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Chapter 1

User Centered Design

Shadan Sadeghianborojeni 83693931

1.1 Introduction

User Centered design is a multi-stage design process where

users have the highest influence on how each stage is done.
There are variety of methods how to design concerning
users’ point of view and preferences, from asking them
about their needs in the first steps such as requirement
elicitation and participating them in the final steps in user
tests to giving them a higher level of impact through co-
operating with the designers as partners. The question is
how to make a good design? some suggestions are:

• Make it easy to determine what actions are possible

at any moment (make use of constraints).
• Make things visible, including the conceptual model
of the system,the alternative actions, and the results
of actions.
• Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the sys-
tem.
• Follow natural mappings between intentions and the
required actions;between actions and the resulting ef-
fect; and between the information that is visible and
2 1 User Centered Design

the interpretation of the system state. In other words,

make sure that
(1) the user can figure out what to do, and (2) the user
can tell what is going on [3].

In this chapter we are going to introduce some concepts

and methods which help you have a design based on the
user. First, you will learn about design principles and how
to classify the users and their tasks. After that you will
be introduced to some methods to measure users’ behav-
ior and usability testing to make sure your design is close
to users’ requirements. Then you will read some principles
for designing user interface and some psychological laws
which improves your design. And at last in the conclusion
you will see the advantages and disadvantages of user cen-
tered design.

1.2 Design Principles

A good design is a design needless of labels or explana-

tions, where user can understand the state of the system
immediately or after a brief explanation. Designs with long
and complicated manuals are inconvenient. Don Norman
in his book ”The Design of Everyday Things” suggests
seven principles to make system design user friendly[3] .
The principles will be discussed in the following:

1. Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in

the head.

2. Simplify the structure of tasks.

3. Make things visible( bridge the gulfs of Execution and

Evaluation).

4. Get the mappings right.

5. Exploit the power of constraints, both natural and ar-

tificial.
1.2 Design Principles 3

6. Design for error.

7. When all else fails, standardize.

1.2.1 Use both knowledge in the world and knowl-

edge in the head

Users are more comfortable and confident in doing tasks

if the knowledge needed is available. The needed knowl-
edge can be in the head like constraints or manuals or in
the world where the user can make a conceptual models
and mappings. What should be taken care of is that the
knowledge in the world should be available in a way that
users can estimate all possible actions and their outputs.
The design should not limited users to perform a certain se-
quence of actions. Experienced users do not need to take all
the small steps that beginners do,they need shorter paths.
There should be a possibility to go back and forth using
both knowledge in the world and in the head depending
on which one is more available.

1.2.2 Simplify the structure of tasks

Users like to do simple task with the least effort, tasks need-
ing planning and being divided to sub tasks confuse the
user. Avoid complexity and reconstruct tasks in to sim-
pler ones. Overloading short term or long term memory
can cause complexity, a person is not able to remember
more than 5 unrelated items by her short memory at one
time;thus the system should provide some aids to help re-
minding. Long term memory is also erroneous thus the sys-
tem should apply the knowledge in the world to help the
user to know what he is able to do and how it can be done.
4 1 User Centered Design

1.2.3 Make things visible, including the concep-

tual model of the system,the alternative ac-
tions, and the results of actions

Bridge the gulf of execution and evaluation,the user should

be able to see the currents state of the system, the possi-
ble actions that can be done and the output of each action.
There should be a clear sequence of actions that leads the
user to the intended result.

1.2.4 Get the mappings right

Exploit natural mappings. Make sure that the user can de-
termine the relationships:

• Between intentions and possible actions

• Between actions and their effects on the system

• Between actual system state and what is perceivable

by sight,sound, or feel

• Between the perceived system state and the needs, in-

tentions, and expectations of the user

[3]

1.2.5 Exploit the power of constraints, both natural

and artificial

Exploit the power of constraints to reduce the amount of

possible action to the fewest possible ones. For example a
slider which is designed in a way which can only have hor-
izontal movements stops the user from doing other move-
ments such as rotation. Having seen it the very first time
the user knows how to interact with it and in most cases
induces the common mappings such as ”left is less, right is
more” to it.
1.3 How to Involve Users in Design? 5

1.2.6 Design for error

Imagine the situation that the user makes any possible er-
ror in the system. Plan for it and make the design in a way
that the possibility that the user commits the error is re-
duced, make the design as clear as the user is able to un-
derstand what has happened and how she can avoid the
error next time she is using the system or what is the way
to recover from it. Make reversible operations easy and the
irreversible ones hard.

