The document discusses user-centric design (UCD). It explains that early technologies and markets developed without considering human users, focusing instead on technological and business priorities. This resulted in users being overlooked. UCD aims to understand what users need in products and systems, including usefulness, safety, ease of use, and emotional connection. It involves understanding user activities, characteristics, communication needs, and meanings. The core of UCD involves frameworks focusing on usefulness, usability, and emotional connection. Key knowledge areas in UCD include ergonomics, semiotics, ethnography, and systems thinking. UCD follows a process including user and contextual research, ideation, modeling and prototyping, and user trials.

1. User Centred Design
Vinai Kumar
10 Aug 2011 Wed
IP & P
Introduction to Design: Issues and Methods
National Institute of Design (NID) Paldi Ahmedabad

2. User-Centric Design
• User-centricity was always a major
driving concern of the early humans
– Which led to the development of
• Technologies
– enabling ease of work and living
• Markets
– taking the benefit to other humans
– Which in turn led to the development of
• Engineering professionals
– Efficiency, productivity, delivery
• Business management professionals
– Return on investment, profits, more
money for themselves
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3. User-Centric Design
• Technologies were developed
…without human user consideration
…by the people who knew (technologists)
• What was built had to be sold
(business economics)
…Which required business professionals
…To hard-sell
…To earn profits for their employers
• RESULT:
– The Human User was forgotten
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4. User-Centric Design
• What human users need
in a product or system
– Usefulness
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5. User-Centric Design
• What human users need
in a product or system
– Safety
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6. User-Centric Design
• What human users need
in a product or system
– Ease of use
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7. User-Centric Design
• What human users need
in a product or system
– Emotional connect
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8. User-Centric Design
• What human users need
in a product or system
– Usefulness
– Safety and hygiene
– Ease of use
– Emotional connect
• Imperative:
– We need to understand
human users
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9. User-Centric Design
Understanding users
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10. User-Centric Design – Understanding Users
• Understanding users means
understanding their:
– Activities of living and
work
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11. User-Centric Design – Understanding Users
• Understanding users means
understanding their:
– Physical characteristics
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12. User-Centric Design – Understanding Users
• Understanding users means
understanding their:
– Communication needs
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13. User-Centric Design – Understanding Users
• Understanding users means
understanding their:
– Meanings
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14. User-Centric Design – Understanding Users
• Understanding users means
understanding their:
– Work and Living
– Physical profiles
– Communication needs
– Meanings
• We need a knowledge and
resource framework to
understand human users
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15. User-Centric Design (UCD)
The UCD framework
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16. User-Centric Design (UCD) – Framework
The UCD framework
Usefulness
Usability
Emotional connect
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17. User-Centric Design (UCD) – Framework
Usefulness
• Functions and
features
• Contextual
relevance
• User value
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18. User-Centric Design (UCD) – Framework
Usability
• Safety
• Ease of use
• Comfort /
wellbeing
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19. User-Centric Design (UCD) – Framework
Emotional connect
• Trust
• Cultural relevance
• Social relevance
• Imageries
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20. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
Semiotics
Ethnography
Systems Thinking
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21. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
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22. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
System Task
– Understanding the
Characteristics Characteristics
relationship between
humans and man-made
environment
User Environmental
Characteristics Characteristics
– Applying this
understanding to:
System Behaviour • Productivity of systems
• Safety and hygiene
• Ease of use
User Reaction ( + / _ )
• Comfort and wellbeing
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23. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
– Physical Ergonomics
• Anatomy
• Biomechanics
• Anthropometry
• Physiology
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24. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
– Psychological Ergonomics
• Senses
– Design for information
acquisition
– Design for sensory
experience
• Perception
– Information organizational
tendencies
» Gestalt laws
» Conditioned
responses
• Cognition
– Understanding
– Pattern recognition and
construction
– Learning
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25. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
– Environmental Ergonomics
• Lighting
– Avoid glare
– Contrasts for lighting
central / peripheral
areas
• Climate
– Temperature
– Humidity
– Air velocity
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26. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ergonomics
– Task analysis (TA)
• Types of tasks
– Physical
– Perceptual
– Cognitive
• Task severity
– Duration
– Frequency
– Criticality
– TA is performed to
understand the ‘demands’
on the human user
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27. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
• Ergonomics
– The twelve principles
– (Macleod)
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28. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Semiotics
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29. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
• UCD Core Knowledge:
– Semiotics
• Syntactics
• Semantics
• Pragmatics
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30. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Ethnography
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31. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
• UCD Core Knowledge:
– Ethnography
• Culture
• What people actually do
• Sociological inferences
• Behavioural inferences
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32. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
Systems Thinking
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33. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Core Knowledge
• UCD Core Knowledge:
– Systems Thinking
• Multi- and inter-
disciplinary
• Addresses the dynamics
and complexities of the
world around us
• A method based on
Right side and Left side
brains
• User and Context
analysis
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34. User-Centric Design (UCD)
UCD Process
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35. User-Centric Design (UCD) – the Process
• UCD Process
– User and Contextual
Research
– Ideation
– Modeling & Prototyping
– User trials
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36. User-Centric Design (UCD) - References
• www.ergoweb.com
• www.danmacleod.com
• http://sites.google.com/site/vinaik
umar/papers
• Ergonomics in Computerised
Offices – E. Grandjean
• Fitting the Human – KHE
Kroemer
• Systems Thinking for Problem
Solving – Vinai Kumar
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