The principles of human-centred design and the related activities have not changed substantially since ISO 13407 was produced and have been validated by ten years of application.
The human-centered approach to design as described in ISO 9241 complements existing systems design approaches. It can be incorporated in approaches as diverse as object-oriented, waterfall and rapid application development.
Human-centered design is an approach to interactive services, products and systems, research, design, development and management that aims to make them usable and useful by focusing on all the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors/ergonomics and usability knowledge and techniques.
This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability; and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance.
There is a substantial body of human factors/ergonomics and usability knowledge about how human-centered design can be organized and used effectively. We aim to make this information available to help those responsible for managing services, products, hardware and software design and re-design processes to identify and plan effective and timely human-centered design activities.