What is User Centered Design?

In broad terms, user-centered design (UCD) is a type of user interface design and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use a product, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design

in simple words we develop all of those software's and Mobile Applications , targeting people if they are not satisfyed our work is useless so to out put a good product we have to deliver a product that satisfying the user, so for that we need a User Centered Design Process.

User-Centered Mobile Design Starts With The User

User-centered design relies on user involvement throughout the design process, leading to a solution that users will find useful and want to use. To achieve that, you first need to have a clear understanding of your users, grouped into a prioritized set of user groups whose needs can be thought of individually. For a pharmaceutical company, those groups could be patients, healthcare professionals and caregivers, with the first two groups being the primary user groups, and caregivers being a secondary user group with very similar needs to patients. Identifying your key user groups and creating personas will help you design better for your main users, the way BBC did when building their future mobile strategy.

Source:http://mobile.smashingmagazine.com/2011/05/02/a-user-centered-approach-to-mobile-design/

More Information :http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~s1000brains/rswork/dokuwiki/media/designing_for_mobiles.pdf

Techniques to Evaluate Mobile Systems, Applications and Services

To out put a great mobile application we must evaluate our product before handing over to the customer, in that case there are many ways to evaluate and test a system. also we gan list down the Evaluation Stages like this,

1.Identify target user
2. Identify user needs
3. Build prototype
4. Evaluate prototype
5. Change prototype
6. Re-evaluate (repeat 5 & 6 as necessary)
7. Beta release (assessment, fine-tuning)
8. Formal release (ongoing assessment, fine tuning)

also we can select users to evaluation select users as close to your target group as possible, and clearly identify any differences (including familiarity with the mobile Internet) Ask for permission to include them in the study Make the level of commitment clear (1 hr? 1 month? Questionnaire? Etc.)  Anonymize the results


So after using uses we can get there feedback by many ways ,below there are some Feedback methods


• Questionnaire:

Ask the user about background, usability, improvements. Pro: Easy to analyze. Con: users don’t introspect well, or even lie; hard to ask non-tech users technologically relevant questions.

• Observation:
Watch the user use the system, (usually with ‘speak aloud’ protocol, plus behindthe-scenes monitoring). Pro: see what really happens. Con: In context?? Observer makes user nervous.


Focus group interviews:
Get small group talking about app (having used it). Pro: A lot comes out. Con: group might not be representative, interviewer can force results

• Diaries: Ask user to record their own observations. Pro: intrusiveness, in context. Con: Must be very easy, brief and structured, or will only be used occasionally (usually when user is annoyed)

Storyboards for Mobile Application.

Using a storyboard can be always  useful because it can illustrate what our product will output and where is our product going, even we can clearly identify the goals of our Mobile application. Even developers can show storyboard to the clients and can get their feedback so there important parts can be recognized.

although how hard developers working on a product can be useless if they can not full fill the customer, so doing a storyboard can prevent those kind of damages to a software company . For this developers can use Balasamiq web site or their product(http://www.balsamiq.com/) or slimier kind of a tool in the market.

This also first can be start with a wire-frame like this

Then they can use a proper tool to illustrate it like this,

even they build a storyboard, building a annotated story board ,which means a storyboard that clearly noted what kind of design patterns going to use in the Mobile application can out put a professional story board. Also by adding this they can create a final out put that included the mobile applications interface design standards.

What is Prototyping?

In previous post we briefly discussed about the Prototyping methods. Here im going to talk more about those methods.We can mainly sort divide prototyping to 3 parts

• Low Fidelity Prototype
• Medium Fidelity Prototype
• Interactive Prototype

Low Fidelity Prototype

In Low Fidelity we mainly do something like sketching and rough work, this is the main start of the Design interface of a Mobile Application . For this stage we not using any specific tool or something just a sketches.But in some advance cases designers using tools to this as well.

Medium Fidelity Prototype

In this Stage Developers use much advanced tools to there Prototype, as a example we can take the Balsamiq tool that easily but little bit advanced prototyping tool. There are lot of other kind of prototyping tools. From this stage Developers can give a quick idea to their clients ,regarding their final out put of the product.

Interactive Prototype

This stage developers actually give clients a real prototype that looks like the final product, difference is it may not functioning but here they can give a navigating piece of prototype that actually customer can recognize if there's any mistakes in the product.

for that there are plenty of tools available, even developers can give the customers a version of there actual product or they can use a tool to build a prototype that looks like the actual product. indesign is a that kind of a software.

  

Suitable approaches and techniques for the design and prototyping of mobile applications

Following a suitable Techniques before doing a mobile application can out put a great out put, because without planning and prototyping a software we can not out put a great product. In the Mobile Application development industry there are so many methods to do this planning and Prototyping, there are many Tools to do these approaches to fulfill those.

"The old adage, “a picture speaks a thousand words” captures what user interface prototyping is all about: using visuals to describe thousands of words’ worth of design and development specifications that detail how a system should behave and look. In an iterative approach to user interface design, rapid prototyping is the process of quickly mocking up the future state of a system, be it a website or application, and validating it with a broader team of users, stakeholders, developers and designers. Doing this rapidly and iteratively generates feedback early and often in the process, improving the final design and reducing the need for changes during development"

Source:http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/06/16/design-better-faster-with-rapid-prototyping/

What is User Experience(UX) and User Interface (UI)

This Video graphically illustrate what is User Experience (UX) and What relationship that User Interface (UI) has with it. This may regarding a websites, also it shows about User Feedback as well. But this concept is accepted same to the Mobile applications as well. So in this video it show really simply about those things.

Mobile Information Architecture & Interaction Design

This Short Video give a brief idea about Mobile Information Architecture & Interaction Design. By watching this we can clearly understand what are the main aspects of the Mobile Interaction Design and Design patterns.