Introduction to User-Centered Design

TOPIC COVERED
• People have “mental models” of how things work, built
from
– affordances
– causality
– constraints
– mapping
– positive transfer
– population stereotypes/cultural standards
– instructions
– interactions
 HCI and Design
• Rather than the traditional design models adopted within
software engineering which are characterized by their
linearity. HCI has adopted a design model which aspires to
incorporate the following premises:
* user centered

* multi disciplinary

* highly iterative
 What is User centered
• What is User Experience?
• What is Design?
• What is User-Centered Design?
• What do designers do?
• What is our design process?
• How to take it home
 What is User Experience (UX)?
• User Experience is the sum experience of a
user interacting with a product.
 What is Design?
• The aim of design is to create good user
experiences.
 What is Design?
• Design is a craft – an artistic science – that
melds technology and humanity
What is User-Centered Design (UCD)?
• The user is put in the center of the design
 Why UCD/UX?
• Increased customer satisfaction
• Increased user productivity/efficiency/accuracy
• Increased service/site usage and adoption
• Decreased support and training costs
• Reduced development time and costs
– Create only the features users need
• Reduced maintenance costs
– Do it right the first time
 What do designers do?
• User Research
• Usability Analysis
• Information Architecture
• Interaction Design
• User Interface Design
• Visual/Graphic Design
 What is our design process?
1. User Needs Assessment
2. Competitive/Comparative Analysis
3. Heuristic Evaluation
4. Personas
5. Goals, Tasks & Scenarios
6. Design Concepts
7. User Testing
 1. User Needs Assessment
• Surveys
• Interviews
• Focus groups
• Advanced observation techniques
– Field studies
– Contextual inquiries
– Ethnography(depth study by observation)
 2. Competitive/Comparative Analysis
• Try using similar services or products in order
to find out:
– Current trends in the marketplace
– What expectations your users will have
– What to do, what not to do
– Interface conventions
– “Must have” standard features
 3. Heuristic Evaluation
• Evaluate an existing interface (or new
interface concept) based on set of usability
criteria.
• Mostly used to highlight usability problems
and deficiencies.
• May or may not propose usability solutions
• Identified problem areas are addressed by
subsequent design work.
• Normally done with expert evaluators, but it
can be a valuable tool for anyone.
 3. Heuristic Evaluation
• Visibility of system status
• Match between the system and the real world
• User control and freedom
• Consistency and standards
• Error prevention
• Recognition rather than recall
• Flexibility and efficiency of use
• Aesthetic and minimalist design
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover
from errors
• Help and documentation
• Visibility of system status
– The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate
feedback within reasonable time.
• Match between system and the real world
– The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user,
rather than system-oriented terms. Information should appear in a natural and logical order.
• User control and freedom
– Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to
leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and
redo.
• Consistency and standards
– Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same
thing. Follow platform conventions.
• Error prevention
– Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring
in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with
a confirmation option before they commit to the action. (e.g. make it impossible to enter a phone
number with incorrect punctuation, or fix punctuation automatically to fit system standards after
entry)
• Recognition rather than recall
– Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should
not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use
of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
• Flexibility and efficiency of use
– Shortcuts - Accelerators -- unseen by the novice user -- may often speed up the interaction for the
expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users
to tailor frequent actions
• Aesthetic and minimalist design
– Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of
information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their
relative visibility.
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
– Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem,
and constructively suggest a solution.
• Help and documentation
– Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to
provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the
user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
 4. Personas
• Each persona is a description of one particular “typical”
user of your system
• Personas may be combined if they have the same (or
sometimes overlapping) goals
• Be specific, make them real
– Pictures, posters
– Include details about their life—humanize them
• Places the focus on specific users rather than on
"everyone”
• Helps avoid “the elastic user”
 5. Goals, Tasks & Scenarios
• Goals:
– Are what the user wants to do, but not how the user achieves
them
• Tasks:
– Describe the steps necessary to achieve the goals
– Can vary with the available technology
– Are broken down into steps for task analysis, and are
recombined into sequence of steps for scenario development
– Designers can reorganize, combine, or remove tasks currently
performed to help users achieve their goals more efficiently
• Scenarios:
– Written description of a persona achieving a goal through a set
of tasks in a specific context
– Should start technology-neutral and become more specific as
the design progresses
 6. Design Concepts
• Start rough
• Explore!
• Use personas to keep the Design
users in view Prototype
• Use scenarios to inform
the design
• Get frequent feedback
• Note user conventions
• Make design artifacts Evaluate
public
• May be expressed in a
prototype for usability
testing Image courtesy of James Landay
 6. User Testing
• Let users validate or invalidate the design
• Ask the user to complete selected typical tasks (from scenarios)
and think aloud while they do it
• Test early in the process
• Can test with 3-5 users (or less!)
• “Formal” testing
• Measures “success”
– Set success criteria prior to testing (best done at the project outset)
– Compare to baseline if you have one
– Have usability problems revealed in the heuristic evaluation been
addressed?
 6. User Testing
• Define what is to be tested
• Select users based on personas
• Administer the tests
• Analyze the data
• Document the findings in a brief
• Share the findings with the development team
• Determine what design changes will be made
based on test results
 6. Facilitating a User Test
• Explain that you are testing the product, not
the user
• Distance yourself from the product
• Don’t react
• Don’t help
• No need to write down exactly what each user
does – trends will emerge
• Save discussion or explanations for the end