Human-centered design

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Human-centered design (HCD, also human-centred design, as used in ISO standards) is an approach to problem-solving commonly used in process, product, service and system design, management, and engineering frameworks that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. Human involvement typically takes place in initially observing the problem within context, brainstorming, conceptualizing, developing of concepts and implementing the solution.

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Human-centered design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors/ergonomics, and usability knowledge and techniques. This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability; and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance.

— ISO 9241-210:2019(E)

Human-centered design builds upon participatory action research by moving beyond participants' involvement and producing solutions to problems rather than solely documenting them. Initial stages usually revolve around immersion, observing, and contextual framing— in which innovators immerse themselves in the problem and community. Subsequent stages may then focus on community brainstorming, modeling and prototyping and implementation in community spaces. [1]

Development

Human-centered design has its origins at the intersection of numerous fields including engineering, psychology, anthropology and the arts. As an approach to creative problem-solving in technical and business fields its origins are often traced to the founding of the Stanford University design program in 1958 by Professor John E. Arnold who first proposed the idea that engineering design should be human-centered. This work coincided with the rise of creativity techniques and the subsequent design methods movement in the 1960s. Since then, as creative design processes and methods have been increasingly popularized for business purposes, the standardized and defined human-centered design is mistakenly equated with the vaguely outlined "design thinking".

In Architect or Bee?, Mike Cooley coined the term "human-centered systems" in the context of the transition in his profession from traditional drafting at a drawing board to computer-aided design. [2] Human-centered systems, [3] as used in economics, computing and design, aim to preserve or enhance human skills, in both manual and office work, in environments in which technology tends to undermine the skills that people use in their work. [4] [5] [6]

Human centeredness asserts firstly, that we must always put people before machines, however complex or elegant that machine might be, and, secondly, it marvels and delights at the ability and ingenuity of human beings. The Human Centered Systems movement looks sensitively at these forms of science and technology which meet our cultural, historical and societal requirements, and seeks to develop more appropriate forms of technology to meet our long-term aspirations. In the Human Centered System, there exists a symbiotic relation between the human and the machine, in which the human being would handle the qualitative subjective judgements and the machine the quantitative elements. It involves a radical redesign of the interface technologies and at a philosophical level, the objective is to provide tools (in the Heidegger sense) which would support human skill and ingenuity rather than machines which would objectivise that knowledge

—  Mike Cooley, "On Human-Machine Symbiosis", 2008 [7]

User participation

Wikimania Human Centered Design Visualization Wikimania Human Centered Design Visualization.jpg
Wikimania Human Centered Design Visualization

The user-oriented framework relies heavily on user participation and user feedback in the planning process. [8] Users are able to provide new perspective and ideas, which can be considered in a new round of improvements and changes. [8] It is said that increased user participation in the design process can garner a more comprehensive understanding of the design issues, due to more contextual and emotional transparency between researcher and participant. [8] A key element of human centered design is applied ethnography, which is a research method adopted from cultural anthropology. [8] This research method requires researchers to be fully immersed in the observation so that implicit details are also recorded. [8]

Rationale for adoption

Even after decades of thought on Human Centered Design, management and finance systems still believe that "another's liability is one's asset" could be true of porous human bodies, embedded in nature and inseparable from each other. On the contrary, our biological and ecological interconnections ensure that "another's liability is our liability". Sustainable business systems can only emerge if these biological and ecological interconnections are accepted and accounted for.

Using a human-centered approach to design and development has substantial economic and social benefits for users, employers and suppliers. Highly usable systems and products tend to be more successful both technically and commercially. In some areas, such as consumer products, purchasers will pay a premium for well-designed products and systems. Support and help-desk costs are reduced when users can understand and use products without additional assistance. In most countries, employers and suppliers have legal obligations to protect users from risks to their health, and safety and human-centered methods can reduce these risks (e.g. musculoskeletal risks). Systems designed using human-centered methods improve quality, for example, by:

Human-centered design may be utilized in multiple fields, including sociological sciences and technology. It has been noted for its ability to consider human dignity, access, and ability roles when developing solutions. [9] Because of this, human-centered design may more fully incorporate culturally sound, human-informed, and appropriate solutions to problems in a variety of fields rather than solely product and technology-based fields. Because human-centered design focuses on the human experience, researchers and designers can address "issues of social justice and inclusion and encourage ethical, reflexive design." [10]

Human-centered design arises from underlying principles of human factors. When it comes to those two concepts, they are quite interconnected; human factors are about discovering the attributes of human cognition and behavior that are important for making technology work for people. [11] It is what allows humans as a species to innovate over time.[ dubious – discuss ] Human-centered design was used to discover that Blackberries have less human usability than an iPhone and that important controls on a panel that look too similar will be easily confused and may cause an increased risk of human error.

