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This post is about finding out what User Research has to do with the User-Centered Design process (UCD process). We present the UCD process and the individual phases.
First of all, what is UCD? - User-Centered-Design is the user-centered design of a product, with the goal of achieving good usability and positive user experience (UX). User-Centered-Design is used to detect errors and problems before they even occur. With the help of user research during the analysis phase and the evaluation of the design solution designers and developers gain insights that would never have been revealed without the use of UCD. As a result in the costly and time-consuming errors in the subsequent development process. The UCD process is generally divided into three or four core phases:
The analysis is often divided into two phases: understanding the context of use and specifying the requirements for use. The first phase is about getting to grips with the users:
There are suitable methods(*) for obtaining such information:
*Methods will be considered in more detail in Part 3 of the series of articles.
The first phase of analysis is about documenting the information collected. The focus is on the needs and requirements of the users. Here, the goals in the fulfillment of the interaction are to be filtered out. The following question should be kept in mind: Are these consistent with the context of use, because from them scenarios can be derived that are relevant for the design solution.
The second phase: Design, is finally about implementing the requirements in a prototype. Not so much time should be invested in this, it is only about creating a simple version of the prototype, which is used for evaluation in the third phase. The goal is to show the structure and behavior of the product or software. However, one should not rely solely on the results of the analysis but also follow general design criteria such as the principles of dialog design according to ISO 9241-110, the Nielsen heuristics or also the Eight criteria for a successful interface according to Dmitry Fadeyev.
In the third phase: Evaluation, the prototype is tested. Usability and UX tests serve this purpose. The important thing here is the planning and conception of the tests:
Often the UCD process is iterative, i.e. the various phases can be run through several times to achieve an optimal result. Once the desired goal is achieved, development can begin, and even then, the UCD process can be applied again.
But what does all this have to do with user research?
User Research = Analysis + Evaluation of the UCD Process
