What is user centered design?
User centered design or human centered design is an accepted ISO standard for an approach to interactive systems development. HCU aims to make system usable and useful by focusing on the user, their needs and requirements.
HCU is often implemented into multiple different software development models.

HCU process
•	Analysis
•	Design
•	Evaluation (iterate back to design)
•	Implementation
•	Deployment

Stages in depth
Analysis
Vision, goals, objectives, feeling, challenges and constraints
The first stage of the UCD (HCU) process is analysis. Generally what will happen here within a group of people, they will start to discuss their "vision" for the project. This vision can be quite a high level observation about where in the long term would hopefully lead.
Additionally, the team should start to discuss goals, objectives,  feelings about different aspects of the project, and the different constraints and challenges that will need to be overcome.
The design the box method works by imagining the projects products have already been delivered and so the box should reflect what everyone might expect the finish project to have. A more modern version of this might be to design the store page.

User/audience analysis
In the next stage of the process we need to find out:
•	Who will use the product?
•	Identify Roles
•	Define Characteristic
o	Knowledge, experience, environment, frequency of use, hardware/software
•	Create "User Group Profiles"
•	Create "Personas"

User Group Profiles
Create the profiles for the different groups of people who you expect to be using your product.
User group profiles contain:
•	Demographics
•	Job responsibilities and tasks
•	Frequency of use
•	Hardware
•	Environment
•	Software
•	Computer Experience
•	Web Application Experience

Personas
A different method that may be used with or instead of user group profiles are personas. Personas is a bit like movie character development, but not as exciting. A developer may take time to create a character based on who is expected to use the final product. A character is meant to represent a particular group demographic that is targeted for your product. Therefore it will contain things such as their technological experience, device usage, and frequency of use. It is encouraged however to create characters with depth so you can develop with a particular character in mind to better meet the requirements of the user.

Developing personas process (simplified)
1.	Conduct user research
2.	Condense the research
3.	Brainstorm
4.	Refine
5.	Make them realistic

Task/Purpose Analysis
When building an interface, you need to develop some requirements for said interface. Task analysis is a general term that can be applied to a variety of techniques for identifying and understanding the structure, the flow, and the attributes of tasks.
Task analysis identifies the actions and the cognitive process that is required when a user is attempting to achieve a task or goal.

When performing task analysis all we are really looking for is a list of tasks that the user wants to complete, and the interface needs to provide support for.
We can achieve this using Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA). The steps for which are as follows:
•	Identify the task to be analysed
•	Break these down into between 4 and 8 subtasks
•	Draw the subtasks as a layered diagram
•	Decide upon the level of detail into which to decompose
•	Continue the decomposition process, ensuring that the decompositions and numbering are consistent
•	Present the analysis to someone else who has not been involved in the decomposition.


Break down of task into sub components. This still does not show the individual steps that a user will take to perform this tasks. For example, subtask 1.4 can be decomposed into 24 more steps.
1.	Locate the Full Name field.
2.	Move the insertion point to the field.
3.	Type the full name.
4.	Locate the Address Line 1 field.
5.	Move the insertion point to the field.
6.	Type the address.
7.	Optional: Locate the Address Line 2 field.
8.	Move the insertion point to the field.
9.	Type the address.
10.	Locate the Town/City field.
11.	Move the insertion point to the field.
12.	Type the town or city.
13.	Locate the County field.
14.	Move the insertion point to the field.
15.	Type the county.
16.	Locate the Postcode field.
17.	Move the insertion point to the field.
18.	Type the postal code.
19.	Locate the Country field.
20.	Move the insertion point to the field.
21.	Select the country from the drop-down list.
22.	Locate the Phone Number field.
23.	Move the insertion point to the field.
24.	Type the phone number

HTA Benefits:
•	Let's you objectively compare different approaches to supporting the same task
•	Ensures the team uses common language and consistent approach
•	Enable effective UX design because designers understand how a systems works.
•	It support UX design reuse and UX design patterns.  (once a task such as entering an address has be broken down into such simple components, in never needs to be done again, like a design pattern.