An important distinction between human-centered design and any other form of design is that human-centered design is not just about aesthetics, and is not always designing for interfaces. It could be designing for controls in the world, tasks in the world, hardware, decision-making, or cognition. [11] For instance, if a nurse is too tired from a long shift, they might confuse the pumps through which might be administered a bag of penicillin to a patient. In this case, the human-centered design would encompass a task redesign, a possible institute policy redesign, and an equipment redesign.

Typically, human-centered design is more focused on "methodologies and techniques for interacting with people in such a manner as to facilitate the detection of meanings, desires and needs, either by verbal or non-verbal means." [12] In contrast, user-centered design is another approach and framework of processes which considers the human role in product use, but focuses largely on the production of interactive technology designed around the user's physical attributes rather than social problem-solving. [13]

Human-centered design approach in Health

In the context of health-seeking behaviors, Human Centered Design can be used to understand why people do or do not seek out health services, even when those services are available and affordable. Human centered design is a powerful tool for improving health-seeking behaviors. This understanding can then be used to develop interventions to address the barriers and promote desired behaviors. Demand-related challenges associated with the acceptability, responsiveness, and quality of services can be addressed by working directly with users to understand their needs and perspectives. [14] HCD can help in designing interventions that are more likely to be effective.

Critiques

Human-centered design has been both lauded and criticised for its ability to actively solve problems with affected communities. Criticisms include the inability of human-centered design to push the boundaries of available technology by solely tailoring to the demands of present-day solutions, rather than focus on possible future solutions. [15] In addition, human-centered design often considers context, but does not offer tailored approaches for very specific groups of people. New research on innovative approaches include youth-centered health design, which focuses on youth as the central aspect with particular needs and limitations not always addressed by human-centered design approaches. [16] Nevertheless, human-centered design that doesn't reflect very specific groups of users and their needs is human-centered design poorly executed, since the principles of human-system interaction require the reflection of those specified needs.

Whilst users are very important for some types of innovation (namely incremental innovation), focusing too much on the user may result in producing an outdated or no longer necessary product or service. This is because the insights that you achieve from studying the user today are insights that are related to the users of today and the environment she or he lives in today. If your solution will be available only two or three years from now, your user may have developed new preferences, wants and needs by then. [17]

See also

Related Research Articles

Usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design to evaluate a product by testing it on users. This can be seen as an irreplaceable usability practice, since it gives direct input on how real users use the system. It is more concerned with the design intuitiveness of the product and tested with users who have no prior exposure to it. Such testing is paramount to the success of an end product as a fully functioning application that creates confusion amongst its users will not last for long. This is in contrast with usability inspection methods where experts use different methods to evaluate a user interface without involving users.

Usability engineering is a professional discipline that focuses on improving the usability of interactive systems. It draws on theories from computer science and psychology to define problems that occur during the use of such a system. Usability Engineering involves the testing of designs at various stages of the development process, with users or with usability experts. The history of usability engineering in this context dates back to the 1980s. In 1988, authors John Whiteside and John Bennett—of Digital Equipment Corporation and IBM, respectively—published material on the subject, isolating the early setting of goals, iterative evaluation, and prototyping as key activities. The usability expert Jakob Nielsen is a leader in the field of usability engineering. In his 1993 book Usability Engineering, Nielsen describes methods to use throughout a product development process—so designers can ensure they take into account the most important barriers to learnability, efficiency, memorability, error-free use, and subjective satisfaction before implementing the product. Nielsen’s work describes how to perform usability tests and how to use usability heuristics in the usability engineering lifecycle. Ensuring good usability via this process prevents problems in product adoption after release. Rather than focusing on finding solutions for usability problems—which is the focus of a UX or interaction designer—a usability engineer mainly concentrates on the research phase. In this sense, it is not strictly a design role, and many usability engineers have a background in computer science because of this. Despite this point, its connection to the design trade is absolutely crucial, not least as it delivers the framework by which designers can work so as to be sure that their products will connect properly with their target usership.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Usability</span> Capacity of a system for its users to perform tasks

Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a software can be used by specified consumers to achieve quantified objectives with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a quantified context of use.

ISO 9241 is a multi-part standard from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) covering ergonomics of human-computer interaction. It is managed by the ISO Technical Committee 159. It was originally titled Ergonomic requirements for office work with visual display terminals (VDTs). From 2006 onwards, the standards were retitled to the more generic Ergonomics of Human System Interaction.

User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process 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. These tests are conducted with/without actual users during each stage of the process from requirements, pre-production models and post production, completing a circle of proof back to and ensuring that "development proceeds with the user as the center of focus." 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 based on the understanding of a user, their demands, priorities and experiences and when used, is known to lead to an increased product usefulness and usability as it delivers satisfaction to the user.

