The term human-centered design (HCD) seems to be used mainly across the development stage of a product which involves human interactions, in basic hindsight HCD is simply a designing approach keeping in mind how easily the end user, i.e. a human, would interact with it and for how long will he/she will be able to continue using it in its true form.
There are various technical jargon's associated with it that makes it sound far more complicated than it actually is.
Many companies struggle with problems caused by bad usability of their products although they have invested in human-centered design (HCD). Their product may still have not gone through a systematic approach, adequate knowledge and a clear definition of responsibilities in HCD.
In this article I thought I’ll share with you a few HCD principles that can incorporate into any ERP solution design.
Some of the HCD elements that could be used would be:
Usability – ability of the users to use the function with minimal supervision.
Maturity – ability of the user to understand the core function of the solution and being able to branch out into other related areas to understand the functionality in its entirety within the organization.
Participation – Assess the solution based on how much the user would be able to participate if a change is to be made to the core logic.
Piloting period – Assess how long is it likely to take a new user to take over the functionality from an existing user, the lower the better as it indicates user sustainability.
Most often than not, these are discussed in a project environment, but laying them down and assessing them during the development process will definitely help in delivering solution that is more human centered and more sustainable.
Hope you found this post informative. Feel free to contact me on ssurenlk@msn.com.
