The big idea: User-centred design (UCD) pays particular attention to the needs of potential users through their involvement at all stages of the design process.
The words that matter are all stages. A survey at the start and a satisfaction score at the end is not UCD.
The five stages, drawn as a loop. Step through to see what the user does in each — not just what the designer does.
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What each stage is for
Specify the context of use
Who will use the product, for what task, and where. Established by going and looking, not by describing a user from a desk.
Specify the requirements
Turn that context into requirements the design must satisfy. Users confirm which ones actually matter — designers and users rank them differently.
Produce design solutions
Generate solutions, from rough sketches to prototypes. Users react to early, cheap versions, before anything is committed.
Evaluate against the requirements
Users perform the real task with it and the failures are recorded. Evaluation is against the requirements from stage 2, not against opinion.
Iterate
Feed what failed back into the context and the requirements, and go round again. This is the stage that makes it a cycle rather than a checklist.
Why it is a loop: Evaluating often changes your understanding of the context, not just the design. Discovering that nurses work one-handed sends you back to stage 1, not stage 3.
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The guide asks for the advantages and disadvantages of UCD when designing for a diverse range of user needs and capabilities. Both halves are examinable, so learn both.
Advantages
- The product fits a diverse range of needs and capabilities, not just the designer's
- Expensive mistakes surface while they are still cheap to fix
- Fewer errors in use, so the product is safer and needs less support
- Decisions are evidence-based, so the team argues about data, not taste
Disadvantages
- Takes longer and costs more up front
- Users can be hard to recruit, especially specialist ones
- A poor sample lets a vocal minority pull the design away from the population
- Users cannot describe what does not exist yet, so early stages need care
The honest answer: UCD is slower and more expensive. The argument for it is that the alternative is finding out later, when the fix costs a production run rather than an afternoon.
How this is tested — explaining the five stages of UCD and weighing its advantages against its costs. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — multiple choice
- Identify which UCD stage a described activity belongs to.
- Pick a genuine disadvantage of UCD rather than a generic one.
Paper 2 — analysing a product
- Explain the five stages in the context of a named product.
- Evaluate whether a company should use UCD for a given product.
The trap: Describing the stages as a straight line that ends at evaluation. Stage 5 is iterate — and evaluating often sends you back to stage 1, not stage 3.
A company is developing a self-service kiosk for a railway station. Explain how it would apply the five stages of user-centred design.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.