Human-centered Design

Human-centered Design (HCD) has had a number of names over the years, from Human Factors, to Usability, to "Design Thinking."

The concept is simple, take a look at your site/application from the perspective of your end-users and design the information architecture, nomenclature and workflow to match THEIR mental model.

The Fallacy of User Error

Posted: February 4,2020

On Monday, Feb 3rd we all witnessed a glitch associated with a very high profile app--the counting of votes in the Iowa Caucuses.

In reading various news sources about the glitch, we've noticed all too many people blaming themselves for not being tech-savy. In a recent #HITsm tweetchat, a similar discussion emerged.

People are all too quick to blame themselves for not being able to use a poorly designed (or tested) system. We call this the "Fallacy of User Error."

What is Human-centered Design?

Posted: December 11,2019

Human-centered design is everywhere.

Look, and feel the chair that you are sitting in right now. If you are sitting in a modern office chair it probably has adjustable arms, the height of the chair can be adjusted to match your height. Most likely the bottom of the chair has special contours to better match the shape of your butt. This is Human-centered design. The developers of the chair knew that humans would be sitting in the chair and they made special design considerations to make the chair better match their human user.

A Bad UX can cause Death by 1000 cuts

Posted: December 10,2019

The ISO 9241 standard presents the definition of usability as Effective Efficient and Satisfying in a specified context of use.

When you design for the people that use your product - people will use your product!

Posted: November 26,2019

We've often blogged about Section 508 compliance as a means to convince very engineering-centric developers to consider their users.

Accessible designs work for everyone - Ever use a curb-cut!?

By thinking about a disabled user and designing a solution that works for them, developers adopt a human-centered design strategy without even knowing it.

It is an excellent foot-in-the-door for designing for an admin user, a casual user, the sales team, an expert user, and many of other personas associated with the solution.

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