Day 53 — Demystify series 1/7: “UX vs. HCD vs. UCD”
When reviewing designers’ resumes, we see all kinds of titles & acronyms. They all seems to link to some sort of user/customer/human related field? What’s the difference? What are the right skill set we’re looking for?
- HCI
- IA & IxD
- UX
- HCD & UCD
HCI
What is it
HCI stands for Human Computer Interface. HCI researches the design and use of computer technology, focused on the interfaces between people and computers. The term was first know in 1975, when computer software started to increase the usage. Back then, there were a group of people started to realize that sometimes the problem isn’t about if the challenge about coding software, but rather how human can understand the computer system and sufficiently use the functions the software provided.
The differences with others
HCI focuses more on users working specifically with computers, not the machines or designed artifacts. Specifically , it focuses on the usability performance of human–computer interaction between the computer software and hardware and human. It’s less about ergonomics like keyboard and mouse interaction. Some argues the combined effort of HCI and Industrial Design form the early concept of user experience.
Also, with a key focus on cognitive psychology, it tries to analyze human as whole, how we receive and process information, so that engineers can design the software to optimize the usability.
IA & IxD
What are they
IA stands for Information Architecture. In design field, IA integrate the concept of “content is king”, derives into a effort of analyzing the content before proposing solution. It uses critical techniques like card sorting to create logical information architecture or content hierarchy that maps to the user’s mental model. IxD stands for Interaction Design, which focuses on the flow and transitions from one screen to another, which is triggered either by the user or the system.
The differences with others
IA is an important piece especially when dealing with complex system or large amount of content. It aims to fill the gap between software design and traditional graphic practices, which is traditionally focuses on one display instead of whole kingdom of them. Interaction Design takes it to another level; instead of looking at each individual screen/page, it really focuses on the narrative of the task or user’s goal by crafting a logical sequences and interactions that make sense to the users.
UX
What is it
UX stands for User Experience, which see not only see the total experience as a whole, but also expand from usability-focus to usefulness and desirability. According to Wikipedia, it refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes about using a particular product, system or service. It includes the practical, experiential, affective, meaningful and valuable aspects of human–computer interaction and product ownership.
The differences with others
One key focus in user experience than HCI, IA, and IxD, is the inclusion of emotion. Rather than putting large emphasis on usefulness, usability, and related performance, UX also sees the importance in other area: Accessibility, Findability, Credibility, and Desirability.
In terms of design practices, UX is also being used as an umbrella term that combines many fields in design. Perhaps so far the best way to illustrate is like Jesse James Garrett’s “The Element of UX” (figure below). This diagram helps designers and product team to understand they specific effort/talent need to be involved in certain level in order to craft great user experiences.
HCD & UCD
What are they
HCD stands for Human Centered Design, and UCD stands for User Centered Design. Sound pretty similar, don’t they? The major focus of HCD & UCD is to describe the approach a design team should take, and the key metrics associated with it.
The differences with others
As a guideline for design approach, the key difference between HCD & UCD falls into the words Human vs. User. Similar to HCI, HCD put more emphasis on human as a whole. Therefore the approach are sometimes psychology driven, to understand how the strength and limitation of human impact the system design. On the other hand, UCD focuses more on individual groups of the users, which could be unique to others due to there cultural background, work/life environment, current marital/financial status, and other factors.
The Impact & Challenges
Ever since the market success of iPhone, companies started realizing that a lot of times the competition is not about the product feature set, and they started paying more attention to the design of the product. Even though the maturity of understanding what User Experience is sometimes can still stay in the stage of “putting lipstick on a pig”, the awareness of importance and impact that well-crafted design can bring is greatly appreciated.
The key challenges for corporations and design team is the intangible impact on deep design analysis: UX research, modeling, and problem framing. Some companies still don’t quite get that to make the design team effective, they need to bring design team in the very early strategy stage. However, we can’t just blame the business or product side. Some designers who’s trained with graphic/visual design, believe that they can “Do UX” with some simple workflow, wireframing, or prototyping skills. They didn’t realize that the key of UX is through gathering, understanding, and modeling information (not in a visualization sense), instead of generating artifacts. This misconception from both sides worsen the progress on companies Design Maturity.
Way Forward
As some companies going through Agile Transformation or Digital Transformation, they are also learning that “moving fast” sometimes only “breaking fast” and not learning valuable lessons. As we see more case studies on how companies benefit from making progress on Design Maturity, we’re also trying to quantify the impact of design in order to shift business mindset from “fixing usability problem” to “creating innovative product/services with lower cost”. This sometimes require a longer term investment, and we hope that with more successful cases from large corporation integrating with design-led effort, we can see the cultural movement increase its velocity
Conclusion
- Except for UX, most of the human/user related practices are describing their specific approach to optimize the design performance of the software/ system.
- UX is not only a phrase to describe how user perceive the journey of using a system, but also an umbrella terms to describe all sorts of user related design practices.
- These design practices are equally important. Depending on the nature of the project challenge, an experienced design team leverage different practices wisely to craft a bespoke plan specific to the project.
Do you have any experience pushing for higher design maturity in a company? I’d love to learn from your experience.
ABC. Always be clappin’.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author. They do not represent current or previous client or employer views.
