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:
“A major misunderstanding of child rearing has been the idea that meeting a child’s needs is an end in itself, for the purpose of the child’s mental health. Mothers have not understood that this is but one step in social development, the goal of which is to help a child begin to consider others. As a result, they often have not considered their children but have instead allowed their children’s reality to take precedence, out of a fear of damaging them emotionally.”
—Elaine Heffner (20th century)
“I don’t like to be idle; in fact, I often feel somewhat guilty unless there is some purpose to what I am doing. But spending a few hours—or a few days—in the woods, swamps or alongside a stream has never seemed to me a waste of time.... I derive special benefit from a period of solitude.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The purpose of education is to keep a culture from being drowned in senseless repetitions, each of which claims to offer a new insight.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)