What do you know about the people who use your website or application? Do you know what wants and/or needs your product addresses for your audience and whether users are able to achieve these goals easily and with minimal frustration? What about the limitations of your audience due to disabilities, environmental factors, or even just human nature? User centered design starts with answering questions such as these so that solutions can be optimized for your audience. Design and development based on possibly false assumptions can prove costly in the long run.

User research may take many forms including structured and unstructured interviews and observations of “typical users”, focus groups, surveys, competitor analysis, website analytics, and more.

Sample Deliverables:

Personas
A fictitious representation of one or more archetypical users that defines their goals, desires, and limitations. Since it is not possible to design for every unique individual, personas help to guide decision making about features and interactions in order to meet the wants and needs of targetted demographics.

Task Flows/Analysis
People who are using your application or website to accomplish a certain task, may already have mental models and/or expectations about the sequence of steps or process they should take. The most intuitive solutions follow the users mental model, rather than forcing adaptation to a new or unnatural way of thinking. Task analysis results in a flow chart that visually demonstrates the expected process.

Use Cases/Scenarios
Use Cases are descriptions of the specific tasks that a user should be able to accomplish using your solution. Use cases are more descriptive than simply listing a feature. For example, “mail merge” is a feature, but “Create targetted emails addressed to a specific customer” is a use case. Scenarios are detailed narratives that explain how a use case will be accomplished.