User Centred Design: Techniques to improve the user experience

User centred design techniques help you understand your users better and design effective, efficient and satisfying products and systems. The benefits include:

- increased sales
- improved customer satisfaction
- better productivity
- increased sales conversion rates
- projects completed to time and budget
- no expensive last minute revisions.

This course is accredited by the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors, ideal for continuous professional development.

Who should attend?
If you are involved in specifying how a system or product will look and function this course will make it easier for you to do your job effectively. Project managers, engineers, designers, developers and analysts from IT, commercial or marketing functions can all benefit from learning about the user centred design process.

What skills and information will you learn?
After successfully completing this user centred design training course, you will be able to:

- Appreciate how understanding your customers will make it easier to do your work
- Build pictures of your customers, their environments, and what they want to do with your product
- Incorporate usability principles into your development process for any system or product, even those with very tight deadlines.
- Apply international standards in user centred design (ISO 9241)
- Track projects to ensure they remain user and business focused

Course content
This course can be customised to meet the overall needs of your business, and those of specific project teams, using examples from your own business. It provides theory, case studies and examples as well as hands-on activities for participants to practice their new skills. A comprehensive course manual is provided.

The content of a typical user centred design course includes:

- Applying the User Centred Design approach to your business
- Business benefits of a User Centred Design approach
- Guidelines and Standards
- Knowing your target users and capturing their requirements
- Translating requirements to conceptual design and release criteria
- Prototyping techniques
- Measuring and testing usability

Course information and how to book
This two day user centred design training course is offered as either an in-house or a public course. If you have more than five people who need training, then the in-house course will be most suitable. The maximum number of participants per course is 12 and prices start from £275 + VAT per head. Customisation to use processes and examples from your own business costs from £500 per course.

There is a short assessment at the end of the course. Participants who complete this successfully are awarded an accredited certificate by the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors.

Public courses
Our public courses are held at our offices in the Strand and cost £675 + VAT per person.

Dates for 2011 are:

February 9-10
March 30-31
May 25-26
September 7-8
November 16-17

Please contact Sedef Gavaz on 020 7240 3388 or email sedef@system-concepts.com to discuss the course or reserve your place.

What did previous participants think?
The tutor was extremely flexible (i.e. If more time was needed, more time was taken). Her presentation (slides and orally) was engaging and ensured that interest was kept. The pace of the course was excellent. I was extremely impressed with how the course was tailored to our company - never seen it to this extreme before, and it made the course content much more meaningful. Can I come again?”

Very enthusiastic, really liked that it was tailored to our specific needs, very practical in showing how it can be used in work.”

Friendly, knowledgeable and provided clear instructions. I am starting at the front end of a new project next week and will find this an excellent grounding to get the project going.”

Enthusiastic and informative. A thorough approach to the requirements of the team in training.”

Enthusiastic, made the course interesting. Useful handouts/workbooks which can be used for reference on future projects.”