Target in Sight: User-Centered Design
What is User-Centered Design?
User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative design method in which designers pay close attention to users and their demands at every stage of the process. UCD design teams employ a combination of research and design methodologies to incorporate customers throughout the design process, resulting in highly useable and accessible products for them.
UCD Process
- Specifying the context of use: Determining who will use the product, what it will be used for, and under what conditions it will be used.
- Specifying user requirements: Identifying any business or user goals that must be satisfied for the product to succeed.
- Creating design solutions: This step can be completed in stages, starting with a rough concept and then progressing to a finished design.
- Evaluating the design against the requirements: Ideally done through usability testing with real users, it is as important as quality testing.
What is a Persona?
Personas are fictionalized versions of real people. It is a representation of a specific group of people who have similar characteristics, such as behavior, needs, objectives, abilities, and attitudes. Personas allow you to bring your users to life and better understand their issues. Designers can make informed judgments about product features, navigation, interactions, visual design, and much more with this knowledge. Creating a persona for our product is the first step in applying UCD to our project.
Making a Persona
To make a persona, you must first have a strong grasp of your target audience (the individuals who will use your product) in order to construct a proper persona. This is crucial because if you don’t understand your target audience, you’ll probably wind up giving them the wrong solution.
To create a persona, we must first determine what information is required to construct that persona. Personal information such as their name, image, age, where they reside, what they do for a living, and their gender are usually included in a realistic persona. There is also a brief description of who they are, their aim in utilizing the product, their annoyance with using the product, and their incentive for using the product.
The next step is to create a template or form for the persona. Platforms like PhotoShop, Canva, and Figma can be used for this. Canva and Figma, for example, provide a default template so that all you have to do is fill out the details for your persona. You can also get free templates online.
As previously stated, it is critical that you understand your target audience. Conducting interviews with at least three potential users is one approach to do this. This is done to confirm our assumptions about the user’s needs. The results of the interviews will confirm or refute our assumptions about our customers. Other than that, relevant information gathered during the interview will be used to create our persona.
Persona in Badaso LMS
These are personas made to aid the development process of Badaso LMS. The first persona (figure 1) is a representation of the teacher sub-role and the second persona (figure 2) is a representation of the student sub-role, both of which are part of the customer user role. The existence of these personas helps in visualizing how users would interact with Badaso LMS and what they require.
Figure 1. Badaso LMS Teacher Persona
Figure 2. Badaso LMS Student Persona
I hope you find this blog helpful, if you find any mistakes or misinformation, I would very much appreciate the feedback. Thank you!
References
What is user centered design? The Interaction Design Foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-centered-design
Department of Health and Human Services. (2017, April 3). User-Centered Design Basics. User-Centered Design Basics | Usability.gov. Retrieved April 12, 2022, from https://www.usability.gov/what-and-why/user-centered-design.html
Illustrations included are official game assets of the game Eternal Return.