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Human-Centered Design (HCD) is an approach that places the end user at the center of the design process, emphasizing a strong understanding of users’ needs, abilities, and preferences.
American psychologist and engineer Donald Norman played a crucial role in defining and spreading the principles of Human-Centered Design, later expanded through his contributions to Emotional Design. Norman established guidelines and provided tools such as +affordances, feedback, and mapping, which remain fundamental for designers in creating usable and effective products.
However, despite his significant contributions, design remains a field where errors are often common: even in modern web interfaces, it is easy to encounter issues ranging from excessive complexity to a lack of clarity, calling into question the effectiveness of the design itself. This highlights the ongoing need to adhere to the fundamental principles of HCD and to continuously work on improving user experience in an increasingly digitalized world.
“When you have a problem with objects – whether it’s trying to figure out whether to pull or push a door or the vagaries of the modern computer and electronics industry — not it’s your fault. Don’t blame yourself: blame the designer.”
Donald Arthur Norman – introduction to The Masochist’s Coffeepot
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A term often associated with HCD is Design Thinking, an expression that is frequently overused and sometimes misunderstood. To clarify, while HCD provides a mindset and emphasizes the importance of focusing on users’ needs and experiences during the design process, Design Thinking offers a structured approach and specific methodologies to tackle problems innovatively.
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Man at the center of everything, right? During the early research phases, it is indeed essential to study and focus on the target of a product.
The research phase is complex and can often be tedious, but concentrating on these initial steps can be advantageous for better understanding the users, identifying their needs, and then creating solutions that effectively meet those needs.
Some tools/templates that can be used at this stage are:
https://www.justinmind.com/blog/how-to-design-user-scenarios/
Oplon Networks extensively used these solid principles during the design and development phases of Oplon Secure Access .
Below is a plausible example of what we did during the design phase for developing the solution:
When we use an object, we encounter two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where we try to figure out what to do, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where we strive to understand what happened. The designer’s task is to help users bridge these two gulfs and make them as shallow as possible. According to Norman, all these phases are experienced and lived through by three types of mental processing: the visceral brain, which is the most basic, reactive, and subconscious; the behavioral brain, which houses skills learned in circumstances similar to the current ones (thus guided by expectations); and the reflective brain, the place of conscious cognition, decision- making reasoning, and higher-level emotional processing, such as satisfaction, frustration, guilt, etc.
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Most IT incidents are caused by human error: estimates are between 60% and 80% of the total.
How is such a statistic possible? Is the staff really that incompetent?
Obviously, the answer is no, as the problem oftelies in the design and poor user interface.
Devices, software, and hardware continue to be developed that require users to maintain constant attention for long hours or to memorize complex and seldom-used procedures.
This can force people to stay in monotonous environments for extended periods, interrupted only by sudden and precise interventions. Such a complex and overloaded environment increases the risk of human errors, often caused by interruptions during the execution of simultaneous tasks.
A significant problem is the attitude towards errors committed: inquiry commissions are often established that, instead of solving the problem, identify culprits to punish with fines, dismissals, or even imprisonment. However, this punitive approach does not address the root causes of errors and does not prevent them from recurring.
To avoid the recurrence of errors, it is necessary to study their causes and redesign products or procedures so that errors are minimized or, preferably, eliminated. It is crucial to adopt an approach based on learning from errors and correcting the underlying causes, rather than focusing solely on punishing those responsible.
Adequate tools can be Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Toyota’s 5 Whys.
The “Root Cause Analysis” (Analysis of the Deep Causes) is a structured process for Identify the underlying causes of a problem rather than just focusing on the symptoms superficial. It involves detailed analysis of the events that led to the problem to identify the root cause or underlying causes.
The “5 Whys” are an investigation technique based on five fundamental questions: Who (Who), What (What), When (When), Where (Where), Why (Why). These questions help you explore an issue or event comprehensively and systematic.
The two methodologies are intertwined as the “5 Ws” provide a structured framework for conduct an in-depth analysis during the “Root Cause Analysis”. The questions help guide the investigation towards a complete understanding of the events and the circumstances that led to the problem, thus helping to identify the root causes of the problem itself. In essence, the “5 Ws” provide an organized method for performing the “Root Cause Analysis”.
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Every year, thousands of new products are created, but most never make it to market or disappoint user expectations. This results in numerous market failures, where most products fail to grow or meet user needs. Only a small percentage of products achieve success.
If in law, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, in “law of market” it is advisable to consider every product as failed until proven otherwise.
Here some tools come to our aid:
1. Pretotyping:
2. Prototyping:
3. Minimum Viable Product (MVP):
“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
W. Edwards Deming
Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking are essential for developing products that meet the real needs of users. Oplon Networks has integrated these principles into the design of Oplon Secure Access, ensuring an effective and intuitive product. Through constant attention to research and iteration, we are able to create functional and, above all, user-friendly solutions.
We firmly believe that excellent design should improve usability and user experience, making the digital environment more welcoming and productive.
The MIMIT Cloud & Cybersecurity Voucher offers small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and self-employed individuals a concrete opportunity to invest in the security and evolution of their IT infrastructure.
Oplon Secure Access 12.3.0 introduces enhancements designed to make remote access management even more efficient, secure, and simple. The new release offers improved Remote Desktop session quality thanks to Sharp Mode, more advanced password rotation control with the new Password Rotation Test Runner, and the ability to create Temporary Connections to quickly address issues on systems not yet registered on the platform. This update was made possible in part by valuable feedback from customers and partners, whose input continues to guide the solution’s evolution.
Click Days are no longer about attacks, but synchronized legitimate demand that can collapse systems. Traditional WAFs fail: they protect the network, not backend capacity. Resilience requires managing real application capacity under extreme load.
The MIMIT Cloud & Cybersecurity Voucher offers small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and self-employed individuals a concrete opportunity to invest in the security and evolution of their IT infrastructure.
Oplon Secure Access 12.3.0 introduces enhancements designed to make remote access management even more efficient, secure, and simple. The new release offers improved Remote Desktop session quality thanks to Sharp Mode, more advanced password rotation control with the new Password Rotation Test Runner, and the ability to create Temporary Connections to quickly address issues on systems not yet registered on the platform. This update was made possible in part by valuable feedback from customers and partners, whose input continues to guide the solution’s evolution.
