User Centered-Design (UCD) is a philosophy and a process. It is a philosophy that places the person, or the user, at the center as opposed to the thing. It is a process that focuses on cognitive factors such as perception, memory, learning problem-solving as they come into play during peoples' interactions with things. UCD can improve the usability and usefulness of everything from everyday things, to software to information systems to processes, basically anything with which people interact.
The goal of UCD is to produce products that have a high degree of usability. The main difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product, rather than forcing the users to change their behavior to adjust to the product.
This however can prove to create difficulties as having a system that revolves around the user makes it harder to pinpoint what exactly will satisfy the user. A good design will now always guarantee a satisfied customer. Design evolves, making the designer always looking out for the newest thing that is coming around. Also, what the user demands for may not always be what the user actually needs.
Therefore, there needs to be a balance between giving the user what they want and using actual skills and knowledge to create a compromise between the two. It's basically the best of both worlds.
No comments:
Post a Comment