Design with The User
User-centered design begins with understanding the people you are designing for by utilizing conversation, observation, and co-creation. Designing with the User is important at all points of the project. It can be incorporated at the beginning, middle, and end or at various points where your design team might want guidance. It is important for your project that your user feels involved and that the product suits their needs. By gaining their input you can determine what the user wants out of the project. By actively listening to the potential user you can synthesize other possible unexpressed needs and anticipate features that would make the project/product even more valuable and successful.
| Checklist Questions |
|---|
| Observation: Have you observed your User? |
| Conversation: Have you reached out to your User and conducted a meeting? |
| Co-creation: Is the User involved in the project? How? |
| Follow-up: Does the User feel involved in the project -> conduct another meeting or administer a survey |
| Out of all the voices heard in designing with the user are you possibly leaving anyone out? |
Additional Resources
Case Study
Grocki, M. (2014). How to create a Customer Journey Map. UX Mastery. YouTube.
In this short video, Megan Grocki details the step by step process of thinking through customer journey mapping. While the resource uses a market, for-profit driven example, the same process is useful to explore user experience for development project deliverables.
Empathy Mapping Resources (Referenced in Journey Mapping):
What is an Empathy Map? PlaybookUX. YouTube.
This video by PlaybookUX provides a guide to empathy mapping strategies in order to understand and later be able to build a relationship with the recipients of the project.
Design Thinking MIT:
Altitude (2017). Design Thinking Video from MIT and Altitude. YouTube.
This resource takes an inside journey through MIT and Altitude’s process of designing a functional walker for the elderly. It gives a good look at the interview and review process with the very demographic the product is intended for. By interacting one-on-one with potential consumers, Altitude and MIT make sure that the product truly suits their needs. Though ethical development projects may have different needs and aims than companies with a for-profit mission, we can use some of the same considerations that help involve the consumer as for profit and industry driven products – because in the end, we are designing a product or service and that product should be something functional that people feel ownership of and want to use.