1.2.7 When all else fails, standardize

Standardization is applied when something can not be de-

signed without using arbitrary mappings. The experience
of standardization has shown that once people learn it they
start to use it forever. A good example can be traffic signs.

Applying the mentioned rules,the designer makes the

knowledge needed available and simplify the tasks by
making them visible and using clear mappings. Errors are
prevented mostly by constraints and there is a solution for
every possible error. Last but not least standards are used
to provide usage regulation.

1.3 How to Involve Users in Design?

As we are focusing on is user centered design it is clear that

user plays an important role in it. In this section we are
going to see who the user is and how many types of users
do we have. Knowing this we will learn how to define the
specific groups of users of our product and the critical tasks
they carry out using it in the first steps of the design. This
helps us having a general image of the whole system. Later
on we will cover several methods for measuring user be-
havior using the product. And finally we will learn how to
test the usability of the design to improve it.
6 1 User Centered Design

1.3.1 Who is the user?

Users in it simplest meaning are the people who are using

the the final product or artifact to accomplish a task or
goal,but according to Eason (1987), users are classified in
to three groups [2]:

Primary users are those persons who actually use the

artifact.

Secondary usersare those who will occasionally use

the artifact or those who use it through an intermediary.

Tertiary users are persons who will be affected by the

use of the artifact or make decisions about its purchase. A
designer should identify the users of the system and their
goal of using it, there exists no average user!

1.3.2 Early and continual focus on users and their

tasks

To be able to monitor user and her interaction with the

product, the designer needs to clarify who are the poten-
tial users of the product and which subclasses they can be
divided to, then it will become easier to define the require-
ments when designing the product. Moreover the designer
needs to know what are the more important and critical
tasks that the user performs using the product. This helps
designer to design by priorities. Following we define two
concepts which help the designer get the information men-
tioned above:

Create personas

Personas are pen portraits of typical customers of the prod-

uct ,each representing a group of users. A good designer
should have focus of the users who frequently use the prod-
uct to know the users, their interests, and the environment
they use the product in, to define good personas.[5]
1.3 How to Involve Users in Design? 7

Define red routs

”Red routs are the critical tasks that people want to carry
out- tasks that need to be completed as smoothly and
quickly as possible.”[5] By prioritizing the tasks that can be
done by the user and defining the ones with higher priority
as red routs the most important tasks are placed handy in
the interface and the less important ones don’t clutter with
them,so the user can focus on a task without being inter-
rupted.

1.3.3 Empirical measurement of user behavior

After the red routs are designed, the users are asked to
carry them out and think aloud while using them , this
helps us know which parts of the design is confusing the
the usability of the system is measured in three ways:

Effectiveness: How many people manage to complete the

red route successfully. Because if the design is easy to use,
more people can achieve their goals.

Efficiency: How long do people take to complete the

tasks. Because if the design is easy to use, people will be
able to achieve their goals quickly.

Satisfaction: How do people feel about the design.

Because there’s no point having a design that people can
use effectively and efficiently if they don’t like it.[5]

1.3.4 Usability testing

Usability testing is a vital process to make the design better.

In a usability test we ask screened user to perform typical
actions (mostly red routs). The data is gathered in different
ways, such as:
Think aloud techniques: in which the user is asked to ar-
ticulate all the steps of her actions.
8 1 User Centered Design

Videotaping: is valuable to review what the participants

did, and to show designers where the problems are in their
designs.
Interviews and user satisfaction questionnaires: enable
designers to evaluate the users’ likes and dislikes about the
design and to gain a deeper understanding of any prob-
lems. [4]
A designer should always remember that the user is always
right and she should not defend her design is something is
confusing or not working as expected. A usability test nor-
mally takes place to reach goals like:

