UCD Principles
User centred design is based on principles for it to remain focused on usability throughout the development process and the system life cycle.
Basic level phases
Exploration
People differ from one another, and a product designed for one person may not be suitable for others. Different products can make performing a task easier depending on the design, or it can actually make it more difficult.
Creation
Designing for you is not the same as designing for your end users. The focus needs to be inclusive rather than egocentric. With this principle in mind, it becomes common sense to involve other people in the design process.
Evaluation
Understand the importance of systematic testing of your product or prototype against your design brief, doing this with real users, and documenting the results in a report of your project.
Intermediate level phases
Exploration
A structured view of user centred design concepts, such as users, tasks and contexts, should enable you to identify user needs. User centred design relates to other approaches, such as iterative design and systems thinking.
Creation
Understand the value, principles and process of user centred design, and integration with other perspectives such as iteration, biomimicry and prototyping, as you design. Recognise the need to accommodate diversity. Understand the obligation to the health and safety of users and undertake a basic risk assessment at the design stage.
Evaluation
Test against the design brief and demonstrate that you can run user trials appropriate to (a) the kind of product you have produced; (b) the stage you are at in the iterative design process; and (c) the way that user needs were expressed in the design brief.
Advanced level phases
Exploration
Critique existing products to recognise tensions that can exist between different design criteria, such as between aesthetics and usability. Recognise the value of thinking about products and users in terms of interactive sub-systems of a human-device system. Develop an understanding of the desirability of universal design and the implications of diversity in the population for achieving it.
Creation
Understand design needs to focus, not only on the final product, but also on where you are in the iterative process. A prototype will serve a number of purposes, but among these will be to communicate to, and to undergo tests with, end users. The power of prototyping lies in not putting a lot of effort into implementation that might be wasted if it turns out that there is a flaw in the design. So you might start with relatively crude mock-ups to test out the broad parameters of the design with users, and then build more detail into prototypes on subsequent design iterations.
Evaluation
Recall the performance concepts and explore the issue of simulation in greater depth, reflecting the greater rigour required in evaluation.