Elicitation Methods
When getting information from someone, you may thinking that you can just ask them in an interview. However, the interview method  is not very constructive, primarily due to the different types of knowledge that people hold.
Interview questions aren't normally very difficult at all, but they're still stressful and confusing to individuals because of the way our brains hold information.

Types of Knowledge
There are 3 types of knowledge, non-tacit, semi-tacit, tacit.
Non-tacit information is information that is non-complex. User's answer question when it comes to non-tacit questions such was how old are you generally without lying or without having to think about it. It is straight forward information system.
Semi-tacit knowledge is knowledge that someone knows but is not able to recall. For example, if someone asked you to name all the counties in england, that would be difficult (recall), but you could easily spot a fake county in a list of all the counties (recognition).
Finally, tacit knowledge is knowledge that generally cannot be explained as an individual has learned it through practice and it has become a compiled skill. A skill such a driving can be thought but not by providing instruction on a piece of paper. If you read the complete instructions on how to drive a car from point a to point b, those instructions would be far too long to use because you're brain introspectively compile all of that into practiced action.

So it is difficult for us to get helpful answers from people by just asking them in an interview because of the different types of knowledge that exist. Therefore, we will need different methods, elicitation methods, for gathering requirements (tasks).

Think-aloud technique
The think aloud technique is quite self explanatory. Subjects are asked to complete various tasks on a new interface and to speak allowed their thoughts. Tally sheets are then used to create a timeline of events or a tally of events. Events would be the individual reading, clicking, hesitating, smiling, swearing or sighing.

Useful for short term memory, taken for granted knowledge.
Advantages: Fast, cheap, simple, lots of data
Disadvantages: Lots of data


Contextual Interview
Much like a normal interview but placed in a real environment relevant to information you're trying to capture. In a contextual interview you don't usually give the user's task in a contextual interview, rather you would watch them work and ask information to get qualitive observed data. This helps to provide much more realistic data.


Observation/field study
A study can be conducted to find information which is much more tacit. For example, when developing an application for a hospital, it would be a good idea to get to the hospital and look how the different department operates, how the individual works operate. We could ask them , but when it comes to doing their jobs, people aren't very reliable at providing accurate information.
What is a field study?
Observing users in their natural work environment provides realistic content and representative data, unveils mismatches between users' mental models and designers' beliefs about them, and builds empathy with end users.

Information Architecture
When we talk about information architecture, we are really talking about navigation and when content goes within a system.
"Information architecture focuses on organising, structing, and labelling content in an effective and sustainable way. The goal is to find help users find information and complete tasks. To do this, you need to understand how the pieces fit together to create the larger picture, how items relate to each other within the system. "

There are 5 stages to information architecture:
1.	Inventory - Take inventory of the content that needs to be organised
2.	Hierarchical outline - Create a hierarchical outline of your content and created a controlled vocabulary
3.	Chunking: Divide your content in logical units
4.	Draw diagrams that show the site structure and rough outlines of pages with a list of core navigations links
5.	Test the organisation interactively with real users (revise the design if necessary).

Card Sorting
Card sorting is pretty much what it says on the tin. Individuals are given between 30-100 index cards with the individuals units on information written on them. Then the cards must be sorted into different categories. This allows us to see where users think items should belong. There are a few variation on card sorting with two main categories, open sorting and closed sorting.

Open Sorting
You would normally use an open sort to start this process unless you are working with predefined categories.
Users sort cards into categories
Then name those categories

Open Sorting: Repeated Single Criterion
Users are asked to come up with criteria and sort the index cards into categories based on that criteria. Then they will pick a new criteria and sort the index cards again. New criteria, sort again, etc. Until the user can come up with no more criteria on which to sort the information. This is great for coming up with ways to categorise sub content, such as finding the differences between an array of different but similar products (e.g phones). For example, they could sort on price, size, brand, whatever criteria they can come up with. When the user can't think of any more criterion, you can usually ask them to identify the difference between two random cards which lays the basis for a new criterion.

