Customer Centered Design vs. User Centered Design

While reading about user experience, customer experience, user interface or just any topic about design, you have may stumbled over the words “user centered design” or “customer centered design”. A lot of times I have seen that these terms are used synonymous. But do these two terms really address the same? — I don’t think so … and here is why.

User vs. Customer

Let’s start with the difference of these two words. I think all of us agree that a “user” is not the same as a “customer”. First I wanted to see what a dictionary says about each one of them.

User: someone who uses a product, machine, or service
Customer: a person who buys goods or a service

So a user is someone who uses a product, machine or service and a customer is someone who buys goods or a service. Some of you will may think now “okay that means every customer is a user … because he buys whatever, and then he uses it”. And that is right, a customer can be the user of a product/machine/service but a customer does not have to be the user of it.

Who buys it? Tim! Who uses it? Tim!

An easy example for a customer being the user could look like that: Tim (26) is growing a beard. Tim doesn’t like his beard. Tim buys a shaver. Tim uses the shaver. Tim is the customer and user of the shaver.

Who buys it? Tim! Who uses it? Berta!

Now an example if the customer is not the user. Let’s say Tim’s grandmother Berta (68) always goes to the local market to buy her food. Berta drives bus. Berta always carries her groceries in plastic bags (buuh!). Tim buys Berta a cool shopping trolley. Berta uses the shopping trolley. So Tim is the customer and Berta is the user.

Online Definitions

So I think you agree with me that “user” and “customer” are two different things and not every customer is also the user of the product. Now let us have a look at some online definitions of user centered/ customer centered design.

What is user centered design?

“User-centered design is an iterative design process in which designers focus on the users and their needs in each phase of the design process […].”(Interaction Design Foundation)

“The User-centered design (UCD) process outlines the phases throughout a design and development life-cycle all while focusing on gaining a deep understanding of who will be using the product.” (usability.gov)

So using user centered design, we’re looking for the needs of the person who uses it → the user.

What is customer centered design?

“[…] customer centricity is deeply understanding customer needs and fulfilling on those needs […].” (customerthink.com)

“Customer-centric design always starts with research to find out what the end-customers actually need and what the business and technology requirements are.” (sofokus.com)

So using customer centered design, we’re looking for the needs of the person who buys it (?) → the customer.

Some examples

I had a hard time figuring out some examples which are explaining my view of using these two terms. I was looking for products/services where it is obvious that the customer is not the user of the product/service. I was thinking about gifts which no one would buy for themselves, so a product which is exclusively used as a present. Products for pets also came into my mind, humans buy them but our friends with 4 legs are using them. But at the end I decided to go on with the following one.

Designing a baby bodysuit

If we design with the user of the product/service in the center of our thoughts and build a product around him, we will design a different product as we would get if we put the customer in our focus. Let’s say you are designing a baby bodysuit. One with exclusively the customer (parents) in mind and another one with the user (baby). I chose this example because it is clear that the baby is not the customer. The baby is also not exclusively the only user of the product, because the parents have interaction while dressing the baby or washing the bodysuit. With these examples I try to point out what would happen if we’d only focus on the customer or user.

Customer centered design: For the parents!

Putting only the customer in the focus of our design process will lead us to think about what is “in” right now. In which bodysuit do parents want to wrap their baby?
-inside a brainstorming session-
Mr. Color: “There are bodysuits in the design of heroes, fruits, Christmas, colored, white, striped, dotted…Yes! Thats what we would do!”
Mr. Material: “Ecological and biological processed wool is super trendy right now, so let’s use some of that.”
Mr. Advertisement: “Biological, super comfy, healthy, lovely,! Print, print, print!”

That’s or similar is how it would look like if designers would only focus on the customer. We wouldn’t think about what the baby wants/needs. We would think about what the parents want or what the parents want for their baby.

User centered design: For the baby!

Now let us imagine we’re designing for our user, for the baby. How could a design thinking session look like?
-inside another brainstorming session-
Mr. Color: “I think we should go with orange because it is a very comfortable color. It promotes a welcoming feeling and inspires interpersonal conversation. Orange is friendly and puts reservations at ease.”
Mr. Material: “Bamboo is thermal-regulating and it will adjust with the baby’s body temperature. It has a host of other fantastic benefits including being hypo-allergenic and anti-bacterial”
Mr. Advertisement: “Is there a way of advertisement for babies?”

Now we’d have the baby in the center of our thoughts and trendy and cool prints of superman won’t be considered. We’d think about what the users needs are and how we can fulfill them.

Conclusion

By now I don’t have a clear picture of how customer centered design and user centered design can be differentiated. I think in every product or service there’s a part of focusing on the user and there’s also a part which focuses on the customer. Because somehow the best designed baby suit has to find its way to the user, and until babies are not independent enough to go by themselves, the way from the stores to the baby (user) depends on the parents (customer) decision.

In my opinion in most cases the more correct term to use, would be user centered design. By setting the user into the center of our design process we’re also considering the way of how the product will find its way to the user. And using the term customer centered design indicates that we are addressing our design onto the person who’s gonna buy it at the end.

For me customer centered design puts its focus on the sale of the product. As we say we design around the customer, and the customer is the person who’s gonna buy it, we aim for selling the product/service. Designing insurances can be customer centered because after buying the insurance there is not really a “using”.

Let me know some of your opinions or examples which help me to understand your way of understanding these terms. I’d like to kick off a small discussion about this topic.

— mnl