What I'm learning about HCD

At work we had some coworkers share a presentation about research they completed regarding a specific process that users of the system execute. It was a very thorough and visually pleasing to view. They presented their information clearly and had reasoning behind their recommendations.

These contractors are User Interface/User Experience (UI/UX) designers, and you can tell how experienced they are because of their professional presentation. Although they are UI/UX designers, the discipline they use is fundamentally Human Centered Design (HCD).

This is something I'm getting more interested in and here are two takeaways I received from the presentation.

Seek to understand the problem from the users' perspective

As a business analyst, I get excited by solutions. But what I'm learning is that we can jump to solutions too quickly. Sure we may solve a problem. But do we understand the problem from the user's perspective? Do we understand how different users are impacted by the problem?

Requirements should be user centered

Requirement, a word that is often used carelessly, specifies what the system is supposed to do.  And what I'm learning is that requirements shouldn't be based on system limitations or what designers or developers feeling like working on.

There may be valid cases when these things should considered, but they shouldn't drive system requirements. Ultimately a product is being developed to assist some end user, so that must be primary. All other preferences should follow suit.

As a final thought, we would do well to prepare well when it comes to application development. These UI/UX designers have modeled that for me. So I'm going to use that as I move forward on the project I work on.