So what is User Centric Design? It’s all about seduction. It’s about the user feeling at home within a space, where they can drive at their own pace, a site where they find answers and one they eagerly look forward to returning to. Unless it’s a family website with pictures of the kids and dogs, every site has business needs that require addressing to be successful. Even non-profit sites have business needs. For a book site to sell its clearance items it must be designed to do so when appropriate, to maximize success. That time will come when subjects match and the user is ready. In the same way, a user will only relinquish personal information at the correct time, often after being offered a small reward for doing so.

All sites showing signs of success have UCD present to some degree. However, focusing on the UCD during the design stage with honing and perfecting later on will directly impact the continued and even increased success of any site. Think of UCD as the cement that ties the user to a site.

User Type Influence
User types will always dictate site path and content architecture, but UCD is only achieved when additional harmony exists between user and site needs.

Be clear on user paths and business needs. When comparing a shopping site to a news or information site, the usage at first appears to be different. Moving between different products and back again to the shopping cart, the CD buyer is likely to use a zigzag path. The individual researching a news topic is more likely to follow a straight path between related articles.

However, both sites may have areas of their sites they need to promote. The music site has clearance items and the information site has information its competitor doesn’t have. So, don't jump to any quick conclusions about site architecture.

Similarities become even more apparent when the CD shopper researches artists and music genre in a straight information path. Conversely, someone using the news site may decide to jump around and check all the events of the past week. Successful design is all about successful outcome for both user and site owner.

Intra-Business Solutions (Apples + Oranges = Produce) As mentioned, the user is only one side of the UCD equation and this is offset by the business needs of the site. But how about when the user side is two-sided? In enterprise solutions a user may employ procurement software, and that user's boss may use it as well, but the user's boss may also want to control where his or her subordinate purchases, as well as obtaining reports on their buying practices. So here you have two users impacting the design, a common user and one that is both common and dictates managed usage. Both have to be correctly aligned for a successful product. I knew of one solution where the users were being targeted for downsizing. In this instance, senior management was not satisfied with current work practices that turned the user into an information island. The user was hard to manage and information on their work habits was difficult to come by. In its place, management wanted to install new team oriented networking paradigms that would equalize workers while sharing information. Additionally, to aid in the downsizing effort, the client management wanted to capture and share successful practices across the entire enterprise. This is just good management. To make it work, management would require additional information from and about users for improved user/usage evaluation. The trick was to give management and subordinate users everything required without overburdening the subordinate user or making it too difficult for the manager user to administrate. With enterprise solutions, user management plays a critical role and often times makes UCD a challenge, though not an unrewarding one. These complicated user scenarios are just one reason why companies like SAP employ extensive user discovery work.