User-centered design (UCD) is an iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process. In UCD, design teams involve users throughout the design process via a variety of research and design techniques, to create highly usable and accessible products for them.

User-centered design is an iterative process that focuses on an understanding of the users and their context in all stages of design and development.

User-Centered Design Principles

User-centered design is based on a few fundamental principles that can be applied for the product design process:

• Users are involved in the design process from the very beginning. Critical design decisions are evaluated based on how they work for end-users.
• Importance of requirement clarification. The product team always tries to align business requirements with user’s needs.
• Introducing user feedback loop in the product life cycle. The product team collects and analyzes feedback from users regularly. This information helps the team to make more user-focused decisions.
• Iterative design process. The product team constantly works on improving user experience; it introduces changes gradually as it gains more understanding about their target audience.

User-Centered Design and Design Process

Many product teams rely on the five-stage design process proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school). That process includes the following stages:

• Empathize
• Define
• Ideate
• Prototype
• Test

User-centered design can be applied for all stages of this process. Interaction Design Foundation explains how requirement clarification can benefit the design process and what process the team should follow to formulate the requirements better. That process looks like this:

• Understand the context of its use