The big idea: Understanding the needs, wants and limitations of end-users is the key to user-centred design.
Three different questions — and a product that answers only the first is usable and unloved, while one that answers only the second is charming and useless.
One real user, and the design decision each of the three forces. Step through to see what a designer who shares none of those limitations would have guessed.
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The guide asks you to explain how empathy leads to better design — and it is specific about how empathy is developed: by understanding users' needs and by carrying out their tasks in the specified environment yourself.
Sympathy — from a desk
- "Older users find small buttons difficult"
- Imagining the user from what you already believe
- Produces a design that is well-meant and still wrong
- Nothing changes, because nothing surprised you
Empathy — in the environment
- Take the tablets yourself, wearing gloves, in dim light
- Do the task in the place and at the time it is really done
- You discover the lid needs two hands and the bin is behind you
- The design changes, because you found something you did not expect
The trap: Writing that a designer should "consider the user". Every designer thinks they do. The mark is in naming what they went and found out, and what changed as a result.
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How understanding turns into a better design
Fewer errors
A limitation you found is a mistake the user now cannot make. Knowing the user has a tremor turns a small twist-cap into a large lever.
Less abandonment
Products are abandoned because of wants, not needs. A reminder that looks medical sits in a drawer however well it works.
Cheaper mistakes
A misunderstanding found by talking to six users costs an afternoon. The same misunderstanding found after tooling costs a production run.
A defensible design
Every decision traces back to something a real user said or did, so the team argues about evidence instead of taste.
How this is tested — explaining how understanding users leads to a better product. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — multiple choice
- Classify a stated user requirement as a need, a want or a limitation.
- Identify what a designer learned that changed a decision.
Paper 2 — analysing a product
- Explain how empathy with a named user group improves a product.
- Explain what a designer would have to find out before a redesign.
The trap: Naming a need and stopping. The mark is the design decision it forces — "users have arthritis" is half an answer; "so the cap is a lever, not a twist" is the rest.
A company is redesigning a garden watering can for older gardeners. Explain how understanding their needs, wants and limitations would improve the product.
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