User Centered Design
Challenges
- Understanding the tasks that the user comes to your Web site to do.
- Presenting the steps for doing a task in a way that is easily recognized and understood by the user.
- Providing everything the user needs to do the task correctly the first time.
A Process For User Centered Design
- Project Analysis
- Determine your purpose
- Analyze your audience
- Information Design
- Develop your content
- Develop look and feel
- Site Evaluation
- Revisit purpose statement
- Revisit user profiles
- Revisit task flows and scenarios
- Production and Maintenance
From User Centered Design for the World Wide Web, a Staff Training workshop developed by Alexis Raphael and Ginger Brower.
Thinking In Terms of Tasks
Task - "A usually assigned piece of work often to be finished within a certain time."
Types of Tasks:
- Wide and deep structures
Chess game, career choice, pursuing education - Shallow structures
Selecting from a menu, choosing a residence hall - Narrow structures
Following a recipe, paying tuitionFrom The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman, Doubleday, 1988
Examples of tasks:
- Getting reimbursed for travel expenses
- Finding a residence hall
- Connecting to campus network to read your email
- Applying for financial aid
- Finding the location of a specific building and room
- Choosing among medical care options
- Finding out what hours the library is open