"User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process."
Designing for the user's needs and goals first and foremost.
Usability Testing: This involves gathering data about how users interact with a product, from finding information to completing tasks, in order to improve its effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
User Research: This is the process of understanding user needs, motivations, and behaviors through various qualitative and quantitative methods, such as interviews, surveys, and observation.
Information Architecture: This involves organizing and structuring information in a way that is intuitive and user-friendly, typically through content modeling, card sorting, and user flow mapping.
Interaction Design: This focuses on designing the behaviors of an interface, such as how users interact with interface elements, to ensure they are efficient, effective, and satisfying.
Visual Design: This involves creating an aesthetic and coherent interface with visual hierarchy, typography, and layout that meets both user and brand expectations.
Accessibility: This focuses on designing for users with disabilities by considering assistive technologies and ensuring content and features are accessible to all users, regardless of ability.
User Persona Development: This is a tool used in user-centered design to create fictional characters that represent target users and help designers understand their needs, behaviors, and motivations.
User Journey Mapping: This is the process of illustrating a user’s experience from start to finish, which helps designers identify pain points and opportunities for improvement.
Mobile-First Design: This approach focuses on designing for mobile devices first, before designing for desktop, since mobile devices are becoming the primary means for accessing the internet.
Gamification: This involves incorporating game-like elements into digital experiences, such as rewards and competition, to motivate and engage users.
Human-Computer Interaction: This is the interdisciplinary field that studies the interaction between humans and computers, which provides insights into designing for user-centered experiences.
Content Strategy: This involves planning and creating content for a website or application that meets user needs, supports business goals, and is both useful and engaging.
User Feedback Gathering: This is the process of gathering user feedback at all stages of design, from wireframes to prototypes, to ensure that designs meet user needs, expectations, and satisfaction.
Rapid Prototyping: This involves quickly creating mock-ups and prototypes of designs to gather feedback and refine designs before investing heavily in development.
Contextual Inquiry: This is a type of ethnographic research where designers observe users in their natural environment to better understand their needs, behaviors, and motivations.
Lean UX: This is an approach to user-centered design that emphasizes a rapid, collaborative, and iterative design process, where designs are created and tested quickly and frequently.
A/B Testing: This involves testing two variations of a design element (such as button placement or color) to determine which version is more effective at achieving user goals.
Design Thinking: This is a problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy, collaboration, ideation, and prototyping to create user-centered solutions to complex problems.
Card Sorting: This is a user-centered design technique where users sort items into categories to inform the structure and navigation of a website or application.
Wireframing: This is the process of creating low-fidelity sketches or mock-ups of a website or application to inform information architecture and page layout.
Usability Testing: This type of user-centered design involves testing how easy it is for users to use a library or museum's website or interface to navigate to find information or accomplish a task.
Card Sorting: Card sorting involves sorting information or items into categories based on user preferences. This helps libraries and museums understand how users organize and label information.
Information Architecture: Information architecture involves organizing the structure of a library or museum's website or interface to make it easier for users to find and access information.
personas: Personas create a representation of an ideal library or museum user, detailing their behaviors, preferences, and motivations.
Journey Mapping: Journey Mapping involves mapping out a user's experience while using a library or museum's website or interface to create elements that are user-friendly.
Accessibility: Designing with accessibility in mind involves ensuring that users with disabilities can use a library or museum's website without any barriers.
User Surveys: User surveys involve gathering feedback about the user experience from those who use the library and museum the most.
Prototyping: Prototyping involves building a model that users can interact with to test the functionality before the product or service is launched.
Co-design Workshops: Co-design workshops are a collaborative approach to design that involves users, designers, and developers working together to develop user-centered design solutions.
"Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively the first-time users of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like."
"User-centered design is known to lead to an increased product usefulness and usability as it delivers satisfaction to the user."
"The chief difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product so that users are not forced to change their behavior and expectations to accommodate the product."
"The users thus stand in the center of two concentric circles. The inner circle includes the context of the product, objectives of developing it and the environment it would run in. The outer circle involves more granular details of task detail, task organization, and task flow."
"Usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks, and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention."
"These tests are conducted with/without actual users during each stage of the process from requirements, pre-production models, and post-production."
"User-centered design ensures that 'development proceeds with the user as the center of focus.'"
"User-centered design is based on the understanding of a user, their demands, priorities, and experiences."
"User-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product so that users are not forced to change their behavior and expectations to accommodate the product."
"It is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively the first-time users of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like."
"Usability goals are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process."
"The inner circle includes the context of the product, objectives of developing it, and the environment it would run in."
"The outer circle involves more granular details of task detail, task organization, and task flow."
"User-centered design delivers satisfaction to the user."
"User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies)."
"Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively the first-time users of their design experiences."
"User-centered design optimizes the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product so that users are not forced to change their behavior and expectations to accommodate the product."
"User-centered design ensures that 'development proceeds with the user as the center of focus.'"
"Usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks, and workflow of a product, service or process."