User Centered Design - UCD

UX Design is based on a users "perceptions and responses resulting from use, or anticipated use of a product, system or service".. to put it simply, or not so simply - that's up to you!

UX was described as a way to "leverage" design for better outcomes. To leverage something is to use it to it's maximum advantage. I thought this was a great way of encompassing the purpose of UX and all the factors it includes. The lecture went on to discuss how to center the user in your process. By recognizing needs, wants and limitations of the user you can create a system that is actionable and understandable. Here's a visual representation of how this is done;

The looping arrows insinuate that each part of the user centred design process is always up for re-assessment. Even after your first full flow through a new system, it's time to get researching again and optimize.

In a class we paired up as teams to go through a website and analyse how they were considering their users. This task includes a lot of factors. Like reading aspects of the website to identify who the demographic was that the website was aiming towards, the tone of the website and the general experience it had on offer the user.

Here's a few examples of questions we asked ourselves to get the conversations going;

1/ How present or important is the branding of this website?

2/ How are they structuring their menus?

3/ What is the goal of the website?

4/ What service or product is it prioritizing?

5/ Do I think there is a particular demographic it's aimed towards? If so, what age?

6/ Is there a lot of written content?

7/ What size is the font?

8/ How helpful is the website if there is information you may be missing/need to attain?

9/ What or who is in the images?

10/ What tone is the language? Fun? Serious? Reassuring? Approachable? Informative?

11/ What colour palette is it using?

We presented our findings to the class. It was very interesting to see all the different team's website choices, perspectives and what they noticed or did not notice about the site. I thought the graphic design and visual elements of the websites would take up a lot of conversation. However, once it was acknowledged, it was easily left behind to focus on the overall user experience that was at play. This was refreshing as appealing visual design is now an absolute minimum requirement for a website in this competitive industry. Being able to detach from that conversation left the group time to discuss the goals of the website. We made improvement suggestions and

Overall, a great start to the course and got the new group of people working, thinking and laughing together!