Abstract
Correct identification of human capabilities and limitations is essential when designing objects, activities or environments that must facilitate the accomplishment of human needs. Expansion of human knowledge provides invaluable input to Design discipline but in practice, such tools, techniques and technologies are quite distant from being directly applicable by the design practitioner, requiring multiple specialists (physiologists, psychologists, anthropologists and others) to translate the findings into useful information for design process. Design process is been permanently modified not only because required objects are each time more intricate or specific, but because the way of gathering necessary to the process incoming data becomes more complex. Describing a wide range of objective or subjective approaches to define User’s characteristics should help developing design study programs as well as would be a helpful tool for practitioners of Design to be aware of where and how to look at when dealing with User’s characteristics specifications.
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- 1.
The Design Council has developed the report “Innovation by Design” which abound on this economical topic focused on the UK long term economic growth, standing out the research to market contribution of design [1].
- 2.
Ergonomics or human factors are the main terms used to refer this interest in human characteristics; There also exist User Centered Design, Usability and so many more terms, all having different postures around the concern of User’s needs, capabilities, limitations or expectations related with the overall system.
- 3.
Referring to the UOAE ergonomic system, where specific Users perform certain Activities, mediated by defined Objects and Environments.
- 4.
To apply the term User has been questioned since it refers a “hole” human being, who has several capabilities, expectations, beliefs and a list of characteristics much more greater than just being user of a thing. Here is stated the term User is a more precise one, because it doesn’t take away the humanity of a person, neither understate any of his or her characteristics, but emphasizes is the human being who uses something—and not any human being—; as when using the terms driver, cooker or teacher referring to persons who do concrete tasks or have specific skills.
References
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Usability First. http://www.usabilityfirst.com/about-usability/introduction-to-user-centered-design/
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Chávez, A.R., Colin, L.M. (2016). User’s Capabilities and Limitations Identification in Design Process. In: Rebelo, F., Soares, M. (eds) Advances in Ergonomics in Design. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 485. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41983-1_42
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41983-1_42
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