Imagine you’re designing a product, but you’re having trouble discovering your end-users needs. You’re also afraid of deploying a product that misses their requirements. Fortunately, Coursera offers, Human Centered Design, an affordable MOOC created for people interested in learning how to design for human needs.

Discover Latent Needs

For my first assignment, I was required to interview a user’s latent transportation needs. As a Technical Writer, I’ve found interviewing end-users to be helpful, especially before creating user manuals or guides. Interviewing can save you lots rework time and improves a document’s usefulness.

Design for Changing Needs

This interviewing task also taught me that product designs have to be dynamic. Designers have to factor in planning for the unknowns like time. Take Apple’s iPhone for example. At first glance, this design seems simple, but look again. This time think about the number of design iterations it undergone. For almost nine years, there’s been an iPhone release. Now think about the number of scheduled releases to fix bugs or provide enhancements.

This quick analysis shows us that the iPhone model changed as its user’s requirements changed. Interviewing users may be the key to discovering users needs, but it’s doesn’t guarantee it’s vitality. No, survival rests with the fittest. The designs that factor in the evolving needs of humans users.

I’ve included my Transportation Script below for your viewing pleasure. I recorded, edited, and uploaded the video with Screencast-O-Matic. If you’re interested in a How-To blog post comment below. Also if you enjoyed this post, visit here Tuesday, November 3 ET for my post on Storyboarding.