Even if you’re not already familiar with the concept of user-centered design (UCD), you’d probably rattle off a pretty good definition if we asked you to hazard a guess. In short, it involves keeping the end user of a product – be it a website, a car, or an ATM card – in mind through every single step of the design process, then mercilessly testing the 'finished' product on real users and tweaking it based on their responses. The goal is to create something that works exactly as the user wants and needs it to, not how some engineer thought it should work. If you find “user-centered design” too much of a mouthful, just call it “good design” and people will understand.
Unfortunately, many websites aren’t nearly as user-centered as they could be because the developers simply don’t have a good idea of who the users are. Often, it’s not entirely their fault; doing their own research is out of the question for all but the biggest projects, so web design firms can find themselves stuck with vague user descriptions provided by their clients. Conversely, a little legwork on the client side can go a long, long way towards making a site more user-centered.
Convinced? Here’s how to get a website your users will love you for:
Step 1: Ask yourself who your users are (or will be)
If it’s your website, chances are that out of the roughly six billion people on the planet, you are in fact the single most-knowledgeable person about who is going to use your site. If you already have a brick and mortar business, you see many of these people face-to-face every day. But even if your business (or non-profit project or social website or whatever) is still just a dream, the point is that it’s your dream. You are the currently the number one expert in who is going to visit your site, so ask yourself first.
Note: If you’ve been designated by an organization to commission or maintain a site, it’s possible that the number one expert on the sites users is, sadly, not you but rather someone you work with. If this is the case, find this person now.
Step 2: Create a few fictional user profiles and give them to your developer
A great way to really cement your ideas on who your potential users are and then communicate this to others is to create full-fledged fictional profiles of one or more of them. Be sure to include the basics – age, lifestyle, reason for using your site – but don’t be afraid to go wild either. Make up names for them, give them fictional pets and favorite nephews, describe the cell phone they use. This may all seem a little ridiculous at first, but really bringing these characters to life will make it that much easier for others to understand. A lot of what web designers do – picking what hue of green to use for the text or what shape a button should be – is almost subconscious, so if they feel like they practically know your users personally, it could well be reflected in the design. At the very least, it will be worth a good laugh.
Step 3: Research your users once your site is up
This is where things get tricky. The problem is that the people who are visiting your site and buying your products just might not necessarily be the people who you, the number one expert on your users, thought they were. Perhaps you assumed you were selling your high-performance computers to techies when, in reality, the majority of your market is actually made up of wealthy mothers trying to buy something for their spoiled kids to use at college (true story, by the way: the computer company quadrupled their revenue after they figured this out and made the website easier for moms to understand). Or perhaps the wholesome t-shirts that you assumed you were selling primarily to baby boomers have just become the hot thing among hipsters and teenage boys (also a true story: check out the customer reviews for said shirt here). The truth is, you never really know.
So how do you do this research? There are, alas, no right answers and no rules. You can try to get visitors to answer surveys or glean ideas from the information they give you when purchasing your products (geographic location, for example). You can get creative and start stalking them on facebook or following their tweets to get an idea of who these people really are. You can even hire some fancy consultant to do the work for you.
Whatever method you use, keep reminding yourself that this is indeed worthwhile. Perhaps you won’t find anything new; that just proves you knew your audience to begin with. But if you’re diligent, odds are you’ll uncover things about your users that you would absolutely never have considered otherwise. If you can work your findings back into your website, or a new marketing plan, or a new product, rest assured those users will be eternally grateful.
