UCD Models and Approaches
For example, the user-centered design process can help software designers to fulfill the goal of a product engineered for their users. User requirements are considered right from the beginning and included into the whole product cycle. These requirements are noted and refined through investigative methods including: ethnographic study, contextual inquiry, prototype testing, usability testing and other methods. Generative methods may also be used including: card sorting, affinity diagraming and participatory design sessions. In addition, user requirements can be inferred by careful analysis of usable products similar to the product being designed.
- Cooperative design: involving designers and users on an equal footing. This is the Scandinavian tradition of design of IT artifacts and it has been evolving since 1970.
- Participatory design (PD), a North American term for the same concept, inspired by Cooperative Design, focusing on the participation of users. Since 1990, there has been a bi-annual Participatory Design Conference.
- Contextual design, “customer-centered design” in the actual context, including some ideas from Participatory design
All these approaches follow the ISO standard Human-centred design for interactive systems (ISO 9241-210, 2010).
The ISO standard describes 6 key principles that will ensure a design is user centred:
- The design is based upon an explicit understanding of users, tasks and environments.
- Users are involved throughout design and development.
- The design is driven and refined by user-centred evaluation.
- The process is iterative.
- The design addresses the whole user experience.
- The design team includes multidisciplinary skills and perspectives.
Read more about this topic: User-centered Design
Famous quotes containing the words models and/or approaches:
“Grandparents can be role models about areas that may not be significant to young children directly but that can teach them about patience and courage when we are ill, or handicapped by problems of aging. Our attitudes toward retirement, marriage, recreation, even our feelings about death and dying may make much more of an impression than we realize.”
—Eda Le Shan (20th century)
“I should say that the most prominent scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts and not pure science, or are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors in particular departments. They make no steady and systematic approaches to the central fact.... There is wanting constant and accurate observation with enough of theory to direct and discipline it. But, above all, there is wanting genius.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)