User-Centered Design is a design philosophy that aims to create products that solve specific needs of their end users, achieving the greatest satisfaction and best user experience possible with minimal effort on their part.

It takes shape as a process in which a series of multidisciplinary techniques are used and where each decision made must be based on the needs, objectives, expectations, motivations and capabilities of the users.

Most of the processes that make User Centered Design involve the following stages:

The term “user-centered design” (UCD) originated in Donald Norman's laboratory at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in the 1980s and became a widely used term after the publication of the book User-Centered System Design: New Perspectives on Human-Computer Interaction (Norman & Draper, 1986). Norman delved deeper into the topic with his seminal book The Psychology Of Everyday Things, also called POET (Norman, 1988).

At POET it recognizes the needs and interests of the user and focuses on the usability of the design. It offers four basic suggestions of what a design should be:.

These recommendations put the user at the center of the design. The designer's role is to facilitate the task for the user to ensure that the user is able to make use of the product with minimal effort in learning how to use it.

The user-centered design process can help software designers meet the goal of a product designed for its users. User requirements are assumed correct from the beginning and are included throughout the product cycle. These requirements are observed and refined through research methods including: ethnographic study, contextual research, prototype testing, usability testing, and other methods. Generative methods can also be used including: card sorting, affinity diagrams, and participatory design sessions. Additionally, user requirements can be inferred by careful analysis of usable products similar to the product being designed.

These principles ensure that a design is user-centered:.

User-Centered Design asks questions related to the user about their tasks and goals, then takes the findings and makes design decisions based on them.

User-Centered Design, for example, seeks the answer to the following questions: