If you are an employee of a software development or software testing company, user-centered design (UCD) is something you should be familiar with and implement it into your work.
However, UCD is something you should learn in order to work with it, as if you don’t understand it, you will not even slightly improve the quality of your software. Some people even receive special education.
Education in Which Spheres of Knowledge Should You Get in Order to Start Practicing UCD?
- behavioral sciences (psychology/sociology);
- industrial design;
- human-computer interaction sciences.
If you don’t have time to receive the full-scaled education, there are also numerous courses or training classes conducted by successful companies. Consider participating in one of them.
Besides, every software testing company should have a specialist in usability testing, who can give you some useful pieces of advice.
5 Tips on How to Work with User-Centered Design:
- Start cooperating with potential end-users. As UCD methodology centers on users, then users should be your major concern. You should try to keep in touch and receive feedbacks on the regular basis. The more your company develops the more users you should indulge into cooperation.
- Conduct a market research. You should know what interests your potential target audience most.
- Conduct usability testing. If you want to receive a maximum effective result, then use the services of a software testing company and plus conduct software testing involving end-users.
- Test your software during all the stages of product development and after release as well.
- Conduct the so-called “before and after” research. Create questionnaires and ask end-users about the previous generation of your product and its current version. Compare the results and write usability plan for the next-generation product. Create standards for your software’s design.