Many large product manufacturers have user-centred processes embedded in their product and service development. The following is a selection:
Apple
www.apple.com
The American computer technology giant.
Hewlett-Packard
www.hp.com
One of the world's largest information technology corporations.
Lego
www.lego.com
The world’s sixth-largest toy manufacturer.
Microsoft
www.microsoft.com
The multinational computer technology corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of software products.
Nokia
www.nokia.com
The world’s largest manufacturer of mobile phones.
Orange
www.orange.com
The major mobile phone operator and internet service provider.
Pitney Bowes
www.pb.com
The world's largest manufacturer of postal meters and mailing equipment. It also provides mailing and delivery software.
Xerox
www.xerox.com
The American document management company that manufactures and sells a range of color and black-and-white printers, multifunction systems, photo copiers, digital production printing presses, and related consulting services and supplies.
ACM SIGCHI (Association for Computer Machinery Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction)
www.acm.org/sigchi/
The focus of ACM SIGCHI is 'the design and... implementation of interactive systems for human use.'
British HCI Group (British Human Computer Interaction Group)
www.bcs-hci.org.uk/
A special interest group of the British Computer Society, champions usability of interactive systems.
Usability Professionals' Association
www.upassoc.org
American society promoting usability and user research. Has UK chapter.
The Ergonomics Society
www.ergonomics.org.uk
An international organisation for ergonomics professionals.
Human-Computer Interaction Group
www.bcs-hci.org.uk
A special interest group of the British Computer Society, champions usability of interactive systems.
Bad designs
www.baddesigns.com
A collection, compiled by Michael Darnell of examples of things that are hard to use because of poor design.
JND
www.jnd.org/index.html
Website of the author Donald Norman. Includes an eclectic selection of products he believes are well designed. (JND stands for 'just noticable difference', a term used in the psychology of perception for the change in stimulus intensity needed for a person to detect the difference.)
Useit.com
www.useit.com
The website of Jakob Nielsen. The controversial proponent of discount usability techniques, often described as the 'guru of web page usability'. Sometimes his rules need a little contextualising.
Boxes and Arrows
www.boxesandarrows.com
Practitioner website for people working in digital design.
Information Design Cafe
www.informationdesign.org/lists
Many user-centred design issues are discussed.
People tend to enter user-centred design either from a background in human sciences (as researchers) or from a user-oriented design training. The following institutions are a limited selection of the many institutions with opportunities to study and develop user-centred research and design methods (usually at post-graduate level).
UK
Cardiff University Department of Psychology
www.cf.ac.uk/psych/
Loughborough University
www.loughborough.ac.uk
School of Art & Design and Research School in Ergonomics and Human Factors
University College London, Interaction Centre
www.uclic.ucl.ac.uk/
Royal College of Art, Interaction Design
www.rca.ac.uk
User Lab, Birmingham Institute of Art and Design
www.user-lab.com
US
Carnegie Mellon University, School of Design
www.design.cmu.edu
Illinois Institute of Technology, Institute of Design
www.id.iit.edu
MIT Media Lab
www.media.mit.edu
Stanford University, ME Design Division
www.design.stanford.edu
American Society for Information Science and Technology
www.asis.org/SIG/SIGIA/sig-ialist.html
Also covers user-centred design.
The Computer Human Interaction Group of the ACM
www.acm.org/sigchi
Mainland Europe
University of Art and Design Helsinki UIAH, Smart Products Research Group
www.uiah.fi/english
Institute IVREA
www.interaction-ivrea.it
University of Southern Denmark, Mads Clausen Institute for Product Innovation
www.mci.sdu.dk