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Tobias Misera, Head of User Centered Design, The Usability
Company
A few years ago, many clients were not aware of the importance
of User Centered Design (User Centered Design) in website development. The focus
was solely on having a web presence at all costs in order to
compete in the new market. There was a general lack of
understanding of the complexities involved in designing a website.
When designing websites, designers had many new considerations.
For example, in addition to creating a visual style and layout of
an individual page, designers now had to focus on the aggregate
collection of information and design a web site structure and
navigation system, which are both elements of User Centered Design. These functions,
although completely new to designers had become requirements to
the web development process. In addition to this, design was at
the end of the development process and designers were given tight
deadlines and budgets. As a result User Centered Design elements were neglected
because designers generally concentrated on visuals, which were
ultimately easier to sell.
Most websites at this time looked arguably fantastic and had
highly creative design but performed poorly. Users got lost within
the sites, did not find relevant information and could not perform
the relevant tasks. Many organisations were losing visitors,
revenue and brand equity due to these issues with their websites.
Even if User Centered Design was considered in this era, it was considered at the
design stage of the project, which is just before the production
stage. There is generally neither enough time nor budget for
possible change at this stage, which can often limit the effects
and the ability to implement User Centered Design recommendations as User Centered Design can require
a complete rethink of the project. The same is true for
programmers and developers who were now faced with the task of
implementing beautiful designs in a structure-less product or
environment. If there wasn't a structure in place at this stage it
was up to the developers and programmers to consider the
organisation of information and navigation while producing the
site.
Today, websites are increasingly complex and rich in
information. This combined with the maturation of the industry
resulted in a more complex development process involving more
specialists such as new media project managers, digital
strategists, E-marketers, usability experts and User Centered Designs.
Interestingly, the bulk of new media jobs has shifted from
creating new web sites to re-designing and/or re-structuring
existing web sites. It's usually the usability experts and web
statistics that point the clients towards User Centered Design.
User Centered Design is not graphic design, software development or usability
engineering but it does touch on all of these and many other
areas. User Centered Design takes a holistic view of websites by simultaneously
concentrating on users, content and context. The complexities of
website development now mean that it requires a phased approach
for success. User Centered Design comes before the design and development process
and should start at the beginning of the project with the
planning, marketing and branding phases.
The Information Architect translates the business requirements
and balances them with the users' needs. By using card sorting
exercises to define the structure, creating wireframes to develop
and test navigation systems and drawing sitemaps and process
diagrams to document the website, User Centered Designs ensure that the content
structure and navigation of a website is built to enable the user
to achieve their objectives thus enabling clients to achieve their
business goals.
All of these components are passed on to the design team who in
turn use them as blueprints for their designs. In this way, the User Centered Design
speeds up the design process significantly by allowing the
designers to focus on what they're best at; design!
Getting a thorough understanding of User Centered Design and usability
implications before the building process commences can
considerably reduce development costs and timelines because the
User Centered Design's recommendations are tested by real users at the beginning of
the process hence avoiding over development and wasted investment
during the project.
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