Closed Sorting
You would normally use closed sorting at the end using the categories that have been identified in open sorting.
Categories are defined before hand, users sort cards into the categories they think best fits.

Content over form. Designers can often be far more obsessed with the form of something that the content of something. For example, Spotify gives you playlist of music based on emotions because thats what how normally select their music, the general feeling and emotion of the music, rather than the genre. Whether a song fits with is often argued about a lot, but if a song is sad or happy, that's quite obvious and much more helpful.


Card Sorting Analysis
Step 1: Identify the common categories /criteria
Identify which categories people got in common by looking for verbatim agreement (the exact same words to describe the exact same thing), and gist agreement (different words to describe the same category/criteria), which may need to be done by an independent third party to avoid bias.

Step 2: Identify the groupings (Repeated criterion)
Create a spreadsheet, listing the card numbers in the first row and column. Then calculate the numbers of times each card was placed in the same category as another card i.e. how many times card 1 appeared in a category with card 2 and so on …

Step 2: Identify the Groupings (for “All-in-one” sorting)
Create a spreadsheet, listing the cards in the rows and the categories in the columns. From the results of Stage 1, determine how participants grouped the cards into the categories, then add the raw counts to your spreadsheet i.e. how many times card 1 appeared in Group 1 etc.

Step 3: Calculate the percentages
Take the raw numbers at replace them with percentages. Each percentage is the number of participants who sorted certain cards into a particular group divided by the total number of participants. Keep only percentages which are relevant (>10%)

Step 4: Group the cards (all-in-one sorting)
Starting with the first group, reorder the cards according which cards earned the highest percentage among all of the groups.  Rearrange the cards so all of the cards with the highest percentages are together under each group.


Design
The design stage can have many different forms, as there are many methods for designing an interface, such as:
•	Conceptual/mental model, metaphors, design concepts (Watch metaphors lecture)
•	Storyboards, wireframes
•	Detailed Design
•	Paper prototypes/mockups

What is user centered design?
User centered design or human centered design is an accepted ISO standard for an approach to interactive systems development. HCU aims to make system usable and useful by focusing on the user, their needs and requirements.
HCU is often implemented into multiple different software development models.

HCU process
•	Analysis
•	Design
•	Evaluation (iterate back to design)
•	Implementation
•	Deployment

Stages in depth
Analysis
Vision, goals, objectives, feeling, challenges and constraints
The first stage of the UCD (HCU) process is analysis. Generally what will happen here within a group of people, they will start to discuss their "vision" for the project. This vision can be quite a high level observation about where in the long term would hopefully lead.
Additionally, the team should start to discuss goals, objectives,  feelings about different aspects of the project, and the different constraints and challenges that will need to be overcome.
The design the box method works by imagining the projects products have already been delivered and so the box should reflect what everyone might expect the finish project to have. A more modern version of this might be to design the store page.

User/audience analysis
In the next stage of the process we need to find out:
•	Who will use the product?
•	Identify Roles
•	Define Characteristic
o	Knowledge, experience, environment, frequency of use, hardware/software
•	Create "User Group Profiles"
•	Create "Personas"

User Group Profiles
Create the profiles for the different groups of people who you expect to be using your product.
User group profiles contain:
•	Demographics
•	Job responsibilities and tasks
•	Frequency of use
•	Hardware
•	Environment
•	Software
•	Computer Experience
•	Web Application Experience

Personas
A different method that may be used with or instead of user group profiles are personas. Personas is a bit like movie character development, but not as exciting. A developer may take time to create a character based on who is expected to use the final product. A character is meant to represent a particular group demographic that is targeted for your product. Therefore it will contain things such as their technological experience, device usage, and frequency of use. It is encouraged however to create characters with depth so you can develop with a particular character in mind to better meet the requirements of the user.

