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The rapid advancement of technology is pushing companies to evaluate their products and methods of operation in order to replace them with more modern and user friendly options.
When it comes to finding solutions, for consumer and societal issues, corporations and design firms are increasingly using the terms UCD (User Centered Design) and UX (User Experience).
What exactly do these terms mean?
User experience or UX refers to any interaction a person has with a product or service. In UX design every aspect that influences this experience is taken into account including the users emotions. How easily they can accomplish their intended tasks.
On the hand UCD takes an emotional approach and focuses more on the situational and contextual factors that impact how people engage with designs.
In this article we will delve into the meaning of each term discuss the difference, between UCD and UX as explore key concepts associated with both terms.
What Is User Centered Design (UCD)?
Whenever we create a product it is crucial to consider who it is designed for and how that person will use it. Understanding the importance of designing consumer products is crucial.
As Frank Chimero famously stated, “People don’t pay attention to designs that don’t consider people.” This quote perfectly captures the significance of user centered design.
The primary objective of user centered design is to gather information, about the individuals who will benefit from or interact with the product. Unfortunately many companies tend to prioritize their objectives, flashy features and technical capabilities when creating applications or systems. These design approaches often neglect the end user, who should be at the core of the process.
User centered design philosophy revolves around placing the products user than just focusing on the application itself at the center of the design process. The key lies in considering and addressing users needs while striving to develop solutions that guide them effortlessly without requiring any effort from their end.
Ensuring user satisfaction becomes a priority where every design decision is evaluated based on its ability to add value for users. By employing a user centered design approach you can even evoke responses from users, towards your products.
User Centric Design Principles
Now that we’ve discussed what User Centered Design (UCD) entails lets delve into the principles to consider when starting a UCD project.
The core principles of UCD aim to prioritize usability throughout the development process. By adhering to these principles a products user experience (UX) will not be optimized upon its release but also throughout all stages of usage.
Below you’ll find a list of nine design principles, for creating systems. Feel free to tailor them according to your interaction requirements.
- Tailor Designs Based on User Needs
Interactive computer systems cannot exist in isolation; they must empower users to accomplish their tasks. It is crucial to focus on providing assistance and support that aligns with user and task centric approaches.
During development it is important for developers to consider the characteristics of the target real world tasks involved and the intended environment over the duration of the project. Additionally the product should be suitable for the context in which it will be used.
Designing a product that demands effort from users significantly undermines its usability and usefulness thus contradicting the goals of UCD.
- Maintain Coherence
Consistency plays a role, in how people engage with a product and how quickly they become familiar with it.
For this reason users expect a system that’s easy to learn and has guidelines. It is important for interface components to behave consistently.
To ensure consistency when interacting with existing elements in a computer system it is crucial to start the design process with an approach. While incorporating design strategies can address interactivity concerns it is essential to consider how much they may impact consistency.
When updating the interface design maintaining consistency across features becomes vital to ensure that users continue to find it useful. This aspect influences how people perceive your strategy and the time it takes for them to learn.
- Utilize Clear and Natural Language
The primary application of the system should facilitate communication with the user.
To avoid users only provide them with information relevant to their tasks, at hand. It is recommended for developers to use language and terminology for the target audience. This involves clarifying vocabulary avoiding jargon and presenting information related to the specific job.
The usefulness of a product decreases when consumers consistently receive information. Users should be able to perform their tasks without feeling overwhelmed or confused by the simplicity of the language.
- Minimize User Effort
Users prefer to focus on their work than worrying about the tools they are using or how they interact with established programs. Interacting with computers or mobile devices that’re compatible, with a program can be frustrating for users as it distracts them from their tasks.
When users exert effort in understanding how the operational component works they become less efficient and more prone to making mistakes. This can be costly, for companies that rely heavily on task success. To prevent this frequent activities should be implemented so that users don’t have to retrieve data from one section of the system to use in another.
Therefore it is important for product instructions to be easily accessible for users to review. This approach reduces effort. Allows users to carry out activities without any misunderstandings.
- Provide Sufficient Feedback
Making products to understand and navigate is an aspect of user centered design.
Designers employ techniques to ensure that using a product is easy and straightforward such, as menus, clear scroll bars, user onboarding and providing enough navigation cues.
To ensure users can accomplish their tasks smoothly the program should offer a path throughout its interface. Additionally having accessible home or back buttons can help users if they become lost or enter the place.
- Intuitive Navigation
A skilled designer understands obstacles or areas where users might encounter difficulties while using their system. Therefore it is considered practice to offer tool suggestions simple pop ups with relevant information and encouraging messages when needed. These features allow users to confidently navigate in the direction.
The language used should be straightforward. Focused on tasks. Furthermore links to resources should be prominently displayed.
- Empower the User
Most of the time consumers already know what they want and expect a product that requires effort from their side while providing assistance. By reducing user effort, in completing tasks they are enabled to perform them independently.
- Ensure Clear Presentation of Information
When displaying information, on a screen the users ability to differentiate between elements and data groupings relies on how the information’s organized. Employing techniques such as using boxes creating spacing and utilizing cues can facilitate this process.
