“All design should be human centred, it’s as simple as that. And I mean human-centred, not user-centred or user-friendly, because users are humans after all.”
Why wouldn’t a designer use human centred design? It is a way of seeing the flaws and getting feedback from the people themselves who will be using the product. The users (humans) are the ones who will be interacting with it, and may do that in a different way than the designer expects, so by carrying out human centred design, the designer can receive product specific feedback to help improve. Dan Norman is one of the pioneers of this practice and he considers it to be a design philosophy and designers need to have a good understanding of people if they want their design to meet the expectations and needs intended. Research is key. It saves time later as you become well versed in the area you are designing for.
IDEO is a design studio which excels at this type of design. They are renowned all over the world for how they use creative approaches to a wide range of topics. It is committed to creating positive impact through their work after being founded in Palo Alto, California in 1991, by David M Kelley, Bill Moggridge and Mike Nuttal. IDEO uses the design thinking approach to design products, services, environments and digital experiences for their clients which include American Family Insurance, Swarovski, HBO, PillPack, Holiday Inn Express and The North Face. It includes a community of designers, entrepreneurs, engineers, teachers and researchers who work across offices all around the world including the US, England, Germany, Japan and China.
The company was one of the early leaders of what we now know as human-centred design, and this is what created their aim and motto of keeping people at the centre of their work. IDEO believes that a key part of design thinking is to always design solutions for people first. The studio uses it platform to educate designers about human centred design.
USER INTERFACE DESIGN focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and making sure that the interface has the elements to do so, which are easy to access and understand. It brings together concepts from interaction design, visual design and information architecture. It is clear that design has changed over the decades, moving from very basic visuals on a box screen, to flatscreens and mobiles and now moving onto hands free devices. But it is still the same process of anticipating what people will need that has made these developments successful. Similar to typography, this all comes down to design systems, which guide designs on what components to use that will provide clear solutions which can be used over multiple devices.
Again Material design is a vital tool available to designers, as it highlights all the components and how they should all look in relation to each other. These include app bars, backdrop, banners, navigation, buttons, cards and data tables to name a few. Three words that put what UI design should be simply are; Identifiable, Findable and Clear. To make this work, consistency is vital whether it’s the line weights or the colour palette or spacing. It must all be consistent throughout.