Developing personas process (simplified)
1.	Conduct user research
2.	Condense the research
3.	Brainstorm
4.	Refine
5.	Make them realistic

Task/Purpose Analysis
When building an interface, you need to develop some requirements for said interface. Task analysis is a general term that can be applied to a variety of techniques for identifying and understanding the structure, the flow, and the attributes of tasks.
Task analysis identifies the actions and the cognitive process that is required when a user is attempting to achieve a task or goal.

When performing task analysis all we are really looking for is a list of tasks that the user wants to complete, and the interface needs to provide support for.
We can achieve this using Hierarchical Task Analysis (HTA). The steps for which are as follows:
•	Identify the task to be analysed
•	Break these down into between 4 and 8 subtasks
•	Draw the subtasks as a layered diagram
•	Decide upon the level of detail into which to decompose
•	Continue the decomposition process, ensuring that the decompositions and numbering are consistent
•	Present the analysis to someone else who has not been involved in the decomposition.


Break down of task into sub components. This still does not show the individual steps that a user will take to perform this tasks. For example, subtask 1.4 can be decomposed into 24 more steps.
1.	Locate the Full Name field.
2.	Move the insertion point to the field.
3.	Type the full name.
4.	Locate the Address Line 1 field.
5.	Move the insertion point to the field.
6.	Type the address.
7.	Optional: Locate the Address Line 2 field.
8.	Move the insertion point to the field.
9.	Type the address.
10.	Locate the Town/City field.
11.	Move the insertion point to the field.
12.	Type the town or city.
13.	Locate the County field.
14.	Move the insertion point to the field.
15.	Type the county.
16.	Locate the Postcode field.
17.	Move the insertion point to the field.
18.	Type the postal code.
19.	Locate the Country field.
20.	Move the insertion point to the field.
21.	Select the country from the drop-down list.
22.	Locate the Phone Number field.
23.	Move the insertion point to the field.
24.	Type the phone number

HTA Benefits:
•	Let's you objectively compare different approaches to supporting the same task
•	Ensures the team uses common language and consistent approach
•	Enable effective UX design because designers understand how a systems works.
•	It support UX design reuse and UX design patterns.  (once a task such as entering an address has be broken down into such simple components, in never needs to be done again, like a design pattern.

Elicitation Methods
When getting information from someone, you may thinking that you can just ask them in an interview. However, the interview method  is not very constructive, primarily due to the different types of knowledge that people hold.
Interview questions aren't normally very difficult at all, but they're still stressful and confusing to individuals because of the way our brains hold information.

Types of Knowledge
There are 3 types of knowledge, non-tacit, semi-tacit, tacit.
Non-tacit information is information that is non-complex. User's answer question when it comes to non-tacit questions such was how old are you generally without lying or without having to think about it. It is straight forward information system.
Semi-tacit knowledge is knowledge that someone knows but is not able to recall. For example, if someone asked you to name all the counties in england, that would be difficult (recall), but you could easily spot a fake county in a list of all the counties (recognition).
Finally, tacit knowledge is knowledge that generally cannot be explained as an individual has learned it through practice and it has become a compiled skill. A skill such a driving can be thought but not by providing instruction on a piece of paper. If you read the complete instructions on how to drive a car from point a to point b, those instructions would be far too long to use because you're brain introspectively compile all of that into practiced action.

So it is difficult for us to get helpful answers from people by just asking them in an interview because of the different types of knowledge that exist. Therefore, we will need different methods, elicitation methods, for gathering requirements (tasks).

Think-aloud technique
The think aloud technique is quite self explanatory. Subjects are asked to complete various tasks on a new interface and to speak allowed their thoughts. Tally sheets are then used to create a timeline of events or a tally of events. Events would be the individual reading, clicking, hesitating, smiling, swearing or sighing.

Useful for short term memory, taken for granted knowledge.
Advantages: Fast, cheap, simple, lots of data
Disadvantages: Lots of data


Contextual Interview
Much like a normal interview but placed in a real environment relevant to information you're trying to capture. In a contextual interview you don't usually give the user's task in a contextual interview, rather you would watch them work and ask information to get qualitive observed data. This helps to provide much more realistic data.


