user-centered design
(noun)
A new product development strategy where the needs of the end users are given the most attention.
Examples of user-centered design in the following topics:
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Strategy
- Here, the needs, wants and limitations of end users of a product are given a great deal of attention at each stage of the design process.
- The main element in this process is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product, rather than forcing users to change their behaviors to accomodate the product.
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Introduction to Handling Growth
- Most projects have a mailing list for general user questions—sometimes the list's name is "users", "discuss", "help", or something else.
- These mailing lists work very well up to a few thousand users and/or a couple of hundred posts a day.
- Most projects start out with one main forum: a general discussion mailing list, on which feature ideas, design questions, and coding problems can all be hashed out.
- For example, some threads are clearly about development and design; others are user questions of the "How do I do X?
- " variety; maybe there's a third topic family centered around processing bug reports and enhancement requests; and so on.
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Pinterest for Teachers
- Pinterest is a photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as interests and hobbies.
- Users can browse other pinboards for images, "re-pin" images to their own pinboards, or "like" photos.
- A "board" is where the user's pins are located, and users can have several boards for various items.
- Once users create boards and add pins, other users can "repin", meaning that they can "pin" one user's image to their boards as well.
- For example, pinboards can be used to design lesson plans, classroom decor, and a space in which teachers can pin sites for later referral.
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Trends in Social Media
- Brands like The Gap and Express have Twitter pages where people can read about new designs and sales.
- Facebook soon followed suit with its "Live Feed" where users' activities are streamed as soon as it happens.
- Foursquare gained popularity as it allowed for users to "check-in" to places that they are frequenting at the moment.
- Clixtr, another photo-sharing service based in the real-time space, is also a location-based social networking site, since events created by users are automatically geotagged, and users can view events occurring nearby through the Clixtr iPhone app.
- Others companies, such as Monster.com, have been steadily developing a more "socialized" feel to their career center sites to harness some of the power of social networking sites.
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Buying Centers
- A buying center is a group of people within an organization who make business purchase decisions.
- The stock market is an example of a buying center.
- In a generic sense, there are typically six roles within buying centers.
- In this process, top management, the IT director, IT professionals, and other users collaborate to find a solution.
- Users - The users will be the ones to use the product, initiate the purchase process, generate purchase specs, and evaluate product performance after the purchase.
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Innovation
- The Kline Chain-linked model of innovation places emphasis on potential market needs as drivers of the innovation process, and describes the complex and often iterative feedback loops between marketing, design, manufacturing, and research and development (R&D).
- As a result, firms may incorporate users in focus groups (user-centered approach), work closely with so-called lead users (lead user approach) or users might adapt their products themselves.
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When to think about using database management software
- Much of the support you get is from the community of users.
- Acquiring software programs designed specifically to meet most needs of a small organization
- These functions are provided at the software company's data centers.
- The downside for some users with SaaS is that the information is not kept "in-house".
- Although hosted solutions are considered very secure, some users worry about security and privacy issues.
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Consumer Penalties
- Penalties, in the form of fees and restricted user access, exist for consumers who violate terms in contracts.
- Penalties, in the form of fees and restricted user access, exist for consumers who violate terms in contracts.
- Certain websites are noted for having carefully designed terms of service, particularly eBay and PayPal, which need to maintain a high level of community trust because of transactions involving money.
- , can change their terms of service without notice to the users.
- In serious cases, the user may have his or her account terminated.
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Consumer Privacy Issues
- Consumer privacy issues revolve around the legal (and illegal) use and extraction of user data on websites and social media platforms.
- Many advertisers have an opt-out option to allow users to remove behavioral targeting advertising from their user experience.
- Some websites use numerous advertisements like flashing banners to distract users or feature misleading images designed to look like error messages from a user's operating system rather than advertisements.
- Some sites attach malware to the computers of unsuspecting users.
- Some malware programs are designed to gather sensitive information from users without their knowledge.
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Malware
- Since the rise of widespread broadband Internet access, malicious software has more frequently been designed for profit.
- Since 2003, the majority of widespread viruses and worms have been designed to take control of users' computers for black-market exploitation.
- These programs are designed to monitor users' web browsing, display unsolicited advertisements, or redirect affiliate marketing revenues to the spyware creator.
- The result is a greater emphasis on back-office protection designed to protect against advanced malware operating on customers' computers.
- When the user installs the software, the spyware is installed along with it.