Interaction design, often abbreviated as IxD, is "the practice of designing interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services." While interaction design has an interest in form, its main area of focus rests on behavior. Rather than analyzing how things are, interaction design synthesizes and imagines things as they could be. This element of interaction design is what characterizes IxD as a design field, as opposed to a science or engineering field.

The user experience (UX) is how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system or service. It includes a person's perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency. Improving user experience is important to most companies, designers, and creators when creating and refining products because negative user experience can diminish the use of the product and, therefore, any desired positive impacts; conversely, designing toward profitability often conflicts with ethical user experience objectives and even causes harm. User experience is subjective. However, the attributes that make up the user experience are objective.

Human-centered computing (HCC) studies the design, development, and deployment of mixed-initiative human-computer systems. It is emerged from the convergence of multiple disciplines that are concerned both with understanding human beings and with the design of computational artifacts. Human-centered computing is closely related to human-computer interaction and information science. Human-centered computing is usually concerned with systems and practices of technology use while human-computer interaction is more focused on ergonomics and the usability of computing artifacts and information science is focused on practices surrounding the collection, manipulation, and use of information.

Service design is the activity of planning and arranging people, infrastructure, communication and material components of a service in order to improve its quality, and the interaction between the service provider and its users. Service design may function as a way to inform changes to an existing service or create a new service entirely.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">User interface design</span> Planned operator–machine interaction

User interface (UI) design or user interface engineering is the design of user interfaces for machines and software, such as computers, home appliances, mobile devices, and other electronic devices, with the focus on maximizing usability and the user experience. In computer or software design, user interface (UI) design primarily focuses on information architecture. It is the process of building interfaces that clearly communicate to the user what's important. UI design refers to graphical user interfaces and other forms of interface design. The goal of user interface design is to make the user's interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals.

Cognitive ergonomics is a scientific discipline that studies, evaluates, and designs tasks, jobs, products, environments and systems and how they interact with humans and their cognitive abilities. It is defined by the International Ergonomics Association as "concerned with mental processes, such as perception, memory, reasoning, and motor response, as they affect interactions among humans and other elements of a system. Cognitive ergonomics is responsible for how work is done in the mind, meaning, the quality of work is dependent on the persons understanding of situations. Situations could include the goals, means, and constraints of work. The relevant topics include mental workload, decision-making, skilled performance, human-computer interaction, human reliability, work stress and training as these may relate to human-system design." Cognitive ergonomics studies cognition in work and operational settings, in order to optimize human well-being and system performance. It is a subset of the larger field of human factors and ergonomics.

Social design is the application of design methodologies in order to tackle complex human issues, placing the social issues as the priority. Historically social design has been mindful of the designer's role and responsibility in society, and of the use of design processes to bring about social change. Social design as a discipline has been practiced primarily in two different models, as either the application of the human-centered design methodology in the social sector or governmental sector, or sometimes is synonymously practiced by designers who venture into social entrepreneurship.

User experience design defines the experience a user would go through when interacting with a company, its services, and its products. User experience design is a user centered design approach because it considers the user's experience when using a product or platform. Research, data analysis, and test results drive design decisions in UX design rather than aesthetic preferences and opinions. Unlike user interface design, which focuses solely on the design of a computer interface, UX design encompasses all aspects of a user's perceived experience with a product or website, such as its usability, usefulness, desirability, brand perception, and overall performance. UX design is also an element of the customer experience (CX), and encompasses all aspects and stages of a customer's experience and interaction with a company.

Contextual design (CD) is a user-centered design process developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt. It incorporates ethnographic methods for gathering data relevant to the product via field studies, rationalizing workflows, and designing human–computer interfaces. In practice, this means that researchers aggregate data from customers in the field where people are living and applying these findings into a final product. Contextual design can be seen as an alternative to engineering and feature driven models of creating new systems.

Human Factors Integration (HFI) is the process adopted by a number of key industries in Europe to integrate human factors and ergonomics into the systems engineering process. Although each industry has a slightly different domain, the underlying approach is the same.

Living labs are open innovation ecosystems in real-life environments using iterative feedback processes throughout a lifecycle approach of an innovation to create sustainable impact. They focus on co-creation, rapid prototyping & testing and scaling-up innovations & businesses, providing joint-value to the involved stakeholders. In this context, living labs operate as intermediaries/orchestrators among citizens, research organisations, companies and government agencies/levels.

