Topic 7 - User Centered Design (UCD)

Field research

A first hand observation of customer's user experience. It is essential for the research to be conducted in the user's environment.

The four-pleasure framework

A framework devised by Professor Lionel Tiger that encourages design for pleasure and emotion. It comprises of four areas: Socio-pleasure; Physio-pleasure; Psycho-pleasure; and Ideo-pleasure.

The attract/converse/transact (ACT) model

A framework for creating designs that improve the relations of users with a product and intentionally trigger emotional responses

Attitude

The perceptions, feelings and opinions about a product by a user

Observation

A collection of responses from users, a trail of observation of users interacting with the product

Methods of extremes

A common sampling method where users are selected to represent the extremes of a user population, typically the 2.5th and 97.5th percentile. Products are then designed and/or tested to ensure that they function efficiently for those users.

User-centred design

A design process that pays particular attention to the needs of potential users of a product by involving them in all stages of the design process.

Design for emotion

A design strategy that focusses on increasing user engagement, loyalty and satisfaction with a product by incorporating emotion and personality into product design.

Usability laboratory

A lab in which usability testing is carried out, and test users are monitored by another group of observers in a different room.

Effectiveness

A measure of the speed of performance or error rate and its relation to the capabilities of a product.

User experience

A person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service, this can modify over time due to changing usage circumstances

Personae

A profile of the primary target audience for a product

Anti-personae

A profile of those for whom a product is not designed

Secondary personae

A profile of those who are not the primary target audience for a product, but whose needs the product should meet.

Physio-pleasure

A sensual pleasure that comes from touching, smelling, hearing or tasting something. It can also be derived from a feeling of satisfaction that comes from the effectiveness of an object in enabling an action to be performed

Prototyping testing session

A session where a test product is made and tested - all experiments are conducted before making the final product, making all changes necessary that can be seen when the prototypes are used.

Use case

A set of possible sequences of interactions or event steps between a user and a product to achieve a particular action

Affinity diagramming

A tool used to organise ideas and information. A tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships

Iterative

Act of repeating a process with the aim of approaching a desired goal, target or result. Each repetition of the process is also called an iteration, and the results of one iteration are used as the starting point for the next iteration.

Scenario

An imagined sequence of events in the daily life of a persona based on assumptions.

Visibility

Controls should be easily accessible to the human eye

Reflective design

Design that evokes personal memory focussing on the message, culture and the meaning of a product or its use.

Visceral design

Design that speaks to people's nature in terms of how they expect products and systems to function and how they expect to interact with them.

Iterative design

Developed through user centred evaluation and based upon the six principles of iterative design. 1. Visibility 2. Feedback 3. Affordance 4. Mapping 5. Constraints 6. Consistency

Productivity

Developing products and services with the user in mind so that they can reduce time wasting and simplify complex aspects of the product

Enhanced usability

Enhanced usability increases product acceptance, user experience, and productivity while decreasing user error and required training and support.

Behavioural design

Focussed on use and understanding, this considers how people will use a product, focussing on functionality.

Training and support

Help and guidance such as tutorials or instructions on how to use the product

Constraints

Limitations on how the product can be used.

User error

Mistakes and slips when using the product due aspects such as complexity or inefficiency

User

Person utilising the product, person who is being affected by the product or who is reaping benefits/drawbacks

Ideo-pleasure

Pleasures linked to our ideal, aesthetically, culturally and otherwise.

Socio-pleasure

Pleasures that come from a feeling of belonging to a social group, social-enablers, and other ways that one can identify oneself with social groups.

Affordance

Property of an object that indicates how it can be used. Buttons afford pushing, knobs afford turning.

Mapping

Relates to the correspondence between the layout of the controls and their required action

Population stereotype

Responses that are found to be widespread in a user population.

Sympathetic

The decisions required for the product to be the most helpful for the user given certain conditions.

Dominant design

The design contains those implicit features of a product that are recognized as essential by a majority of manufacturers and purchasers.

Inclusive design

The design of mainstream products and/or services so that they are accessible and usable by as many people as possible without the need for adaptation or specialised design.

Usability

The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals effectively and efficiently, while functioning in a predictable and consistent manner

Usefulness

The extent to which a product enables the user to achieve their goals.

Learnability

The extent to which a user can operate a product or system at a defined level of competence after a pre-determined period of training

Product acceptance

The knowledge that a product or service paid for will meet up to its defined expectations

Natural environment

The monitoring of the user interacting with the product in their homes, place of work or other natural product usage environments.

Environment

The place where a product is likely to be used.

Feedback

The provision of information as a result of an action. This can be a audio, visual or aesthetic response.

User popultation

The range of users for a particular product or system.

Usability testing session

The testing of a product with potential users to find out how usable the product is

Task

The thing that the product is supposed to do, however the user may have several sub uses for the product

Characteristics of a good user-product interface

These include: simplicity and ease of use; intuitive logic, organization and low memory burden; visibility; feedback; affordance; mapping; and constraints.

Psycho-pleasure

Types of pleasure that comes from cognition, discovery, knowledge and other things that satisfy the intellect.

Testing house

Typically a company that will test products on their site.

Usability objectives

Usability objective include usefulness, effectiveness, learnability and likeability.

Empathetic

When the designer takes the place of the user to see who potentially could use the product and the object could be better suited for the consumer.

Participatory design

When users representing the target market for a product perform realistic tasks by interacting with a paper version of the user-product interface manipulated by a person acting as a computer who does not explain how the interface works