User Centered Design – Page 3 – UX Reference Collection

Turn Marvel Prototypes Into iOS And Android Apps In Less Than 10 Minutes Using Appcelerator

For Marvel Pro users only. Also run locally.

About two months ago we launched a feature for Pro users that allowed them to download their prototype as a zip file. The zip file contains the HTML, CSS and JS source files that Marvel uses to build your prototype.

This allows you to host, alter, mix up and play with your prototype on your local machine or server. It’s also really useful if you happen to be presenting and you’re not sure if you’ll land yourself in a situation that has a sketchy internet connection.

There is one other advantage to our downloadable prototype in that it’s fully compatible with HTML based app building platforms like Titanium, Phonegap, Cordova. The following tutorial video gives you an overview on how to run the integration with Titanium.

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What is User-Centered Design?

User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to design that grounds the process in information about the people who will use the product. UCD processes focus on users through the planning, design and development of a product.

An International Standard

There is an international standard that is the basis for many UCD methodologies. This standard (ISO 13407: Human-centred design process) defines a general process for including human-centered activities throughout a development life-cycle, but does not specify exact methods.

In this model, once the need to use a human centered design process has been identified, four activities form the main cycle of work:

Specify the context of use
Identify the people who will use the product, what they will use it for, and under what conditions they will use it.

Specify requirements
Identify any business requirements or user goals that must be met for the product to be successful.

Create design solutions
This part of the process may be done in stages, building from a rough concept to a complete design.

Evaluate designs
The most important part of this process is that evaluation – ideally through usability testing with actual users – is as integral as quality testing is to good software development.

The process ends – and the product can be released – once the requirements are met.

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The 13 Most Popular Methods for User Centered Design (2008)

List of methods, with links. From 2008, some may be no longer relevant.

User centered design is receiving increasing attention in recent years. Various methods and tools are used within organizations to improve the understanding of user and task requirements, support the iteration of design and evaluation. Identifying the most important and most used user centered design methods was the goal of the study “The State of User Centered Design Practice.”

In this study the authors surveyed more than 100 experienced practitioners of UCD with at least three years of experience and who considered UCD as their primary job. The following table shows the key results of the survey (Ranging from 1 to 5, from the most important to the least important method):

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