Six User-Centered Design Business Goals and Principles

According to IBM, one of the leading technology companies in the Pacific Northwest, there are essentially six business goals and principles to user-centered design:

Determine the market: The target market, intended users, and primary competition are central to product design and user participation.

Understand the users: Being committed to understanding and involving the intended user is essential to the design process. If you want a user to understand your product, you must first understand the user.

Assess the competition: Superior design requires ongoing awareness of the competition and its customers. Once you understand your users' tasks, you must test those same tasks against those of your competition and compare their results with your own.

Design the user experience: Everything a user sees and touches is designed by a multidisciplinary team, including the methods by which a product is advertised, ordered, bought, packaged, maintained, installed, administered, documented, upgraded, and supported.

Evaluate designs: User feedback is gathered early and often, using prototypes with widely ranging backgrounds. Feedback drives improvements and encourages new product design and development.

Manage by continual user observation: Throughout the life of the product, continue to monitor and listen to your users, and let their feedback inform your responses to market changes and competitive activity.

Source:

IBM’s Ease of Use site: http://www3.ibm.com/ibm/easy/eou_ext.nsf/publish/558