UX Glossary · U
User-centred design
Also: UCD · User-centered design
An iterative process that grounds design in real users, tasks and environments, defined in ISO 9241-210.
User-centred design is an approach in which the needs, tasks and context of the intended users drive the design, and the result is evaluated against them rather than against internal preference.
It is a standard, not just a philosophy. DIN EN ISO 9241-210 specifies four activities that repeat until requirements are met:
- Understand and specify the context of use
- Specify the user requirements
- Produce design solutions
- Evaluate the design against the requirements
The standard also sets out principles, including that the design is based on an explicit understanding of users and tasks, that users are involved throughout, and that the process is iterative.
Why the standard framing is worth using
In regulated, industrial and public procurement, a named and auditable process carries weight that “we did some research” does not. It converts a claim into a defined set of activities with defined outputs, which is a very different conversation with a client’s quality department.
The step teams skip
Context of use, almost always. Requirements written without it describe an imagined user in an imagined environment, and every subsequent activity inherits the error, which is why the evaluation step then measures the wrong thing.
In practice
Iteration is not optional in the standard. A process that runs each activity once and ships has not followed it.