The concept of human-centered design (also called participatory design) has been around for a while, and it makes sense as to why it should be used when designing your website. If you’re not familiar with the term, human-centered design inspiration comes from people’s everyday behavior, emotions and thinking.
By involving the user at the beginning and keeping them at the center of the design process, the final product will offer a tailored, in-tune user experience.
When you take the time to discover your customers’ needs, problems, and goals, you can build a deep connection with them through your website design. Not only will you be the clear winner in solving their problems, but this kind of design will improve your bottom line.
How to Start the User Research Process
To achieve successful human-centered design, you need to ask the right questions and take advantage of user research in your process. You’ll be surprised how better decisions can be made by using their answers to identify new opportunities, reveal underlying desires, and understand user intent.
Think of their perception as the primary guide toward your website design and tailor your questions to paint a picture of it.
The 5 Phases of Human-Centered Design
Here are the steps of how to achieve successful human-centered design:
- Observe and brainstorm. What does every great science experiment start with? A hypothesis! Start by making assumptions about your audience and draft questions to either confirm or debunk your thoughts.
- User feedback. Now that you have your questions drafted, it’s time to ask your questions to actual customers. If you have multiple different audiences, try speaking with at least one person from each segment.
- Ideation. Once you have your user feedback, go to the drawing board and think of how you can utilize their thoughts into your website design.
- Implementation. Implement your plan of action and make your human-centered website design come to life!
- Analyze. After a few months, take a look at your Analytics and see if your approach to your design worked in your favor or not. If you feel like it could improve, go back to your customers and ask for their feedback on the design.
Why Human-Centered Design is Important
Today’s digital landscape has lead people to be more demanding and have higher expectations when it comes to their digital experiences, and this makes human-centered design pretty much mandatory for digital success.
Human-centered design solves people’s problems and provides the best user experiences. Keep this principle in mind and see how this approach can improve your bottom line!
To learn more about human-centered website design, contact GreenMellen today!
