User-centred design – what’s in it for me?
It’s not you, it’s me…
My temples are burning up, I can feel my cheeks flushing and I now resemble that odd shade of red lipstick 70 year old women wear to bingo. We’ve all felt it. Have you ever looked back at something you’ve created years ago and cringed? The crimson cheek experience was definitely creeping over me when looking back at my old university portfolio. Sure, it was creative and visually pleasing, but the websites were a nightmare to use; little moving circles for navigation, or unlabelled, different-coloured boxes that needed to be hovered over. Even the 70-year-old granny with her brave shade of lipstick wouldn’t have dared to use this. A vital thing had been overlooked: The User.
Nowadays, a good website isn’t about whether the most cutting-edge technology has been used or how beautiful it looks. It’s whether the user has an enjoyable experience with it. This is where user-centred design (UCD) comes into play. It’s an approach for employing usability where the user is not only integral to the design, but also to the content and structure of a website.
Wear that user hat with pride
Before you even begin planning a website, put yourself in your users’ place and ask: “what’s in it for me?” Yes, you’ll need to bring some business objectives to the table, but don’t forget about your users’ objectives either. After all, clear communication with your users the whole point.
Find out who your users are, what they are like and what their goals are. These are the people that are going to be using your website and, especially in today’s age, how well you communicate through the internet greatly impacts the survival of your business. It’s this person sitting at the other end of your site that needs to be at the heart of the process.
Of course, not all of your users will approach your website in the same way. We all have different personality types that require different information before we can make a comfortable decision:
• Methodical types prefer to focus on the how
• Spontaneous types prefer to focus on why
• Humanistic types prefer to focus on who
• Competitive types prefer to focus on what
Try to link these personality types with who your users are to create personas. Give each persona a name and a face, and use these to refer to your users from now on. So, meet Bob…
Hi, my name is Bob…
Write a small bio for Bob. How old is he? What is his job? Think about the job role Bob will have and how that will affect his decision-making. Will Bob be a Methodical type or will he use the Humanistic approach? What will be his aims when using the website? These questions all play an important role when planning a website.
Make sure that you do this for all of your user personas. Bringing your users to life will not only help your web design agency understand who’ll be visiting your website, it will bridge the gap between you and your audience, ensuring the right decisions are made and the website design is tailored to the users needs, not yours.