• Improve the product’s usability

• Involve real users in the testing

• Give the users real tasks to accomplish

• Enable testers to observe and record the actions of the

participants

• Enable testers analyze the data obtained and make

changes accordingly

Before creating the product users are asked to accomplish

tasks on a paper prototype or a mock up of the system inter-
face. A paper prototype is made of pieces of paper having
tabs , menus or new windows with all planned controls (
buttons, combo-boxes,etc.) drawn on them. A mock up is
an electronic prototype which is which looks a lot more re-
alistic but is still a simulation of the system.
By asking users to work first with the paper prototype and
then the mock up while being monitored and by the data
recorded and analyzed, the design can be improved to a
more user friendly one. The data which should be gathered
is:

• Time for users to learn a specific function

• Speed of task performance

• Type and rate of errors by users

• User retention of commands over time

1.3 How to Involve Users in Design? 9

• Subjective user satisfaction

As normally usability tests take place in the working envi-

ronments and have the duration of a couple of hours, users
rarely get full satisfaction, as a solution to this Mayhew
(1999) suggested iterative testing.

Iterative testing

Designing a user friendly interface, one should go through

three levels of iterative usability testing:

• The first level is done before any code is written, with

the paper prototypes; Making the test iterative and
performing it for several times helps us improve the
prototype and make it closer to what the user desires.
The number of users in these tests varies between
three to ten. The goal is to test ease of learning.

• The second level is after the prototype is coded.

These tests are done to evaluate the usability the
same criteria used in the first level is used here.
These tests give informative results to guide design
for screen layouts, terminology, color and graphics
design, input and selection devices, shortcuts for
experts, error reduction methods, and dozens of
other user interface aspects.

• The third level is testing the final prod-

uct,ccontinuous monitoring of usage to record
error rates and performance speed provide the data
to make improvements even for the expert frequent
users.
The advantage of iterative design is that a lot of prob-
lems are fixed before the product is shipped and by
monitoring the users the designers can deal with real
problems not the ones they assume. The improve-
ment of the usability of the product can be evalu-
ated after each iteration and the designers can check if
10 1 User Centered Design

the system meets the requirements, moreover it gives

them the opportunity to test system against competi-
tor’s products.

1.4 Principles of User Interface Design

To design a user interface there also principles indepen-

dent of technology and implementation which should be
considered. Schneiderman divided these principles in to
three groups[4]
Principle 1 : Recognize User Diversity
Principle 2 : Follow the Eight Golden Rules
Principle 3 : Prevent Errors

1.4.1 Principle 1 : Recognize User Diversity

Considering the human diversity in the world multiplied

by a a big number of tasks, situations, usage frequency, at-
titudes and goals makes big number of alternative designs
a designer should consider.
a 9 year old school boy who plays computer games on-
line is totally different from a travel agency agent who
is searching the web everyday for hours to answer he
customers, as well as a programmer’s usage can be totally
different than a library clerk.

Usage Profiles

A successful designer consider the diversity between

users in learning, thinking and solving problems. Some
people learn faster using graphs while some other prefer
tables. All design should begin with an understanding of
intended users including population profiles that reflect
age, gender, physical ability,education, cultural ethnic
background, goals, motivation, and personality.
The designer should produce usage profiles to classify
the users by their characteristics, for examples for a web
application users with different jobs such as teachers
1.4 Principles of User Interface Design 11

nurses and programmers have different combinations of

knowledge and usage patterns. Other aspect such as the
country of the user or her cultural background can also
influence the design.
One of the good ways to separate user groups is to divide
the in to three groups of first-time users,knowledgeable
intermittent users and expert frequent users.

• First-time users These users are aware of the task the

want to perform but not the interface they work with.
A designer should always take care of placing instruc-
tions and manuals for these users. Limiting the vo-
cabulary used in the interface to fewer and simpler
words and also limiting the tasks to fewer ones ex-
ecutable via readable dialogue boxes and activators
helps first-time users to perform easy tasks and gives
them confident for further use.

