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5.3 User-Centered Design 81

Fig. 5.2 Iterative process of UCD

be involved one way or another in the design process. For instance, users may be
consulted about their needs and be involved at different stages during the design
process, such as the requirements gathering process or the usability testing process.
In some types of UCD methods, users may have a deep impact on the
system/product design by being involved throughout the design process.

UCD is an iterative design process, whereby a prototype is designed, tested, and
modified. The iterative process based upon the design cycle presented in the
user-centered design draft standard ISO 13407 (see https://www.iso.org/standard/
21197.html) was shown in Fig. 5.2. These days, this process is often called
design-based research (see Chap. 11).
In the process of planning UCD, the following four activities is the key to
success.

1. Understand and specify the context of use: Identify who will use our product,
what is the purpose of using it, and in which conditions they will use it.
2. Specify the user and organizational requirements: Identify any business mis-
sions or end-user needs that must be met for our product to become successful.
3. Produce design solutions: This step should be a spiraling process, building from
a rough concept to a complete design.
4. Evaluate designs against user requirements: The evaluation to see if our product
meet user’s needs—usually through usability testing with actual users—is as
important as quality testing to good software development.

User-Centered Design Principles
In the above iterative process of UCD from ISO 13407, the following six principles
should be considered by UCD managers.

1. The design should be based on clear understanding of environments, users, and
tasks.