User focus in design increases competitiveness, leading to the development of products and services that people genuinely need and value and that they find intuitive and easy to use.
Company reputations and customer loyalty are built by positive user experiences. In web-based services, in particular, it is very easy for people to 'click' to an alternative website if a service seems difficult to use or doesn't meet their needs.
A user-centred approach broadens the scope of inputs to designers' thinking. Design teams are often physically and culturally removed from the people they design for. Over the course of product and service development, designers, engineers, planners and marketeers can grow so close to the concepts and technologies they are developing that their expectations don't match those of everyday end-users. Those who take pains to understand the context they are designing for and who include users' perspectives in the evaluation of their work have a greater chance of business success.
A user-centred approach to product and service development provides a unifying framework for organisational strategy. It brings the interests of different departments, such as research, operations and marketing together, generating a coherent development strategy and reducing the wastage of conflicting initiatives. Relatively small investments in user research from the earliest stages of development can help set the agenda for product and service development.
Because user-centred design draws together the practical, emotional and social aspects of people's experience it provides a basis for planning how to improve services and innovate in service delivery.
When implemented effectively, user-centred design can help maximise the impact of service development in the following ways:
- Ensuring success through focus on the people who will deliver and use the service
- Increasing acceptance through trial and evolution of new services before full-scale launch
- Increasing accessibility to a range of people
- Increasing personalisation by responding to individuals’ diversity.