UCD - A WHOLE LIFE TO SOLVE PROBLEMS
USER CENTERED DESIGN
Do you know when we are surfing on a website and we do not find a button or we are not clear how and where to do that particular thing?
These problems are called usability or navigation problems that arise from a badly made User Centered Design. Today we can not ignore the application of this matter in our lives, whatever we do in our daily life provides for a good 90% interface with a screen, And if what we visualize on these screens doesn’t have a good navigation design, it can really waste precious time.
– Don’t Make me Think! – Steve Krug
It is the book by Steve Krug, and that’s what we think every time we come across a new website or app. We just want to do what we need, quickly and without having to waste too much time figuring out how.
When we talk about User Centered Design we mean all that design focused on the needs of the user. The UCD aims to solve user usability problems around a product/service. The designer who works on the design of the service will have to determine upstream what could be the break points in which the user could run, so as to adapt the service to the natural process of behavior of the User within the navigation space, without vice versa, having to change the natural behavior of the user.
Once the best solutions are established, the designer will have to start a series of tests. Through these tests he verifies if his theses are correct, where otherwise he will have to intervene in terms of improvements and changes. All this allows the best usability of a product/ service and at the same time allows you to amortize costs managing to predict any future problems related to design.
The UCD seeks simple solutions for the user to complex problems.
USER EXPERIENCE
The material that takes care of this kind of aspects is usually called User Experience Design (UX). The term was coined in the 90s by Donald Norman, a scholar of cognitive sciences and psychology, to indicate a set of aspects regarding interaction with a product or service. The User Experience is well defined by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) as:
ISO 9241-210 “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”.
According to the ISO definition, the user experience includes all emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and realizations of users that occur before, during and after use. The ISO also lists three factors that influence the user experience: the system, the user and the context of use.
The User Experience designer is the one who deals with designing the best user experience. Very often we think that when we talk about User Experience, we are referring only to the digital field but in reality the approach is broader and applicable to any kind of good. The user experience can also happen when we feel involved by packaging of our latest online purchase. But what we’re focusing on now is the digital aspect.
The User Experience design includes:
- Experience Strategy
- Interaction Design
- User Research
- Information architecture
The UI (User Interface) is the ultimate process by which the end user will then interface. The UI is the visual application of design and research derived from the User Experience. It is not a simple aesthetic habit but a psycho-cognitive process that derives from a careful analysis. All to make it easy and pleasant navigation of our user.