Gone are the days of a genius coming up with an idea and making a product based upon his own assumptions. Today, however brilliant an idea may be, it is first tested against human centered product design philosophy and then rejected or accepted as the case may be. The concept of human centered product design has been there for over two decades now. It has been the guiding philosophy in design and development of almost everything pillows to airplanes. Though there is no broad consensus on what actually constitutes a human centered product design, and there are as many arguments and definitions as there are people thinking on this aspect, all products are being designed keeping the end user in mind. There are some other variations of human centered design such as user centered design (UCD), participatory design and contextual design, and all such variations rely heavily on the interactions with the people who will eventually use the products.
Designers utilize the findings based upon interactions with the end
users that are obtained through face to face talks, surveys, reviews and plus minus testing to design solution for a lot of products. The needs, requirements, wants and the abilities as well as limitations of the end users are kept in mind at all stages of development of a new product. Designers are confronted with the problem of how a new product is going to be perceived by end users and also have to use their own assumptions about human behavior to come up with ideas that are appreciated by real people. UCD gives an insight into human behavior as well as liking of the end user which helps greatly in coming up with design concepts.
One great advantage of human centered design philosophy is that it helps designers to come up with designs that are in conformity with the needs and wants of the real people rather than coming up with designs that force people to change themselves according to the new design. The requirements of the users are always kept into mind from the initial stages to the end cycle when the product is finally ready for use.
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