• knowledgeable intermittent users This group of users

have broad knowledge about tasks and the user inter-
face but have difficulty finding the structure of menus
or features. To help these users , the designer should
consider ordered menus,and apparent menus which
rely on recognition than recall. Consistent sequence
of actions, meaningful messages and guides to fre-
quent patterns of usage will help. Assuring the user
of the danger is also important, it gives them confi-
dent to explore in the system without being afraid of
destroying anything. Online help screens and well
organized user manuals are always handy for these
users.[4]

• Expert frequent users These users are familiar with both

the task concepts and interface ,they seek a way to ac-
celerate their actions. Shortcuts and abbreviations for
sequence of tasks is a method to ease their jobs. De-
signers should provide shortcuts for them to perform
tasks with few key strokes or menu options where
you can have a sequence of actions done by pressing
a button. Moreover the feedback should be as fast as
possible and without any unnecessary interruption.
12 1 User Centered Design

1.4.2 Principle 2 : Follow the Eight Golden Rules

A designer should always consider the users’ level of ca-

pability, previous knowledge and tolerance working with a
product. Furthermore the design should be clear and easy
to learn. Don’t forget that dealing with the interface is not
the user’s goal. An interface should be a tool to help user
get the tasks done faster and easier. Schneiderman has de-
fined ”The eight golden rules” following which the design
will become more desirable for the user [4] :

1.Strive for consistency

A consistent interface reduce user confusion carrying out

a task. A design with too many varieties is normally error
prone and difficult to learn, users need to have simple and
consistent designs to remember the sequence of actions
they have done on the system and generalize a sub task
to bigger ones. Keeping the consistency of a system is not
easy to do but reduces the error rate noticeably. Inconsis-
tencies are defined in three levels: 1.Lexical inconsistency ,
2.Syntactic inconsistency and 3.Semantic inconsistency.

Lexical inconsistency happens when the coding of color

or space is not the same as common usage for example
when an alert is shown in green and a recommended
command is written in red. Having consistent abbreviation
rules also helps the user remember shortcuts to do tasks
easier,moreover designers should also remember to use the
devices and activating keys(e.g. ESC) always in the same
way.
Syntactic inconsistency is avoided by placing the error
messages at the same logical place, always giving the
commands at first or at last, applying selection consistency
like selecting the text and then the tool or vice versa and
keeping the menu items in the same order to use muscle
memory.
Semantic inconsistency can be prevented by making global
commands such as Help, Abort and Undo always available
and having reasonable operations for all existing objects
valid.
1.4 Principles of User Interface Design 13

2.Enable shortcuts

Beginner users need manuals and help, casual users need

reminders to remember the path to their goal,but as the fre-
quency of usage increases users need to get their feed back
faster and in fewer steps of actions, here shortcuts are re-
quired. Abbreviations, function keys, hidden commands,
and macro facilities are very helpful to an expert user.

3.Offer informative feedback

To inform the user that the action she has just done has
taken place there should be a feed back for all of her actions.
Depending on the importance and frequency of the action
the feed back should change; Frequent and smaller tasks
have modest and peripheral feed backs such as progress
bars, cursor change and highlighting while infrequent and
important actions get substantial feed backs like dialogues
and warning sounds.

4.Design dialogues to yield Closure

When you have an action that requires several steps, be

sure to separate it into a logical beginning, middle and end.
After each step be sure to give feedback that will clarify that
the step was done correctly and they can move on to the
next step. At the end of all the steps be sure to let the user
know that they are completed and that they have finished
all the requirements this makes the user feel the satisfied of
accomplishment and start to plan for the next steps.

5.Prevent errors

The design of the system should be in way that the user

is not prone to make errors by for example using menus
instead of commands or options instead of text fields, and
if an error is made system should be able to detect the error
and offer simple and constructive solutions for handling it.
14 1 User Centered Design

Errors should live the system state unchanged otherwise

there should be instructions to get back to the previous
system state.
To prevent errors one should know what are the errors
and the reason they are made. Errors are categorized in 2
groups according to their reason of occurrence:
Mistakes:
over-generalization
wrong conclusions
wrong goal
Slips:
Result of ”automatic” behavior
Appropriate goal but performance/action is wrong

6.Permit easy reversal of actions

Give a way for the user to undo an error. This will help
keep the user at ease if they know that not everything has to
be perfect. This will encourage further exploration of your
interface. You might want to place an undo feature when
dealing with a single actions, a data entry or a complete
group of actions. Any word processor is a good example
of this. Ctrl + z is probably one of the most popular key
commands available.

