, most of the methodologies are describing the same thing. That hasn't kept me from coming up with my own twist on the iterative approach.

  • Why doing user observations first is wrong
    "How many times have you had to fight hard for the ability to do field studies and other observations at the very start of the project? How many times have you patiently explained that taking time now would be rewarded by faster time to market overall? And how many times were you successful? The HCI community has long complained about product processes that do not allow time to start with good observations. The more I examine this issue, the more I think that it is we, the HCI community, who are wrong. This includes me, for I have long championed the 'study first, design second' approach. Well, I now suggest that for many projects the order is design, then study. "
    (Donald Norman)

  • Why people matter
    "I view a user experience as a conversation between people separated over the distance of time. At one end of that conversation are those who create the product; at the other, the people who use it. In between is the product itself with a design that either helps or hinders, creates a barrier-free interaction, or shouts in an unfamiliar language. Because this conversation does not happen in real time we are not there to smooth over the rough spots and make sure that we have spoken clearly. Instead, we have to build our understanding of those users into every aspect of the design by putting people, users, at the center of the design process."
    (Whitney Quesenbery - UXmatters)

  • You DO talk to customers, don't you?
    You ARE talking to customers, aren't you? After all, if a customer experience practitioner isn't involving real customers in the project, I'd have to ask: what are you afraid of?

  • Your website is for your most ambitious customers
    "Most websites suffer from over-ambition. They try to do too much with few resources. They think they can answer every question."
    (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

  • Your website is for your most ambitious customers
    "Most websites suffer from over-ambition. They try to do too much with few resources. They think they can answer every question."
    (Gerry McGovern - New Thinking)

Research articles

  • Key research findings related to user-centered design
    It is not enough to just design from intuition and good intentions. We need the benefit of scientific insights. As we move toward mature usability engineering, institutionalised in organisations, we must have resources to constantly incorporate these insights into our practice.

Case studies

  • A user-centred approach to designing a new top-level structure for a large and diverse corporate website
    In January 1998, Kodak introduced a new top-level structure and visual design for its Web site. This paper describes the user-centered approach utilized in the design process. We discovered that combining the knowledge gained from a variety of data collection methods was critical to understanding and defining Web site user requirements. We also found an on-line preview and survey to be a useful tool for assessing user acceptance of new designs. A sampling of results is provided to illustrate the process we used and to discuss its effectiveness.

  • Building ease of use into the IBM user experience (PDF)
    This paper provides an overview of the process and organisational transformation that IBM has gone through in improving the user experience with our offerings. IBM’s process for building ease of use into the user experience is described and two versions of the process are introduced and contrasted. The IBM User-Centered Design (UCD) approach, which has been used for the last several years, is contrasted with the traditional approach to the development of offerings. A recent major enhanced version of the process, called User Engineering (UE), which is optimised for the IBM e-business on
    demand strategy, is contrasted with the existing UCD process.

  • Redesign of the Monash University website: a case study in user-centred design methods
    This paper presents a case study in user-centred design as applied to the redesign of the Monash University web site. It begins with an overview of user-centred design which is then contrasted with traditional development processes. The case study provides some background information about the project and the choice of methodology, an outline of the user-centred design methods used, and the nature of the multi-disciplinary team responsible for the project

UCD processes

  • LUCID (Logical User-Centered Interaction Design)
    LUCID is a framework, developed by the Cognetics Corporation, that gives you a context in which to conduct your product, UI design, and usability activities. It also gives you the background and tools you need to manage those activities.

  • TRUMP (TRrial Usability Maturity Process)
    A European Union-funded project that considered ways to raise the "usability maturity" of organisations. It has developed an UCD methodology that is documented on this website.

Quizzes

  • Are you customer-centred?
    The first step in usability survival is to make sure that your development process is customer centred. This means making sure that customers are involved in the design and evaluation of the system. This page reproduces an assessment form from the book "E-commerce Usability", written by one of our consultants. The test will help you measure where you are now and provide a framework to help you improve. Use this to work out the strengths and weaknesses in your current process.