User-Centered Design - Week 6

3 main principles of Human Perception:
- Chunking
- Visual variables
- Gestalt

What is simplicity?
Designing for simplicity is a process of elimination. Simplicity forces you to have a good reason for everything. In film, it is called foreshadowing.

Simplicity is not simple.

Make sure your design has a purpose!

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" -Albert Einstein

Chunking:

The elements of perception + memory = chunks (take information and put it into categories to remember better. Chunk into big category.)

Visual variables:

Used for communication by encoding data and drawing distinctions
There are two types of visual variables: Selectivity and Associativity

Selectivity: 

- Degree to which a single value can be selected from the entire visual field.
- Most variables are selectivity.
- Locate objects at a glance.
- Shapes are not selective.

Associativity:

- Opposite of selectivity
- Something blends into one another.

Gestalt Principles:
- Proximity
- Similarity
- Continuity
- Closure
- Area
- Symmetry

User-centered design (UCD)

A design philosophy 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. 

Designers need to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use a product and 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.

Methods of Involving User:
- TALK TO THEM!
- Contextual interviews + site visits
- Interview
- Prototype
- Focus group
- Direct Observations
- Indirect Observations
- Studying Documentary


Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_centered_design

Amirah Farhanah Binti Daud Ahmad
1102700149