Weboword - This is what I have been doing lately.

A successful design always begins with a nice idea. Here's an idea me and my colleagues have been working around with.

Human Centered Design - Little things that can transform user experience!

Product design is like bringing a story to life. It is about creating an experience for the user that makes him/her feel satisfied. People talk about being considerate to human beings in day to day life. I think its time product design teams used the same philosophy while designing. Many a times the focus while designing is to make things unique, externally beautiful, compact etc. but what is sometimes, critically forgotten is to incorporate the "human element". After all, what good is a design that is brilliant to look at and costs a lot of money but leaves frowns on the faces of it's users.

Here are a few cases that cross the bar with regard to most parameters of design but unfortunately (and I say this because I have been bitten a few times) miss out on the human element, on some count or the other.

1) Improper placement of Laptop Charging point: Most laptops have a charging point that is located on the back side (See 1 below), which makes attaching and detaching the power cord a pain because
a) the point is not visible without the user having to lift the entire body and turning it around.
b) it becomes increasingly tough to access (for the user from front - 2) the point when the laptop lid is open (which is a very highly probable case). I mean, people might want to put their laptops on charging while working or disconnect the charger, in case the batter is full. It really becomes tough. I personally hate this part.

1 (Acer 5920)

2 (Acer 5920)

What can be a really convenient option is to have the charging point positioned on the sides of the laptop which is easily accessible and viewable at all times (with the lid open or closed). (See 3 below). A small thing such as this can really create a big difference in the user experience (because power cord connection and disconnection is a high frequency activity as far as laptops are concerned)

3 (Apple MacBook)

2) Double hand MP3 players: Single handed back-hands are rare amongst tennis players. The same is the case with Mp3 players :). For players that are designed only to play music and nothing else, why is it that the user has to engage both his hands to operate them (See 4). I can understand that high-end MP3 players such as the Ipod Touch etc have a large number of other functionalities that sometimes require the user to use both his hands but run of the mill players should definitely be designed so that they can be used and operated single-handedly (literally :)).

It is quite obvious that it would be a much better situation for a user to have his other hand free while he/she toggles with the controls on the device.

4 (Ms MP3 player)

The point that I am trying to make is simple. When you know that the end-user of the product is a human being, just step into his shoes and design.

Human centered design is the future.

Watch David Kelley (IDEO) talk about Human Centered design on TED.