The UCD Process
User-centered design (UCD) typically involves four key phases: Understand, Design, Evaluate, and Iterate. These phases are not always linear and may be revisited throughout the design process.
- Understand: This phase focuses on gaining a deep understanding of the users, their tasks, and the context in which they will use the product or system. Key activities include user research, defining user needs, and understanding business requirements.
- Design: This phase involves creating design solutions based on the insights gathered during the understanding phase. It includes activities like brainstorming, prototyping, and creating user interfaces.
- Evaluate: This phase involves testing the design solutions with users to identify usability issues and areas for improvement. Evaluation can include usability testing, heuristic evaluations, and other feedback collection methods.
- Iterate: This phase involves refining the design based on the feedback and evaluation results. It's a cyclical process where the design is continuously improved through multiple iterations.
These four phases form the core of the UCD process, ensuring that the final product or system meets the needs and expectations of its users.
Understand
A project might start with a novel idea, a problem or a question, the so-called' research question'. At this point, we are starting with a white canvas. We are open to meet the potential user and try to gain a better understanding, namely a generative method. We could have an idea or a product to put in the users' hands. We then want to see how that might meet their goals, namely an evaluative method.
Whatever the way, it is essential to understand what question you are trying to answer. 'Understand' a reflective phase where a researcher can look for previous work. One may need to search across disciplines and neighbouring technologies for past examples. Now is the time to talk to stakeholders to understand business needs.
Here, I prefer to be mindful of the human values the offering addresses (Being Human-HCI in the year 2020). So I can design with a purpose to augment their life experience, change a behaviour. The impact of the solution should be defined from the onset, so it is measurable (i.e. KPI's). For example, is the application allowing the user to communicate, socialise? Is it enabling them to be creative or be productive in a more effective way?
Create
Design is a creative phase. Either I am designing a Research plan, a discussion guide or a low-fidelity prototype. As a researcher, I draw from a list of research methods to mix what will best answer the question we set out to answer. I might observe, interview or facilitate a workshop with a group of related participants. As a designer, I draw from an array of components in my Library to form a primary User Interface (UI) or prototype to test.
Either way, we move from problem to solution eliciting answers to the research question at hand and morph a concept to test with users. As such, the design decisions are honed in user research rather than assumptions. Hence the design is more likely to respond to our users' needs.
In principle, the lower the prototype fidelity, the more feedback your users share. Hence, testing often and early is beneficial. The more feedback we receive, the more we can perfect the design of the product or service. Thus the fidelity is incremental, and this is why we test in iterations. When possible, I prefer to engage users early and often. Participatory design' methods, help us to democratise the design phase (i.e. IKEA).
Deliver
The purpose of design is to test our concepts. The moment we make contact with the user, we are bound to learn more about the question at hand. In Gestalt terms, contact creates change and development. We will know more than before when we listen in for queues and nuances when we empathise with the user. There's hardly a chance an experiment fails if you set out to listen and empathise with the users. That's the beauty of testing!
Did I mention that the UCD process is team-based? Testing is a significant culmination. It would be a missed opportunity not to engage the stakeholders. They need to listen in, to ask questions to the user and share key learnings at the debriefing. Testing becomes a shared team experience and insight.
Evaluation insights are usually packed into sizeable actionable chunks informing deliverables. They form the user requirements, recommendations, user stories or 'Jobs To Be Done' (JTBD). They are interpreted by designers and actuated by technologists. Insights shape the next phase, moving from Discovery to Alpha, to Beta to Live. If you are following a more Agile approach as such test completes a circle and starts anew. Deliverables are, in essence, an answer to the problem defined during the 'Understand' phase. Research brings value as we know more about the issue and user needs; we change user behaviours through design or move key performance indicator (KPIs) needles.
UX Research Methods
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
UX Design Tools
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
UX Design Software
It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.