Human Centered Design e Design Thinking for Oplon Secure Access

Human-Centered Design (HCD) is an approach that places the end user at the center of the design process, emphasizing a strong understanding of users' needs, abilities, and preferences.

American psychologist and engineer Donald Norman played a crucial role in defining and spreading the principles of Human-Centered Design, later expanded through his contributions to Emotional Design. Norman established guidelines and provided tools such as +affordances, feedback, and mapping, which remain fundamental for designers in creating usable and effective products.

However, despite his significant contributions, design remains a field where errors are often common: even in modern web interfaces, it is easy to encounter issues ranging from excessive complexity to a lack of clarity, calling into question the effectiveness of the design itself. This highlights the ongoing need to adhere to the fundamental principles of HCD and to continuously work on improving user experience in an increasingly digitalized world.

"When you have a problem with objects – whether it's trying to figure out whether to pull or push a door or the vagaries of the modern computer and electronics industry — not it's your fault. Don't blame yourself: blame the designer.” Donald Arthur Norman - introduction to The Masochist's Coffeepot

Human Centered Design vs Design Thinking

A term often associated with HCD is Design Thinking, an expression that is frequently overused and sometimes misunderstood. To clarify, while HCD provides a mindset and emphasizes the importance of focusing on users' needs and experiences during the design process, Design Thinking offers a structured approach and specific methodologies to tackle problems innovatively.

In any case, the two approaches (HCD and DT) are not isolated silos and can be overlapped to guide the ideation process of a product.

Oplon Networks has extensively used these solid principles during the development phases design and development of Oplon Secure Access (opens in a new tab).

Design Phases: User Research

Man at the center of everything, right? During the early research phases, it is indeed essential to study and focus on the target of a product.

The research phase is complex and can often be tedious, but concentrating on these initial steps can be advantageous for better understanding the users, identifying their needs, and then creating solutions that effectively meet those needs.

Some tools/templates that can be used at this stage are: https://www.justinmind.com/blog/how-to-design-user-scenarios/ (opens in a new tab)

1. User Personas: Semi-fictional representations of ideal users, used to better understand your target audience and guide design decisions.
2. User Stories: Brief informal descriptions of system features or requirements, focus on the user's point of view, e.g.: "As [person], I want [action] in so as to [reason]"
3. Scenarios: Narratives of user-product interactions in specific contexts, which they highlight the user's emotions, motivations and challenges during the interaction.
4. Storyboards: Series of sequential illustrations visualizing user-interaction product, used to communicate and visualize design ideas in a way quick and effective.”

Oplon Networks extensively used these solid principles during the design and development phases of Oplon Secure Access (opens in a new tab). Below is a plausible example of what we did during the design phase for developing the solution:

1. User Personas: Mariano, 43 years old, IT consultant at TeknoTRP.
2. User Stories: Like Mariano, I need to access information systems of the consulting company to administer and maintain the application by us developed.
3. Scenarios: During a typical workday, Mariano is busy with multiple clients at the same time. To connect to their systems, he is forced to manage several VPN connections, switching VPN on and off, or installing virtual machines with dedicated VPN clients for each customer.

How people do things, Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and the 5 Ws rule

When we use an object, we encounter two gulfs: the Gulf of Execution, where we try to figure out what to do, and the Gulf of Evaluation, where we strive to understand what happened. The designer’s task is to help users bridge these two gulfs and make them as shallow as possible. According to Norman, all these phases are experienced and lived through by three types of mental processing: the visceral brain, which is the most basic, reactive, and subconscious; the behavioral brain, which houses skills learned in circumstances similar to the current ones (thus guided by expectations); and the reflective brain, the place of conscious cognition, decision- making reasoning, and higher-level emotional processing, such as satisfaction, frustration, guilt, etc.

Most IT incidents are caused by human error: estimates are between 60% and 80% of the total. https://clusit.it/rapporto-clusit/ (opens in a new tab) https://www.verizon.com/business/resources/reports/dbir/ (opens in a new tab)

How is such a statistic possible? Is the staff really that incompetent?

Obviously, the answer is no, as the problem oftelies in the design and poor user interface.

Devices, software, and hardware continue to be developed that require users to maintain constant attention for long hours or to memorize complex and seldom-used procedures.

