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Human-centered design has grown out of traditional design, social sciences, engineering, and business. It is taught at ID through the highly effective framework of four human factors, which address the physical, cognitive, social, and cultural factors involved in people's interactions with products, systems, organizations, and messages. The framework of human factors supports ID's designers as they address not only the users' physical capabilities and cognitive functions, but also the cultural background and social situation of the user at the time of using the product or service. As a result, ID students learn how to modify a product for different cultures, for different situations within a culture, and ultimately, for the \"market of one.\"
In addition to the human factors framework, the Institute of Design uses a range of methods to help gather data, analyze and understand human behavior, and to develop prototypes to test human-centered designs. Following are brief descriptions of some of those methods.
Ethnographic Observation
Ethnographic observation is a method borrowed from social science research. ID students utilize this method to understand unarticulated needs and issues that users of particular products, environments, software, and systems have in order to create innovative design solutions.
Video Ethnography
Video ethnography is a way to capture human behavior in the context of the person's natural environment as a means of gaining insights about user behavior and needs. Videotaping allows students to view and re-view user behavior. The analysis of the tapes is used to present insights and implications for design solutions. Not only is videotaping essential at the beginning of the design process as needs are identified, but it is also key throughout the process as students gain an understanding of a particular user context and as prototypes are developed.
Disposable Camera Studies
Disposable camera studies is a new method at ID that enables students to gain insights about places they cannot access, such a people's homes. Because they are so inexpensive, students can give disposable cameras to users so they can document their environments and objects in context. Because this method involves the subjectivity of the participants instead of the student doing the research, students get a glimpse of life through the users' eyes.
Observation with Prototypes
ID students give their prototypes to users as a means of observing typical interactions. Students use video ethnography and field notes to document their observations. The insights they gain allow them to determine what works, or doesn't, and why, so they can refine their concepts.
New Human Factors
New human factors include methods to understand the broad terrain of human needs in a methodical way -- needs people may not even know they have. These processes extend far beyond the focus groups and surveys applied in traditional marketing. Employing the principles of human factors, in combination with ethnographic observation methods, can help product-development teams create value-rich products that not only satisfy but also delight their users.
Physical Human Factors
Understanding physical human factors helps students design products, environments, software, and systems that fit the physiological capability of users. This area of study expanded greatly during World War II when, to build submarines, aircraft, and tanks, the armed forces needed to understand what men could and could not tolerate. NASA research also led to important understanding about physical needs in extreme environments. This knowledge has been magnified enormously to create optimal physical environments for living and working in the modern world.
Cognitive Human Factors
Understanding cognitive human factors helps students design in response to coginitive patterns, such as how people receive, process, and understand information. Only by knowing how people best absorb information, attach meaning, and develop memory can we present effectively. This becomes critical as we incorporate increasingly complex information into product and services.
Social Human Factors
Understanding social human factors helps students create products, environments, software, and systems that enable people to work more effectively either individually or in teams. This understanding is increasingly vital to the emerging networked society and the growing use of empowered teams as the cornerstone of modern enterprises. Regardless of the explosive trend toward collaborative work, almost all of today's products that support work, such as office furniture and computer hardware and software, have been designed for people working individually.
Cultural Human Factors
Understanding cultural human factors helps product-development teams avoid creation of products, environments, software, and systems that conflict with values and patterns of behavior. Cultural influences on human perception and behavior are often difficult to grasp, yet such understanding is essential when developing products for new markets or when creating fundamentally new products that current markets will use in entirely new ways.
Prototyping
Prototyping produces a succession of mock-ups to hone in on a concept. ID students use a combination of conceptual and behavioral prototypes to reach their final designs.
Behavioral Prototypes
Behavioral prototypes demonstrate how a new product, environment, or interface may function rather than how it may look. These prototypes may be 3-D functional models, engineering prototypes, paper prototypes of interfaces, or software-based interface designs that can simulate interaction.
ID students create behavioral prototypes so they can observe typical user interaction early in the design process. The insights students gain from such observations allow them to determine what works, what doesn't, and why.
Conceptual Prototypes
Conceptual prototypes represent what products, environments, and software may look like without necessarily simulating functions. These prototypes may be concept sketches, concept renderings, 3-D appearance models, paper prototypes of interface designs, or software protoypes that show screen designs.
ID students create these prototypes so people will not have to rely on verbal descriptions that often lead to a variety of interpretations.
Structured Planning
Structured Planning is a computer-supported methodology that was developed at ID by Professor Charles Owen. It is a rigorous process for identifying, structuring, and synthesizing the information necessary for inventive solutions. Structured planning helps students identify, relate, group, and rank hundreds of factors, which they determined from observation and secondary research, in terms of qualititative as well as quantitative information. As a result, students find non-intuitive relationships that may have remained unexpected.
Computer-Supported Design Processes
Students at ID use SiliconGraphics UNIX systems to analyze data through Structured Planning. The core computer programs for this process are RELATN (RELATioN - graph construction) and VTCON (Variable Threshold CONdensation). These two programs establish relationships between informationa elements, discover clusters of highly related elements, and create hierarchical Information Structures recognizing relationships among the clusters. Both programs were written by Professor Charles Owen, the inventor of Structured Planning.
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