UCDRE Lektion 1

Published at Sep 14, 2026

• Print

learn how to avoid bad designs and build better software.

Erion Elmasllari and Elif Gürcinar are responsible for UCD (User-Centered Design)

and Samuel Fricker is responsible for RE (Requirements Engineering)

Weeks 1-7 UCD Weeks 8-14 RE

Difference usability and usefulness

usability - how is it to use a product (ease of use)? usefulness - does a product serve a function that is valuable to the user?

examples:

  • a fidget spinner might be very easy to use but not useful
  • a plane ui might be very hard to use but extremely useful

something useful might not be easy to use or something usabel might be useless.

User Experience (UX)

the user experience “all aspects of the end users interaction with the company, its services, and its prodcuts.” or “how people feel about a product or service, which might reflect the quality”

usability is only a part of the user experience, which also contains emotional qualities, like look and feel, content, fun, emotional appeal and so on.

qualities of the user also affect the user experience.

this means a designer does not design the user experience but more like for the user experience. the designer is not the user and one size cannot fit all.

Goals

Usability goals are more pragmatic while UX goals might be more about the astethics

Usability goals:

  • Effectiveness: How good is the product at doing what its supposed to do?
  • Efficiency: How quickly can the product be used once the user knows how it works?
  • Safety: What kind of errors are possible, how severe are there, does the system prevent the user from making errors, can the user recover from error, is it designed in a way that reduces the users fear of the software?
  • Utility: Is the product useful?
  • Learnability: How hard/easy is it to learn to use the product?
  • Memorability: Is it easy to remember how to use the product, even if it is only used infrequently?

UX goals:

  • Fun, Motivating, Helpful, Engaging, Enjoyable, Entertaining, Surprising …
  • (Boring, Unpleasant, Frustrating, Patronizing, Making one feel guilty, Makting one feel stupid, Annoying, Cutesy, Childish, Gimmicky … might not be so desireable)

Exercise

ChatGPT

  • Utility/Efficiency: Notification auf dem Handy wenn die Anfrage erfolgreich beendet wurde
  • Safety: Man kann angeben ob es auf Websiten zugreifen kann
  • Safety: Man wird beim weg navigieren gewarnt
  • Learnability: Man kann das produkt ziemlich schnell verwenden
  • UX Satisfying: Dass die Buchstaben nacheinander kommen
  • UX Engaging: Dass man sieht auf welchen Websiten er gerade sucht
  • UX Cutesy: Emojis
  • UX Frustrating: Wenn man falsche antworten kommen
  • Efficency: Wenn chat zu lang wird es sehr langsam
  • UX Emotionally fulfilling: Die Einstellungen die man vornehmen kann und auch das Einstellen der Persönlichkeit

Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)

  • Users*
  • Usability
  • Usefulness
  • User Experience

HCI

  • saves lives
  • saves time
  • sells

Stages of the User-Centered design process

  • Discovering Requirements: Define what will be developed.
  • Designing Alternatives: The actual designing, should end up with multiple variations
  • Prototyping: Representation of the design that someone could interact with
  • Evaluating: Determening the usability and acceptability of the design

User-Centered Approach

  1. Early focus on users and tasks
  2. Empirical measurement
  3. Iterative design

UCD and RE might overlap at some points but they come from different places UCD puts the user in the center while RE mainly cares about the business/market opportunity.

Course Project

Towards a sustainable Lifestyle