This can force people to stay in monotonous environments for extended periods, interrupted only by sudden and precise interventions. Such a complex and overloaded environment increases the risk of human errors, often caused by interruptions during the execution of simultaneous tasks.

A significant problem is the attitude towards errors committed: inquiry commissions are often established that, instead of solving the problem, identify culprits to punish with fines, dismissals, or even imprisonment. However, this punitive approach does not address the root causes of errors and does not prevent them from recurring.

To avoid the recurrence of errors, it is necessary to study their causes and redesign products or procedures so that errors are minimized or, preferably, eliminated. It is crucial to adopt an approach based on learning from errors and correcting the underlying causes, rather than focusing solely on punishing those responsible.

Adequate tools can be Root Cause Analysis (RCA) and Toyota's 5 Whys.

The "Root Cause Analysis" (Analysis of the Deep Causes) is a structured process for Identify the underlying causes of a problem rather than just focusing on the symptoms superficial. It involves detailed analysis of the events that led to the problem to identify the root cause or underlying causes.

The "5 Whys" are an investigation technique based on five fundamental questions: Who (Who), What (What), When (When), Where (Where), Why (Why). These questions help you explore an issue or event comprehensively and systematic.

The two methodologies are intertwined as the “5 Ws” provide a structured framework for conduct an in-depth analysis during the "Root Cause Analysis". The questions help guide the investigation towards a complete understanding of the events and the circumstances that led to the problem, thus helping to identify the root causes of the problem itself. In essence, the “5 Ws” provide an organized method for performing the “Root Cause Analysis”.

7 Fundamental Principles of Design

Keeping all these concepts in mind, 7 fundamentals of design can be drawn:

• Visibility: it is good that it is easy to immediately discover which actions are possible and what is the current status of the device.
• Feedback: it is advisable that there is complete and continuous information regarding the results of actions and the current state of the product or service. After performing an action, it should be easy to determine the outcome.
• Conceptual Model: the design should provide all the information necessary for create a good conceptual model of the system, which promotes understanding and feeling of control by the user. The conceptual model enhances both visibility and evaluation of results.
• Affordance: it is good that affordances are made in such a way as to make actions possible desired and unwanted ones impossible.
• Signifiers: an effective use of signifiers ensures visibility and understandability of commands.
• Mapping: the relationship between commands and their respective actions must obey the principles of good mapping, supported, as far as possible, by the spatial arrangement and temporal contiguity.
• Constraints: physical, logical, semantic and cultural constraints must be provided in order to guide action and facilitate interpretation.

In the field of UX/UI development, it's easy to notice these concepts by looking simply any user interface.

Pretotyping, Prototyping and MVP

Every year, thousands of new products are created, but most never make it to market or disappoint user expectations. This results in numerous market failures, where most products fail to grow or meet user needs. Only a small percentage of products achieve success.

If in law, a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty, in “law of market" it is advisable to consider every product as failed until proven otherwise.

Here some tools come to our aid:

1. Pretotyping:

• During the pretotyping phase, we try to test a product idea quickly and cheaply to evaluate its potential for success on the market.
• Techniques such as simulations, storyboards, product concepts, or landing pages are used to create an illusion of a product without fully developing it.
• The goal is to collect feedback from users and validate interest in the basic idea.

2. Prototyping:

• If the idea tested during pretotyping seems promising and has received positive feedback, we move on to the prototyping phase.
• During prototyping, you develop a working model or preview of the product. This model can be used to test and evaluate the functionality, usability and appearance of the product.
• The goal is to iterate on the design and gather feedback to refine the product before launch.

3. Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

• Once the prototype has gone through various design iterations and has reached a satisfactory level of validation, we can proceed to create the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
• The MVP is a simplified, working version of the product that contains only the essential features to solve the target user's problem.
• It is launched in the market to collect real feedback from users and test the acceptance and profitability of the product.
• The MVP's goal is to learn as much as possible from user feedback to guide future development and improve the product

“Without data, you're just another person with an opinion.” - W. Edwards Deming

Conlusions

Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking are essential for developing products that meet the real needs of users. Oplon Networks has integrated these principles into the design of Oplon Secure Access, ensuring an effective and intuitive product. Through constant attention to research and iteration, we are able to create functional and, above all, user-friendly solutions.

We firmly believe that excellent design should improve usability and user experience, making the digital environment more welcoming and productive