Observation/field study
A study can be conducted to find information which is much more tacit. For example, when developing an application for a hospital, it would be a good idea to get to the hospital and look how the different department operates, how the individual works operate. We could ask them , but when it comes to doing their jobs, people aren't very reliable at providing accurate information.
What is a field study?
Observing users in their natural work environment provides realistic content and representative data, unveils mismatches between users' mental models and designers' beliefs about them, and builds empathy with end users.

Information Architecture
When we talk about information architecture, we are really talking about navigation and when content goes within a system.
"Information architecture focuses on organising, structing, and labelling content in an effective and sustainable way. The goal is to find help users find information and complete tasks. To do this, you need to understand how the pieces fit together to create the larger picture, how items relate to each other within the system. "

There are 5 stages to information architecture:
1.	Inventory - Take inventory of the content that needs to be organised
2.	Hierarchical outline - Create a hierarchical outline of your content and created a controlled vocabulary
3.	Chunking: Divide your content in logical units
4.	Draw diagrams that show the site structure and rough outlines of pages with a list of core navigations links
5.	Test the organisation interactively with real users (revise the design if necessary).

Card Sorting
Card sorting is pretty much what it says on the tin. Individuals are given between 30-100 index cards with the individuals units on information written on them. Then the cards must be sorted into different categories. This allows us to see where users think items should belong. There are a few variation on card sorting with two main categories, open sorting and closed sorting.

Open Sorting
You would normally use an open sort to start this process unless you are working with predefined categories.
Users sort cards into categories
Then name those categories

Open Sorting: Repeated Single Criterion
Users are asked to come up with criteria and sort the index cards into categories based on that criteria. Then they will pick a new criteria and sort the index cards again. New criteria, sort again, etc. Until the user can come up with no more criteria on which to sort the information. This is great for coming up with ways to categorise sub content, such as finding the differences between an array of different but similar products (e.g phones). For example, they could sort on price, size, brand, whatever criteria they can come up with. When the user can't think of any more criterion, you can usually ask them to identify the difference between two random cards which lays the basis for a new criterion.

Closed Sorting
You would normally use closed sorting at the end using the categories that have been identified in open sorting.
Categories are defined before hand, users sort cards into the categories they think best fits.

Content over form. Designers can often be far more obsessed with the form of something that the content of something. For example, Spotify gives you playlist of music based on emotions because thats what how normally select their music, the general feeling and emotion of the music, rather than the genre. Whether a song fits with is often argued about a lot, but if a song is sad or happy, that's quite obvious and much more helpful.


Card Sorting Analysis
Step 1: Identify the common categories /criteria
Identify which categories people got in common by looking for verbatim agreement (the exact same words to describe the exact same thing), and gist agreement (different words to describe the same category/criteria), which may need to be done by an independent third party to avoid bias.

Step 2: Identify the groupings (Repeated criterion)
Create a spreadsheet, listing the card numbers in the first row and column. Then calculate the numbers of times each card was placed in the same category as another card i.e. how many times card 1 appeared in a category with card 2 and so on …

Step 2: Identify the Groupings (for “All-in-one” sorting)
Create a spreadsheet, listing the cards in the rows and the categories in the columns. From the results of Stage 1, determine how participants grouped the cards into the categories, then add the raw counts to your spreadsheet i.e. how many times card 1 appeared in Group 1 etc.

Step 3: Calculate the percentages
Take the raw numbers at replace them with percentages. Each percentage is the number of participants who sorted certain cards into a particular group divided by the total number of participants. Keep only percentages which are relevant (>10%)

Step 4: Group the cards (all-in-one sorting)
Starting with the first group, reorder the cards according which cards earned the highest percentage among all of the groups.  Rearrange the cards so all of the cards with the highest percentages are together under each group.


Design
The design stage can have many different forms, as there are many methods for designing an interface, such as:
•	Conceptual/mental model, metaphors, design concepts (Watch metaphors lecture)
•	Storyboards, wireframes
•	Detailed Design
•	Paper prototypes/mockups