Purpose
UCD answers questions about users and their tasks and goals, then uses the findings to make decisions about development and design. UCD of a web site, for instance, seeks to answer the following questions:
- Who are the users of the document?
- What are the users’ tasks and goals?
- What are the users’ experience levels with the document, and documents like it?
- What functions do the users need from the document?
- What information might the users need, and in what form do they need it?
- How do users think the document should work?
- What are the extreme environments?
- Is the user multitasking?
- Does the interface utilize different inputs modes such as touching, spoken, gestures, or orientation?
Read more about this topic: User-centered Design
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)
“Along the journey we commonly forget its goal. Almost every vocation is chosen and entered upon as a means to a purpose but is ultimately continued as a final purpose in itself. Forgetting our objectives is the most frequent stupidity in which we indulge ourselves.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Productive collaborations between family and school, therefore, will demand that parents and teachers recognize the critical importance of each other’s participation in the life of the child. This mutuality of knowledge, understanding, and empathy comes not only with a recognition of the child as the central purpose for the collaboration but also with a recognition of the need to maintain roles and relationships with children that are comprehensive, dynamic, and differentiated.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)