7.Support easy locus of control

Make users feel they have control over the system and they
are the ones initiating the actions and system is there to re-
spond them. Issues like surprising system actions, inability
or difficulty obtaining necessary information and inability
in doing the desired action cause dissatisfaction. Inform
the user of the reason behind each change in the state of
the system, lack of causality reduces user’s confidence in
exploring the system.
1.5 Easy looking is not always easy to use 15

8.Reduce short term memory load:

People have a limited short-term memory. Having to keep

track of several things at once can leave a user frustrated
or incapable of using your interface. Try and consolidate
multiple pages, reduce unneeded motion, and generally
just keep things simple. This will go a long way to help
your user’s frustration level.

1.5 Easy looking is not always easy to use

There are many things around us that look really simple but
are not that simple to use; Think of tennis rockets or a skate
board, they both look pretty simple but each of them need
years of practice, thus a simple design does not necessar-
ily mean ease of usage. Imagine an alarm clock with only
two buttons and a display for setting the time, changing
the alarm tone, setting the alarm and turning it on/off. Al-
though it might look simple at the first sight ,it takes user
some time to learn or remember which button is used for
which action and whats the order of using them and which
actions need do both buttons to take place. While having
an alarm clock with one button for each task makes it much
easier for the user, since she only needs to find the button
matching her goal and press it. Considering this we can
conclude one control per task is the ideal method to make
the design simpler for the user. But what about the case
when we have a number of more than 20 tasks? Imagine a
novice user facing an interface with 30 controls for the first
time, she definitely would not make it achieving her goal in
appropriate time looking for the right control. The question
is how to make the design easier without using too many
controls that makes it time consuming and difficult to find
and too less controls to learn? One solution is to use ex-
actly the same number of controls as the tasks but hiding
the unneeded ones by making panels for relevant controls.
Another solution is using Gestalt laws.
The Gestalt approach emphasizes that we perceive objects
as well-organized patterns rather than separate component
16 1 User Centered Design

parts. According to this approach, when we open our eyes

we do not see fractional particles in disorder. Instead, we
notice larger areas with defined shapes and patterns. The
”whole” that we see is something that is more structured
and cohesive than a group of separate particles. The Gestalt
laws are as below1.1:

Proximity
We tend to group things together that are close together in
space. Objects that are grouped together then become a sin-
gle perceived object.

Similarity
Human brain tends to group similar shapes together as one
coherent object and then map it to a meaning as an output.

Closure
Our mind is always seeking familiar patterns even though
the information we receive is often incomplete,with shapes
that aren’t closed, our mind tries to fill in the gaps and get
the completed shape.

Continuation
This principle says that our mind tends to perceive a line
as continuing its established direction. In other words,
we tend to continue the lines we see to be heading to an
implicit direction.

Common fate
The law of common fate states that we tend to see the
objects moving in the same direction as a unit.

Simplicity
This law says that human mind tends to group the ele-
ments of an object to form a simple and regular pattern.

Symmetry
This law implies that the human being mind perceives
objects in the world to be symmetrical and shaped around
a center point,it also divides objects in to a number of
1.6 Conclusion 17

symmetric parts, having this ability when two symmetric

objects are not connected the brain perceive them as a
single unit.

Past experience
Our past experience has a big affect on how we perceive
things, when one object is similar to another one we have
seen recently or are familiar with we normally perceive the
object as the other one.

Figure 1.1: Gestalt Laws

1.6 Conclusion

Involving the users in the design helps the designer to

know their needs and prioritize them. It makes the product
be user friendly, easy to learn, matching more the psycho-
logical and ergonomic characteristics of the user and the us-
age environment. Having users participated at every stage
of the design helps the designer to avoid complicated and
erroneous design. Below you can find the table1.1 showing
the advantages and disadvantages of user design.[1]
 18

Table 1.1: advantages and disadvantages of using UCD

Advantages Disadvantages
Products are more efficient, effective, and safe It is more costly
Assists in managing users’ expectations and levels of
satisfaction with the product It takes more time
Users develop a sense of ownership for the product May require the involvement of additional design team
members (i.e. ethnographers, usability experts) and wide
range of stakeholders
1

Products require less redesign and integrate into the

environment more quickly May be difficult to translate some types of data into design
The collaborative process generated more creative
design solutions to problems. The product may be too specific for more general use, thus
not readily transferable to other clients; thus more costly
User Centered Design
 19

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[3] D. Norman. The Design of Everyday Things. Doubleday,

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[4] Shneiderman and Ben. Designing the User Inter-

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SIGNER, 2009.
Typeset August 17, 2012