Purpose
UCD answers questions about users and their tasks and goals, then uses the findings to make decisions about development and design. UCD of a web site, for instance, seeks to answer the following questions:
- Who are the users of the document?
- What are the users’ tasks and goals?
- What are the users’ experience levels with the document, and documents like it?
- What functions do the users need from the document?
- What information might the users need, and in what form do they need it?
- How do users think the document should work?
- What are the extreme environments?
- Is the user multitasking?
- Does the interface utilize different inputs modes such as touching, spoken, gestures, or orientation?
Read more about this topic: User-centered Design
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“During the cattle drives, Texas cowboy music came into national significance. Its practical purpose is well known—it was used primarily to keep the herds quiet at night, for often a ballad sung loudly and continuously enough might prevent a stampede. However, the cowboy also sang because he liked to sing.... In this music of the range and trail is “the grayness of the prairies, the mournful minor note of a Texas norther, and a rhythm that fits the gait of the cowboy’s pony.””
—Administration in the State of Texa, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“How still the evening is,
As hushed on purpose to grace harmony!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Our purpose in founding the city was not to make any one class in it surpassingly happy, but to make the city as a whole as happy as possible.”
—Socrates (469–399 B.C.)