This post contains an overview of the steps of a user centred design process for any software application. For the purposes of this article, I am using a website as an example. In a previous post, I looked at the principles of usability and usefulness and these steps can help in ensuring that these principles are incorporated into your website (or software application).

Involve a sample set of users

As the name suggests, in a user centred approach, an appropriate set of users should be included on the website project team. By appropriate, I mean a representative sample which reflects the experiences, personality and skills set of the users who will eventually be using the new website. These team members will work with the designers and developers to provide timely and first hand feedback on the website design and as the design evolves to a fully completed site.

It would be ideal, if the user representatives can join the project team and work directly with the designers and developers to work directly on clarifying requirements, reviewing and testing prototypes of the website.

Identify the requirements via a set of representative tasks

There are a number of tools of which I will mention two that can be used to support the inputs from the user representatives to build a detailed picture of requirements and user behaviours; personas and scenarios. Personas, originated in marketing, are a technique used by website designers, to profile their target audience, by creating a bio or profile of a (fictional) user in terms of their background and their intentions in using the website.

Generally, a persona is created for each distinct category of users in the target audience with inputs from user interviews, external research and design experts. A typical persona contains the following details; name, picture, education and work background, previous experience using the web and their intentions for using this website as shown in a sample persona from Tina Calabria from Step Two Designs.

Bob is 52 years old and works as a mechanic with an organisation offering road service to customers when their car breaks down. He has worked in the job for the past 12 years and knows it well. Many of the younger mechanics ask Bob for advice when they meet up in the depot as he always knows the answer to tricky mechanical problems. Bob likes sharing his knowledge with the younger guys, as it makes him feel a valued part of the team.

Bob works rolling day and night shifts and spends his shifts attending breakdowns and lockouts (when customers lock their keys in the car). About 20% of the jobs he attends are complex and he occasionally needs to refer to his standard issue manuals. Bob tries to avoid using the manuals in front of customers as he thinks it gives the impression he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Bob has seen many changes over the years with the company and has tried his best to move with the times. However he found it a bit daunting when a new computer was installed in his van several years ago, and now he has heard rumours that the computer is going to be upgraded to one with a bigger screen that’s meant to be faster and better.

Bob’s been told that he will be able to access the intranet on the new computer. He has heard about the intranet and saw once in an early version on his manager’s computer. He wonders if he will be able to find out want’s going on in the company more easily, especially as customers’ seem to know more about the latest company news than he does when he turns up at a job. This can be embarrassing and has been a source of frustration for Bob throughout his time with the company.
(Reproduced from Tina Calabria’s blog on Step Two Designs – March 2004)

Scenarios, also known as user cases are descriptions, sometimes with the aid of flow diagrams, showing how the user will go about completing a particular task.
For example, a user opens their browser, clicks on their favourites list to go to their wish list of books, clicks on one of the books, checks the price and then proceeds to place an order for the book. As you can gather, combining the use of scenarios with personas, help to provide the website project team with a detailed understanding of the type of users and what they would like to accomplish when using the website.

For further information on the use of personas and scenarios, please go to this article by John Wood in IQContent.

As the requirements / scenarios are being discussed and finalised, ideas and other recognised best practices from other websites should also be included in the discussion. The designers and developers can provide this input based on their experiences on other projects together with any research of other websites by the project team. The justification for including any of these ‘best practice’ suggestions will be based on how well they support the users’ and wider business requirements, but this type of ‘outside’ input helps to ensure that the project doesn’t get too routed in how tasks are performed currently within an organisation.

Progress the design and development of the website

When designing the website, the structure of the website and the relationship between the different pages can be illustrated visually using wireframes. The wireframe for each page will also depict how the page will look to the user and the location of the designated information and functions for that page.
In addition to the agreeing the look&feel of the website, an analysis of the proposed site’s content will establish how best to structure and locate functions and information on the website to make it easy for the users to find. The resulting information architecture provides the blue prints of the website with such deliverables as;

• A content inventory where a list of the website’s content (including text, graphics and multimedia) is positioned in the sections and pages of the website
• A site map which illustrates the hierarchy and structure of a website

Using the wireframes and information architecture, the project team can progress the development of the website in iterations/phases which I will write about in a future post.

Follow-up work after the rollout

After the website is released and put live, it is important that the approach and process behind managing the content of the website is monitored, as one of the contributors to the website’s success is the ongoing quality of its content. This monitoring also helps to ensures that the web designers and developers maintain an ongoing contact with the user community and are keeping abreast of changing business and user expectations.

This follow-up work helps to address the question; is the website achieving the expected results and assisting the users in a meaningful manner. This assessment of expected versus actual benefits also allows for the inclusion of changing user expectations and business requirements in planning and delivering future enhancements.

In summary, with the user centered approach, the users’ requirements can be clearly articulated and together with the hands-on user involvement in the design and development work, the website project is focused on the appropriate set of features to be delivered. Then post-delivery, ongoing monitoring of the website is important to help keep the website updated to meet changing business requirements.