User centred design: the business benefits
User centred design increases sales, improves user efficiency, reduces development costs, and reduces support costs.
What is user centred design?
User centred design is a development method that guarantees your product, software or web site will be easy to use. The International Usability Standard, ISO 13407, specifies the principles and activities that underlie user centred design:
- Active involvement of customers (or those who speak for them).
- Appropriate allocation of function (making sure human skill is used properly).
- Iteration of design solutions (therefore allow time in project planning).
- Multi-disciplinary design (but beware overly large design teams).
Why do user centred design?
User centred design is the only design methodology that puts users at the heart of the design process. It is therefore ideally suited to developing products or web sites that must be simple and straightforward to use.
When should I do user centred design?
Because user centred design is a development process, you need to consider and apply it throughout development: from requirements capture through to acceptance testing.
Our approach to user centred design
We follow three core principles in all our user centred design projects:
- Early and continual focus on users and their tasks
- You must understand your users and what they want to do with the system. This understanding is arrived at by directly studying their behaviour and attitudes, and by studying the nature of the goals you expect them to accomplish.
- Empirical measurement of user behaviour
- Early in the development process, intended users should actually use simulations and prototypes to carry out real tasks, and their performance and reactions should be observed, recorded and analysed.
- Iterative design
- When problems are found in user testing (as they will be) they must be fixed. This means design must be iterative: there must be a cycle of design, test and measure, and redesign, repeated until the usability objectives are met.
There are a variety of specific activities you can choose from to deliver user centred design. On a typical project, we will:
- Develop personas to characterise the users and their tasks.
- Derive the information architecture with a card sort.
- Paper prototype early design concepts.
- Usability test the system with representative customers.
What does it cost?
User centred design can take a few weeks to several months. Prices from £15,000.
What should I do next?
- Read more about the benefits of user centred design.
- Complete the form below and one of our consultants will contact you within 24hrs to discuss your situation.
User centred design in practice
“Our web site is one of the UK’s highest revenue e-commerce stores and small improvements in usability can have a large impact on sales. The usability research paid for itself many times over.”
– e-Commerce Manager, High Street brand.