Introducing User-Centered Systems Design - Foundations for Designing User-Centered Systems - page 3

Understanding people will help you build better interactive technologies and
systems.
When we say ''understanding people'' we mean:
• Knowing how to observe and document what people do
- Using appropriate methods to get credible results and differentiate anecdotes
from reliable data
• Understanding why people do what they do
- Developing insights into people's conscious and unconscious motivations for
doing things
• Understanding and predicting when people are likely do things
- Understanding people's patterns of behavior
• Understanding how they choose to do things the way they do them
- Understanding what options people actually have and/or perceive they have
available to them, understanding the constraints they are under and assessing
what the resources they have available to them.
We propose that systems should be designed in a user-centered way. Being user-
centered means considering human characteristics and capabilities during system
design. It means explicitly asking: who is going to use the system/technology and
why; what are they hoping to achieve in using the system/technology; how much
effort are they willing to put into learning how to use the system/technology; whether
they will be operating the system alone or with others…. Being user-centered means
knowing why, as well as how, users do what they do when they do it. We propose
that consideration of users' basic human characteristics should be in place before
system development begins. Reflection and experimentation with potential users of
the system should take place throughout the design and development process using
methods like brainstorming, storyboarding, low to high fidelity prototyping, and, as
the system gets closer to full functionality, with more formal use testing.
This topic assumes no previous knowledge; it is designed to be accessible to those
without a background in psychology or computer science; if you have already taken a
traditional human-computer interaction (HCI) course, this material may be a quite
easy read and help you organize your thoughts. If you have taken several psychology
courses, you are likely to recognize much, but perhaps not all, of the material here.
1.2 Starting to Understand Users
Many designers and developers make two fundamental errors. They assume that
understanding how a technology will be used can be derived from introspection:
from imagining how it will be used. This assumption is based on a second