There are a number of benefits associated with a user centred approach to design. User experience research helps to identify the needs and expectations of end users and it can also immerse the design team into the lives of people they are designing products and services for. Importantly it can also help to mitigate the high level of risks that are associated with launching new products and services.
Viewing the images above how would you improve the user experience for people:
- withdrawing cash from an AMT
- using separate remote controls for the TV, DVD player and video recorder
- making phone calls from a public phone
- taking the cap off and reading the instructions on medicine bottle
Instilling a user centred culture can help to ensure products and services meet the needs of people and that they are usable, desirable and useful. “P&G, Samsung, and others like them put great energy into learning what their customers crave [via new ethnographic and behavioural practices from anthropology and psychology] and into designing their innovation process to satisfy them. So close are they to their customers that they are beginning to co-create with them…Success increasingly goes to those companies who focus on creating better things with their customers, not for them.” The Innovation Economy, from Business Week, 11th October 2004.