Tools, devices or software must be evaluated before their release on the market from different points of view such as their technical properties or their usability. Usability evaluation allows assessing whether the product under evaluation is efficient enough, effective enough and sufficiently satisfactory for the users. For this assessment to be objective, there is a need for measurable goals that the system must achieve. That kind of goal is called a usability goal. They are objective criteria against which the results of the usability evaluation are compared to assess the usability of the product under evaluation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ergonomics</span> Designing systems to suit their users

Ergonomics, also known as human factors or human factors engineering (HFE), is the application of psychological and physiological principles to the engineering and design of products, processes, and systems. Primary goals of human factors engineering are to reduce human error, increase productivity and system availability, and enhance safety, health and comfort with a specific focus on the interaction between the human and equipment.

User research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs and motivations through interviews, surveys, usability evaluations and other forms of feedback methodologies. It is used to understand how people interact with products and evaluate whether design solutions meet their needs. This field of research aims at improving the user experience (UX) of products, services, or processes by incorporating experimental and observational research methods to guide the design, development, and refinement of a product. User research is used to improve a multitude of products like websites, mobile phones, medical devices, banking, government services and many more. It is an iterative process that can be used at anytime during product development and is a core part of user-centered design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extreme users</span> Design concept

Extreme Characters is a methodology used within user-centered design in order to represent edge case users of a product, brand or user interface. Extreme Characters also fits under the umbrella of market segmentation within marketing as it formulates design solutions for both average users and extreme, brink users. The concept of creating extreme users has been adopted heavily into the concept user-centered design and human-centered computing, and has led to its wide adoption both within online and offline applications, along with its placement within marketing communications.

References

  1. ↑ Innovating for people: the Handbook of human-centered design methods. Pittsburgh, PA: LUMA Institute. 2012.
  2. ↑ Cooley, Mike (1982). Architect or Bee?. South End Press.
  3. ↑ Cooley, Mike (1989). "Human-centred Systems". Designing Human-centred Technology. The Springer Series on Artificial Intelligence and Society. pp. 133–143. doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-1717-9_10. ISBN   978-3-540-19567-2.
  4. ↑ John Bellamy Foster; Harry Braverman (1998). Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the 20th Century. Monthly Review Press.
  5. ↑ Philip Kraft (1977). Programmers and Managers: The Routinization of Computer Programmers in the United States.
  6. ↑ Mike Cooley (1989). "Designing Human-centered Technology: A Cross-disciplinary Project in Computer-aided Manufacturing". In Howard Rosenbrock (ed.). Human-centered systems. London: Springer-Verlag. ISBN   978-3-540-19567-2.
  7. ↑ Cooley, M. (2008). "On Human-Machine Symbiosis". In Gill, S. (ed.). Cognition, Communication and Interaction. Human-Computer Interaction Series. London: Springer. pp. 457–485. ISBN   978-1-84628-926-2.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Del'Era, Claudio; Landoni, Paolo (June 2014). "Living Lab: A Methodology between User Centered Design and Participatory Design". Creativity and Innovation Management. 23 (2): 137–154. doi:10.1111/caim.12061. hdl: 11311/959178 . S2CID   153640858.[ permanent dead link ]
  9. ↑ Buchanan, R. (2001). "Human dignity and human rights: Thoughts on the principles of human-centered design". Design Issues. 17 (3): 35–39.
  10. ↑ Jones, Natasha N. (2016). "Narrative Inquiry in Human-Centered Design: Examining Silence and Voice to Promote Social Justice in Design Scenarios". Journal of Technical Writing and Communication. 46 (4). Sage: 471–492. doi:10.1177/0047281616653489. S2CID   147708023.
  11. 1 2 Lee, John D.; Wickens, Christopher D.; Liu, Yili; Boyle, Linda Ng (2017). Designing for People: An introduction to human factors engineering. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN   978-1539808008.
  12. ↑ Giacomin, J. (2014). "What Is Human Centered Design?". The Design Journal. 17 (4): 606–623.
  13. ↑ Abras, C.; Maloney-Krichmar, D.; Preece, J. (2004). Bainbridge, W. (ed.). "User-centered design". Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction. Vol. 37, no. 4. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications. pp. 445–456.
  14. ↑ "HCD for Health Homepage". UNICEF Human Centered Design 4 Health. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved October 16, 2023– via www.hcd4health.org.
  15. ↑ Norman, Donald A. (2005). "Human-Centered Design Considered Harmful". Interactions (essay). 12 (4). CACM: 14–19. Archived from the original on January 18, 2007. Retrieved April 15, 2017– via www.jnd.org.
  16. ↑ "Trauma-Informed Youth-Centered Health Design". YTH – youth + tech + health. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  17. ↑ "6 Building Blocks for Successful Innovation". 6 Building Blocks for Successful Innovation. Archived from the original on January 2, 2020. Retrieved January 2, 2020.

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