User-centered Design

User-centered design is a popular and smart way to approach interaction design. Understanding the needs of users helps humanize the process and keeps your project in check with their goals. Users know best and will cast their vote by giving their attention to your site – or not.

A user-centered design approach fits especially well with mobile. Start with context. Think about how and where people will interact with your content or application. What content would they want to get through a mobile device? Because of technical constraints and attention limitations, in most cases, the answer becomes clear.

As an example, consider making a restaurant’s site mobile friendly. People accessing the site from a mobile would probably want a textual menu, location and directions, contact information and hours of operation. Remember that mobile users often usually require information that they can action - so, as an example, providing the day’s specialties on the site would be a good feature to offer – with the phone number on the same page. Technological constraints mean that you should verify the capabilities of the user's device before offering features like online ordering and a PDF-based menu.

Thinking about how someone interacts with a mobile device and the context around that provides the best first step in creating an effective mobile experience.