# Human Centered Design

Design is all around us. To some, design is present in the beauty of things, to others, in its ability to function flawlessly or solve a problem. But the fact is that definitions and opinions aside, everything that was made by man, was also designed, and so design is ubiquitous. But not all of us see it everywhere. This is because good design interacts and communicates with the user so effectively, that the experience is rarely internalized.

We simply don’t notice it anymore, so good design is the one that communicates its function and behavior in such a clear and subtle way, that it becomes invisible.

When the user understands or discovers how an object or product is supposed to work, what it’s supposed to do, and how it’s supposed to behave (even when broken) just by looking at it, then a successful communication between object and user has taken place. Human-centered design (HCD) is a term product creators use to describe a process of designing for people. HCD develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.

# Process of Human Centered Design (HCD)

# Center on the People:

The main aim of Human Centered Design is to create a product that has maximum interaction with the user. When designing, always have in mind the people you are designing for knowing that they want to use your product to acommplish a certain task or goal.

It’s vital to identify the real goal of real people who will use your product.

# Identify the Users' needs

This is the very first step towards solving creating the ideal product for your users and it involves user reasearch. User research is when one goes into the field and comes in contact with the supposed users of the product he is creating. This is a very important step creating a product as it helps answer some important questions like

• Who are my users ?: It will help you understand the target audience, the specific people that will be using your product and also what they tend to achieve using your product.

• What are the issues my users are having: Going into the field will help you get an indepth understanding of the problem your users are having and how to go about solving them.

# Creating the solution

After you have understood who your users are, what their problems are and how best to go about solving it, the next step is to start designing the solution. To get started with designing the solution, there are some steps or processes any designer should be familiar with like:

• User flow
• Mockups
• Images
• Icons
• Colors

Once you have gotten these steps completed, then you are almost done and it would be time for the last step to the final solution ...

# Evaluation

This step involves analyzing and testing out the design to know it if was able to solve the needs of the users. This process of evaluation entails asking some important questions such as :

• Where did our process go right? Why?
• Where did we struggle and why ?
• How did our users respond to the product ?
• Did it actually solve their problem ?
• Where can we improve the product ?
• What lessons can we take from this process for future products ?