User-centered design: what are the stages and why is it important?

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You've no doubt heard that everything is about experience and user-centered design. This was the last big shift in marketing, which stopped focusing on the product first, then on post-sale, to finally understand the entire process as the way to create memorable experiences.

This is what is known as the Purchase Journey or Customer Journey: we sell experiences that involve service, products, payment methods, delivery, usability. All of this must be organized in a flow design.

However, this concept is actually a remake of the 90s. Yes, as you read, it is skype database not something that has emerged from digital culture, design and thinking focused on the usability of products is from the computer era before the Internet.

It was created in 1993 by Donald Norman, a cognitive psychologist and specialist in usability engineering. Today, the need to think about the design of processes in the digital world is more relevant than ever. User-centered design is the great competitive advantage of any Internet venture.

That's why in this article we tell you everything about customer-centered design in the era of SEO design , so that you can continue to evolve in your marketing.

In it we will tell you:

What is user-centered design?
Why should you consider it in your strategies?
Stages of user-centered design planning
6 Keys to Developing an Effective User-Centered Design
Conclusion
Keep reading!

What is user-centered design?
It is an iteration-based process that aims to study and map the needs of users throughout their journey, so that a website or platform can offer its users a simple, satisfactory and memorable user experience.

«No product is an island. A product is more than a product. It is a cohesive, integrated set of experiences.» Donald Norman.

To gather the information that will lead to this constant improvement in design, it is necessary to use different research techniques and tools, ranging from the famous brainstorming , through interviews, to forms and questionnaires.

Why should you consider it in your strategies?
It's an obvious question, but design engineering comes precisely from being able to see the obvious. Answer: because it increases sales and gives us a huge competitive advantage.

Although you may not believe it, many times we do not design using common sense and we are seduced by an idea or an effect, which in the long run may seem interesting to us, but it harms the experience.

What is obvious? When we do Digital Marketing we want the user to be happy, not to get frustrated, to succeed in their objectives within our website, to make conversions and to interact with our domain as much as possible.

To do this, it is essential to create multidisciplinary teams that understand both engineering and psychology and, at the same time, constantly collect user information to map, optimize and innovate their workday.

The word design has its origin in the Latin designare, which evokes: to order, to arrange, to mark and to trace.

This is what we must do in relation to the user: organize all the information in a way that is easily understandable, arrange the points of interest in the best way, mark them so that they can be viewed and plot the best possible route.


Stages of user-centered design planning
Improving the user experience is not only based on digital tools , but also on iteration, that is, repetition and optimization of processes. We carry out tests, obtain information from users, identify points for improvement, carry them out and evaluate the results.

There are 4 stages:

Information about the user's context: it is useless to have the best ideas if they are inappropriate for the context of our target audience, therefore, we first have to carry out research to put ourselves in the reality of our users.
Understand the needs and requirements: once this is done we have to understand their specific needs and demands. For example, an extremely relevant topic when talking about requirements is the payment method. Imagine if due to a design error, at the end of the day everything falls apart due to an inadequate payment method. Not only do you lose the sale, but also all the previous work of leading the user to that point.
Designing solutions: once the problems are understood, comes the practical and creative part, which is finding ways to create solutions to these problems.
Evaluate the results: and last but not least, evaluate the results to see if our ideas were really efficient or if we still need to improve them.
And this is where the repetition part comes in. Depending on the evaluation of the results, the idea is to repeat the process to get closer and closer to the ideal levels.

6 Keys to Developing an Effective User-Centered Design
Seen like this it seems simple, but we have to have a method to be able to apply this concept and that guarantees that all the information comes from the user and that all the optimizations are for the user.

At the same time, we have to understand that there are limits specific to each company, the type of project, how many people work on the team, how much time and budget they have, among many other factors.

1. Invite Focus Groups
First-hand information is essential, so inviting a group of users to share their experiences, ideas and frustrations regarding the usability of your site is always a great option.

In addition, it has the added value of being an excellent opportunity for marketing, stimulating word of mouth and generating a more humanized image of your company.

Always remember that all of this must be done by someone who understands the subject, do not believe in anything that is not professional.

Direct contact with a focus group is the gateway to valuable information, but it can also be detrimental if the approach is not designed in the best possible way. Invest in an experienced moderator and analyst.

2 - Conduct usability testing
This stage aims to collect information directly from people as they navigate the website.

It also works with guests who are asked to go through the entire navigation process while taking note of any difficulties they encounter.

It is a mapping of improvement points, in real time, that comes directly from users.

There are many dynamics for this type of work, whether through a moderator who receives the information and an analyst who systematizes it or through the users themselves creating their reports.

These dynamics are of the Alpha-Omega style, meaning they can be used both to start a process and at the end to evaluate its results. The truth is that they are very effective in detecting design problems.

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3. Classification of tokens
Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that don't exist yet or the ones you and your team haven't thought of. How can you make them come to life?

The solution: place blank cards and ask users to fill them with categories in an intuitive way . You will be amazed at the capacity, imagination and creativity of the human mind!

Give your guest users cards that have just a brief description and a link to a page on your site, ask them to sort these cards into groups and create and name categories for them.

This exercise is usually done at the beginning of the process, obviously it gives some clues to the participants and they produce excellent ideas for creating the architecture of your website.

4. Participatory design
This idea is all of the above except that it gives users more input into the entire design optimization process and the decisions that are made. It is an ideal way of working for creating prototypes.

5 - Surveys and Questionnaires
The obvious always works and we have the classic questionnaires that are an incredible source of high-quality information.

The most important thing about this medium is the reach, because, logistically, it is much simpler to gather information with this system than inviting groups and creating dynamics that require more dedication and equipment.

As we always say, the technical knowledge of the person who creates these questionnaires is important because the efficiency of this medium will depend on the quality of the questions.

6. Interviews
And finally, we have interviews, which, although not so light, give us the advantage of being able to delve into details to extract more information. At the same time, it is possible to generate better communication without misinterpretations or ambiguous answers.

Due to these characteristics, this method is always used at the beginning of a process.

Conclusion
As you can see, design is a topic that has been around since long before the digital era and that has gained relevance and development possibilities in this era. Everything is design to be able to generate conversions, to qualify leads, to guide them through the sales funnel and to close a sale. Understand design and you will understand marketing.