***** Centered Design

The ***** in the above title is based on the numerous centered designs that we come across.

There is User Centered Design - this is perhaps the most famous and widely used. You are supposed to be the designer who takes care of the user at all times. Considering what the user says is right and try to incorporate in the design.

The Human Centered Design - This is an offshoot of the above. Just that here we are replacing the user word with human. After all human sounds so much more caring. The personal touch here is much more just by using the human word.

The Technology Centered Design - This is something that is of prime importance in the engineering schools where there exist a design school. Examples could be MIT, IITG, etc. Here I feel the design revolves around the technology. This really gets exciting when we are looking at research labs and places where they are coming up with innovative use of technology for a better design. The iPhone, Microsoft Surface could be an example of starting of with this type of design, but later becoming a user centered one. After all they are looking at making things more intuitive for the user and more exciting.

Of late my research interests has been in studying the use of technology in emerging market, and rural population. This I feel is directly related to this centered design.

The Activity Centered Design - This is taken from the Activity Theory, and bases its premise on activities being performed in the course of a task. This is also promoted by Don Norman. The activity theory is a theory in Psychology, that emphasizes understanding who people are by understanding how they interact with the world. This has also been widely used by Bonnie Nardi from U C Irvine.

Then there this Goal-Centered Design. This is proposed b Alan Cooper and his team in the book About Face 3. I have become a fan of this of late. In trying to find the tasks that the users want to do, we often fail to recognize the goal behind the task. This process focuses on the design being three-tiered. The first is to identify the goal. The second the activities and then the third is the tasks. So for example, if i had to send mail to my friend, the goal is to communicate with my friend. The activities would be the finding a computer, looking up the site and opening it, and then the tasks would be typing the address, moving the mouse to the appropriate level, typing the mail and sending it.

Looking at a goal based approach, enables us to take care of the motivations and the intentions that users/ humans would have in order to use the appropriate technology to perform those tasks.