I recently heard a fellow student ask a good question: “What exactly does ‘user-centered’ design?” The also asked, “Everything is designed for users so how could something not be user-centered?”
Wow, that is a great question! One of my favorite answers to this question comes from the book “The Psychology of Everyday Things” (P.O.E.T.) by Donald A. Norman. Norman says that user-centered design is “a philosophy based on the needs and interests of the user, with an emphasis on making products usable and understandable.” (ch. 7, p. 188)
Norman further states that
Design should:
- Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment (make use of constraints).
- Make things visible, including the conceptual model of the system.
- Make it easy to evaluate the current state of the system.
- Follow natural mappings between intentions and the required actions; between actions and the resulting effect; and between the information that is visible and the interpretation of the system state.
In other words, make sure that (1) the user can figure out what to do, and (2) the user can tell what is going on.
- Norman, D. A. (1988). The Psychology of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.
The Psychology of Everyday Things is available from:
Note: The Psychology of Everyday Things was reprinted under the title The Design of Everyday Things. I am quoting page numbers from the 2004 edition but I believe they are the same regardless of title.