User-Centered Design Process

There are six phases in the User-Centered design process:

1. Plan
2. Analyze
3. Design
4. Build
5. Release
6. Assess

In each phase, different tasks are worked on - this is a comprehensive list - each project is different:

Plan

Who: Project Team, Usability Specialist, Client, Stakeholders

Deliverables:

• Product concept
• Business objectives
• Statement of preliminary assumptions
• Purpose statement
• Audience (primary and secondary)
• Use/functionality
• Project plan (goals, resources, constraints, preliminary schedule, etc.)

Analyze

Who: Usability Specialist, Users

Methods used for User Research:

• Observe users (Contextual Inquiry)
• User surveys
• User interviews
• Focus groups

Results of User Research:

User profiles (Usability Specialist)

• technical environment
• experience
• role/job
• tasks
• terminology
• technical expertise
• native language
• mental model
• strategies
• attitudes
• issues
• computer support

Task analysis (Usability Specialist)

• intent/goal
• flow/sequence
• frequency
• triggers

Requirements (Usability Specialist, Project Team)

• Detailed and refined purpose statement
• Supported tasks
• Usability goals
• Get buy-off from Client/Stakeholders.

Design

Who:UI Designer/Developer or Information Architect and Writers, Usability Specialist, Users

Methods used for Design:

• Paper prototyping, HTML prototyping
• Card sorting
• User brainstorming
• Cognitive walkthroughs
• Expert reviews
• Usability testing
• Results
• A reasonably usable user interface (UI)
• Architecture designed to support the UI

Get buy-off from Client/Stakeholders

Build

Who:

• Coding (Developers)
• Functional testing (Anyone/Everyone)
• Usability testing (Usability Specialist, Users)
• Beta testing (Client)
• Continue until you're out of time...then move to the Release/Publish phase

Release/Publish

Who: Developers

Assess

Who:

• Technical support (Support Staff)
• User problems
• User feedback and requests
• Collect additional user feedback (Usability Specialist, Users)
• User research
• Usability testing
• Analyze server hits (Developers or Project Manager)
• Continue until "things aren't going well"...then move to the Plan phase