Moreover it is essential to provide users with the information for their specific tasks. Including elements that’re relevant to the product but not essential for a job may clutter the users screen and introduce confusion. To address this developers should partition the information into sections enabling users to identify different components of a task.
- Minimize Errors
The principle of User Centered Design (UCD) centers around reducing the likelihood of errors. Mitigate mistakes by guiding users towards the path to success.
Restrict feedback from users when it is necessary for completing a task in order to prevent errors. However avoid implementing restrictions that limit your users options for completing their tasks. Ensure that data entry is validated promptly by system checks.
For instance products should be capable of accepting inputs that closely align, with the users intended outcome. The product should allow for the possibility of the user making a mistake that’s very close, to the answer.
These modifications will vary depending on the product. To ensure that users have the experience it is important for the product to always offer a solution if any issues arise.
To avoid relying on codes it is beneficial to present error messages in straightforward language that clearly identifies the specific problem and provides a suggestion for fixing it.
User Centered Design Process
As stated by the Interaction Design Foundation, user centered design is a process that prioritizes understanding users and their context throughout all stages of design and development.
These stages include;
- Understanding the Context of Use
Before beginning to create a product designers must have an understanding of what ideal users need. By observing their activities designers can gain insight into some of the challenges these individuals may face.
With this, in mind it is important to determine who will be using the product what they will use it for and how they will use it.
- Defining Requirements
Once designers know who will be utilizing the product they can better understand what features or functionalities are most desired by those users. Designers begin by focusing on creating solutions that’re user friendly. This involves understanding the goals and objectives that the product needs to achieve in order to be successful.
Once a strong design concept has been developed and tested designers also consider any business requirements that need to be addressed. It is important to address these requirements over time as the main objectives of products are to gain customer loyalty and generate long term revenue.
In the phase of the User Centered Design (UCD) process design solutions are created based on user feedback and requirements. These ideas go through a testing and refinement process progressing from concepts to a finalized design. It is crucial to involve users throughout this process in order to meet their demands and make adjustments.
During the evaluation stage of the UCD process designers assess how usable their product is, by involving consumers. This helps them gain an understanding of how people will interact with the product enabling them to make it more user friendly, through appropriate adjustments.
According to Nielsen Norman Group “User experience encompasses all aspects of how users interact with a company, its services and its products.”
The primary objective of user experience is to possess an understanding of individuals encompassing their needs, values, abilities and limitations. Additionally it takes into account the goals and objectives of the project management team.
UX best practices aim to enhance the way users interact with a product and perceive any associated solutions.
Key Principles of User Experience Design
The following universal principles, in UX design can help guide you in making decisions that prioritize user needs;
- User Centric Approach
UX design aims to deliver goods and services that address user concerns. Therefore prioritizing user requirements and making judgments based on what’s known about them and their desires for the product is fundamental to a user centric approach.
Consistency is a principle in UX design that should be kept in mind when creating a website. In its sense consistency refers to maintaining uniformity in designs and functionality across all websites and products.
Users expect items to be similar, to products they have previously used. By ensuring consistency users can quickly understand your product. Have an improved experience.
Another aspect of UX design is the concept of hierarchy as it greatly influences how users interact with a product and determines whether the process is easy or challenging.
Both information architecture and the visual arrangement of pages and displays are closely related to hierarchy.
Ideally you would want the significant elements of your design to be placed at the top of the hierarchy since they are more visible and easily discoverable, for users.
- Context Matters
The UX design method gives us important information about how context affects how people interact with your designs.
“It’s more important to understand systems than to make beautiful chairs for good design.”
Understanding your target group and the setting where they will use your product is very important. When you use context, you think about both the setting where your product will be used and the things that might affect the user experience.
- Enabling Users
Empowering consumers through user control can take various forms within UX. Giving consumers control over their environment and actions ultimately improves their experience.
A component of user control is allowing users to undo and correct errors.When a user begins to create an activity or event, it is essential that they have the option to reverse or go back in order to undo any unwanted actions.
All UX designers must perceive the meaning of accessibility and keep it in mind throughout the design process.
The essence of accessibility is ensuring that as many people as possible can use your product or service. This entails catering to the needs of individuals with disabilities and gaining a comprehension of how different settings or contextual factors can impact their user experience.
Using contrast, for example, designers can ensure that text remains readable for those with disabilities.
The principle of UX design is usability. Usability refers to how efficiently and effectively a specific user can utilize a product or design in a given situation.
It goes without saying that usability plays a role, in UX design since you cannot create an user experience if your product isn’t usable.
Final Words: UCD vs UX
Considering the definitions of various terminology and ideas covered in this article, we conclude that user experience is not user-centered design.
Instead, user experience is an important component of user-centered design, and you must build engaging online and mobile experiences to keep consumers engaged.
Quality design is rooted in empathy, and the UCD approach excels at developing a comprehension of and sensitivity to the user.
Designers may make products that are likely to delight their consumers and hence need less time and money for redesign or problem-solving by including the consumer in the creative process.
On the other hand, it is never a smart idea to disregard user experience. The user experience of your product is crucial to growing and keeping your consumer base. If clients don’t appreciate using your product, it might damage your reputation and cause you to lose sales when they go to your rivals.