User-first Design
User-First Design – good people-focused design – involves attending to the appropriateness of products and services to the needs of the user and the application of the principles across a wide range of domains.
‘…recent research shows that the 70% to 80% of new product development that fails does so not for lack of advanced technology but because of a failure to understand users’ needs …The emergence of user-centered innovation clearly shows that this near-exclusive focus on technological advance is misplaced’
Professor Eric von Hippel (Harvard Business Review, February 2007).
User-first research at NCAD is engaged across a number of domains - e.g. human–computer interaction, industrial design, service design, universal design and multi-modal design - with the aim of deepening our understanding of people-focused design and of developing practical innovative and creative solutions to user needs.
