Today, businesses are realizing that exceptional user experiences are the key to gaining and retaining customers in the long run. In order to create truly seamless user interfaces, companies must understand their users and adapt their designs accordingly. One of the most effective ways to do this is by applying human-centric principles to your design process. A human-centric approach will allow you to create designs that effectively address your users’ needs, provide them with an intuitive experience, and improve conversions on your website or app. This article will give you insight into human-centric design and show you how to apply these principles effectively in your projects.
An Intro to Human Centered Design
What does human centered mean? Human centered design means that we are designing for humans. Why do we care about humans? For one thing, customers spend money on things that make their lives easier, give them more time or are just fun. Customers will choose products with a better experience over ones that just look good. So it’s important for companies to create experiences where users can have all these benefits from using their product or service.
Step 1: Understand Your Users
Before you can begin creating user interfaces, you need to understand your users—their behaviors, motivations, and preferences. While you may have a rough idea of who will be using your product, it’s important that you dig deeper into who they are. Who are they? What do they want? How do they interact with technology? If possible, research them in their natural environment. Talk to them face-to-face. Find out what motivates them or drives them crazy about technology.
Step 2. Determine Goals, Objectives, and Critical Path
Before we can set a plan of action, it’s important that we establish our goals. What do you want your users to accomplish on your website? Do you want them to purchase something? Do you want them to read a certain section of content? The trick is in figuring out what exactly makes for an engaging UI (User Interface). At times, achieving one goal might have detrimental effects on another. To avoid scenarios like these, it’s best that we outline our goals first before proceeding with design.
Step 3. Identify Key Features
What makes you unique? What will make your design work stand out from other solutions available in your industry or field? What are the strengths and weaknesses of your product or service? Look over any past projects you’ve completed that may have made a lasting impression on your clients. Review their strengths, weaknesses, features, and functions. Look over competitors to see what they’re doing differently.
Step 4. Build Personas
Your Persona should help you understand your users better, which in turn helps you understand how they want your product or service to feel. The more research you do on your customers, their problems, and pain points, then you can really understand what they want when they see a problem solved by using your product or service.
Step 5. Prioritize Usability Criteria
Usability is a key factor in determining if your app or website will be popular. As such, it’s essential that you prioritize usability as part of your design strategy from start to finish. What criteria are most important in developing an intuitive, easy-to-use experience? And how do you apply these elements for maximum benefit? Usability is about way more than simply ensuring that your interface is simple; it's about making sure people can find what they need quickly and easily.
Steps 6-8. Prototype Solutions, Iterate & Test
Coming up with a brilliant solution is usually only half of what’s required for a successful project. Turning your design into an actual product that people will enjoy using is another major challenge. Luckily, you don’t have to go at it alone. Tools like InVision, Flinto and Marvel are more than just prototyping tools; they provide a much faster way of turning mockups into interactive prototypes so you can test them with real users before committing big resources on development or design.
Conclusion
While crafting intuitive, engaging interfaces for your users is no simple task, it’s essential that designers take into account how people will interact with what they’re building. Thoughtful attention to user behavior during development can go a long way toward creating a truly memorable experience. For more on crafting intuitive, engaging experiences for your users, check out leading UI/UX designing company in India, Pepper Square, who specialized in creating amazing human-centric ui/ux Design for web apps. Contact them, to know more.
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