HUMAN CENTRED DESIGN

• Human Centred Design is a combination of rational problem solving and emotional storytelling.

Designing with a focus on Human Centred Design, according to IDEO:

Focus on the people
Focus on the underlying problem not the symptoms
Understand that EVERYTHING is part of a system
Know that you'll never get it right first time so iterate continuously, right from the start.

IDEO's Human Centred Design Field Kit pdf

• Don Norman - Practical Human Centred Design

• Community Based Design

>What is a 'Charrette' in Community Design?<

• 15 Principles for HCD

Design Principles - by Brian Ambielli, Engineering Manager @ Flexport

There are 15 different principles that HCI researchers use to evaluate an interface. These principles were developed by Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Larry Constantine and Lucy Lockwood.

Discoverability — Relevant interface functions should be made visible, instead of requiring a user to read about them in documentation. There is a natural tension between discoverability and simplicity.

Simplicity - The interface is easy to understand and use, irrespective of a user’s experience, knowledge, or level of concentration. The interface is not cluttered with unnecessary information that distracts from accomplishing the primary task.

Affordances - Interfaces that “hint at” the way they are meant to be used. The interface’s perceived affordance might be at odds with its actual affordance (e.g. a door with a handle seems like it should be pulled, but the door actually needs to be pushed). You can add signifiers to the interface to help a perceived affordance match the actual affordance (e.g. a label next to the door handle that says “push”).

Mapping - Used in HCI to describe the relationship between the interface and real world equivalents. Interfaces should speak the language of the users who use it, favoring language in their terms vs system-oriented language. e.g. we use cut, copy, paste instead of duplicate, since this maps better to terms and actions that users already know.

Perceptibility - The user’s ability to perceive the state of the system. Are they closer or farther away from accomplishing their goals? This is very important with digital systems, so users do not feel helpless when attempting to accomplish their tasks.

Consistency - Design interfaces using familiar components which behave the same, so users do not need to re-learn your interface from scratch. Consistency is generally the best option, unless a design alternative provides a 10x improvement in usability.

Flexibility - An interface should accommodate a wide range of users with varying levels of expertise. Allow users to use your interface in ways that fit with their standard workflows: e.g. some users are more comfortable copying and pasting using the right-click menu commands instead of keyboard shortcuts. Both accomplish the same task, but fit in to different user workflows.

Equity - An interface is useable by users with diverse ranges of ability (accessibility).

Ease - The design can be used with minimal amounts of fatigue.

Comfort - Users of varying physical sizes, postures, mobility, can use the interface without strain.

Structure - A user interface should be architected in a way that is organized and makes sense to the end user. e.g. information layout on a page is often made consistent with standards adopted from the newspaper industry.

Constraints - Preventing a user from performing erroneously in the first place by constraining their possible behaviors. Password reset flows with client-side validations are a good example of this: they prevent the submit button from being made available until the user has successfully met password requirements.

Tolerance - The user interface should be designed such that errors that inevitably occur do not cause too much setback for the user in accomplishing their primary task. Supporting standard functions like undo and redo give users a sense of security when using an interface, and make them more likely to engage and explore.