We’re talking about user-centered design because ideas succeed when they translate to products, services, and experiences that users love.

So what does “user-centered design” really mean, and why is it so important right now?

To understand user-centered design, look back to the time when digital products didn’t focus on the user experience like they do today. Just 10 years ago, digital products like websites, apps, and software didn’t need to perform on multiple screen sizes or resolutions because devices were mostly standardized. Companies could create a version of their digital product for desktop devices, a distinct version for phones, and possibly another version for tablets. Many companies didn’t address accessibility and they primarily designed digital products for a single operating system. As a result, many users found technology frustrating, hindering, and downright irritating, which hindered adoption.

Kelly La Belle, Designer

A great product is a product people want to use.

Thankfully, companies addressed the user frustration, and the design process for digital products has been evolving to prioritize users ever since.

People value products that are easy to use, simple to set up, and have a logical progression. User-centered design isolates the users’ specific needs down to granular steps, then we design to be aesthetically pleasing and intuitive. To really understand the users, the design process requires user research, which can include user surveys, brainstorming, testing, and more.

There is no single approach to user-centered design. Most digital products have unique experiences that require unique solutions. An investment in a great user experience and user interface design can make the difference between success and failure.

Products that incorporate user-centered design have been proven to:

• Cut down on customer service costs. More intuitive workflows result in less customer frustration and fewer service calls.
• Increase sales. Customers conduct research before committing to a new product or service so first impressions online are key. A few bad online reviews about your product will result in lost sales. Rather than hire a PR firm to fix your product’s reputation, invest in a great user experience upfront to reduce the cost of sale.
• Reduce lawsuits. Companies can be held legally responsible if their digital products aren’t usable for people with disabilities. Having an inaccessible digital product is in the same vein as having an inaccessible storefront. User-centered design will address accessibility as a top priority.

User-centered design is popular because it works. The digital landscape is constantly changing, so keep the user at the center of the change to ensure a great product and strong business.

Want to know more about our user-focused design capabilities?

• Customer Experiences
• UX & UI Design
• Experience Strategy and Design

Additional Resources:

• Designing for Good: Equitable Design
• Our Studios
• Our Work: Design Case Studies

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The terms Equity and Equitable Design come up with increasing frequency as businesses are asked to be transparent about efforts to support diversity, equity, and inclusion by investors, customers, and employees.

Our designers want to make equitable designs for every client, so we have worked to understand what it means to design equitably.

Understanding Equitable Design

To quote Jennifer Wright of Designers Build, “The term equity is often used interchangeably with equality, but it is a fundamentally different concept. Equality is giving everyone the same thing. Equity is giving everyone what they need to be successful.”

This does not mean that we design everything to be equal or the same for everyone regardless of their needs. Equitable design also does not mean that we have a diversity checklist for your stock photo library.

“From my perspective, equitable design has three levels of impact: Representational, Experiential, and Cognitive-behavioral,” says Kopius UX Designer, Jacob Lowry.  In the context of equitable design, we like to define the three levels of impact like this:

• Representational design authentically and positively challenges societal defaults and expectations.
• Experiential design focuses on accessibility, beyond WCAG or ADA accessibility to include social, cultural, and technological access. With experiential design, we design for user needs and emotions.
• Cognitive-Behavioral design influences how people think and behave. In this case, to use design to help people to think and act in a way that contributes and supports a more equitable society.

Transforming Your Next Project With Equitable Design

Everyone consumes content, and designers are in the unique position of helping create that content. As Christopher Paul discusses in his book Wordplay and the Discourse of Video Games: Analyzing Words, Design, and Play, design is a powerful and important societal role – it isn’t isolated.

Most design is built for business needs and for-profit content. However, being driven by profit is not in conflict with equitable design. In fact, there is a mountain of evidence to back up the link between business effectiveness and equitable design. Companies that integrate social responsibility into their operations can expect positive financial returns. These companies also increase sales and prices while reducing employee turnover.

It happens in big and small moments.

Embracing Equitable Design for Inclusive Solutions

Designers can have the ambition for large, systematic change while operating on a niche, local, brand, or worldwide level. 

Designer Rie Nørregaard said in “Designing for Humanity,” that designers should shift away from “designing for” to “designing with” by connecting with different people and contexts. When designers step back from their own experiences to connect with the user and their perspective, we can design more equitably. This is especially true for designers that are members of the default norms (white, male, able-bodied, English-speaking, etc.). How do we connect with other user experiences and needs? It can be through interviews, observations, conversations, research, and more. This is informed at Kopius by our user research team, too.

It’s simple to include equitable design in your next project because it doesn’t require a lot of research or professional development (though those can help). Equitable design simply requires a commitment to look outside of a limited worldview to find the right way to approach solutions for a more diverse set of users.

Contact Kopius for Equitable Design Solutions

Kopius creates digital experiences that are used by companies and people across every industry and experienced by users around the world. In addition to our own sense of social responsibility, by considering equitable design in our work, we also meet our responsibility to produce commercially successful solutions.

Additional Resources:

• Our Services: Experience Strategy and Design
• Our Studios
• Our Work: Design Case Studies

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