User-centered design is a philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of the end user of an interface or document are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. It is often seen as an offshoot of the usability movement, and a progenitor of the experience design and interaction design movements.
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Approaches to Creating Personas 
You do research to better understand your users, but exactly what is it that you want to find out about them? That's the first question you need to ask, and its answer dictates which research methods you should use, since specific methods are tailored to finding specific types of information.
Mulder, Steve. InformationDesign (2007). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Personas
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It is the job of the information architect to discern the internal structure of content and than give it external form to support users in constructing meaning, in relating the content to their own knowledge, needs, and purposes, and thus making sense of the content.
Soergel, Dagobert. University of Maryland. Articles>Information Design>Rhetoric>User Centered Design
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Are We Giving Readers What They Want, in the Way They Want and Need It?
With all the talk about Web 2.0 and the attendant technologies, are readers actually being better served by documentation now than they were in the past?
DMN Communications (2008). Articles>Documentation>Technical Writing>User Centered Design
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The first step in usability survival is to make sure that your development process is customer centred. This means making sure that customers are involved in the design and evaluation of the system.
Userfocus (2003). Articles>User Centered Design
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Site visitors crave the sense that someone is there, within and behind your Web pages, your emails and newsletters. Dealing with the bare technology of online interactions is a cold experience for many, or even most of us. It makes us feel anxious. Technology isn't warm. It has no heart. It neither understands us, nor cares for us. For many Web sites, whether for businesses or organizations, we simply plug in and play the bare technology - the super-duper means of information delivery. All the site visitor sees and feels is the design, the interface, the links and the clicks. The experience is about as warm and human as banking with an ATM machine.
Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2002). Articles>Web Design>User Centered Design>Usability
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Audience Analysis and Information Design: Creating a Needs Assessment Documentation Strategy
A user needs assessment developed from extensive audience analysis can be used to develop a documentation strategy that effectively meets user needs. This paper provides an overview of the steps required to identify and analyze the various audiences critical to enterprise software documentation and create a needsassessment- based strategy.
Yeats, Dave and Paula Kozlowski. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Audience Analysis
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Audience-Driven Web Design: An Application to Medical Web Sites 
We begin by identifying the problem of defining medical Web site credibility and then identify the gap in Web design research, a gap that fails to identify or address specific audience needs in Web site design. We then present our process for identifying and fulfilling specific audience needs, describe a framework, and present a case study in audience-driven Web design using the framework to guide the discussion.
Swenson, Jenni, Helen Constantinides and Laura J. Gurak. Technical Communication Online (2002). Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Biomedical
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Audio signals also help us interact with our environment. Some of these signals are designed: We wake to the buzz of the alarm clock, answer the ringing telephone, and race to the kitchen when the shrill beep of the smoke alarm warns us that dinner is burning on the stove. Other audio signals are not deliberately designed, but help us nonetheless. For instance, we may know the proper sound of the central air conditioning starting, the gentle hum of the PC fan, or the noise of the refrigerator. So, when these systems go awry, we notice it immediately--something doesn't sound right. Likewise, an excellent mechanic might be able to tell what is wrong with a car engine just by listening to it run.
Follett, Jonathan. UXmatters (2007). Design>User Centered Design>User Experience>Audio
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Balancing Visual and Structural Complexity in Interaction Design
Usability is based on principles such as 'Less is more' and 'Keep it simple, stupid'. But there is more to simplicity than meets the eye. By reducing visual complexity at the cost of structural simplicity, you will give your users a hard time understanding and navigating the content of a web site.
GUUUI (2003). Design>Web Design>Interactive>User Centered Design
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Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings
Users rarely look at display advertisements on websites. Of the four design elements that do attract a few ad fixations, one is unethical and reduces the value of advertising networks.
Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2007). Design>Web Design>Ethics>User Centered Design
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Basics of Conducting Focus Groups
Focus groups are a powerful means to evaluate services or test new ideas. Basically, focus groups are interviews, but of 6-10 people at the same time in the same group. One can get a great deal of information during a focus group session.
McNamara, Carter. Free Management Library. Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Focus Groups
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Behavioral Concepts: Effectiveness and User Response
What are hazards and why do we need them? Best practices for key elements of hazards.
Guren, Leah. In Other Words (2006). Presentations>Usability>User Centered Design
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Being User-Centered When Implementing a UCD Process
For those who are interested in usability – whether long-time advocates or newly introduced – this is a good time to introduce a user-centered design process.
Quesenbery, Whitney. WQusability (2001). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Usability
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Benutzertests durch Spurenverwertung
In most cases a technical writer cannot do any user tests. If you have access to the user log of a web server you can derive quite interesting facts like how often and how long a specific page was viewed and how the surfers navigated.
von Obert, Alexander. Techwriter.de (2003). (German) Design>Web Design>User Centered Design>Log Analysis
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Currently, “user-centered design” is the touted methodoloay for software development for many companies. To many of us, it’s merely a more global articulation of what we have always believed to be the preferred methodology. Technical communicators and HF professionals have critical roles to play as part of a multi-disciplinary user-centered design team. (1) This paper presents some viewpoints on how technical communicators and HF professionals can increase each other's effectiveness.
Rauch, Thyra L. STC Proceedings (1997). Presentations>User Centered Design>Collaboration
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Beyond Usability Testing: User-Centred Design and Organisational Maturity
What lies beyond usability testing? User-centred design, based on ISO standards. We discuss this approach and the organisational maturity needed to put it into action.
Philip, Ross and Rourke, Chris. Mercurytide (2006). Articles>Usability>User Centered Design
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Beyond User-Centered Design and User Experience: Designing for User Performance
The shortcomings and limitations of user-centered and user experience design are considered and contrasted with usage-centered design. The iterative, trial-and-error approach of traditional user-centered approaches is argued to lead to excessive dependence on user testing and user approval, leading to overly conservative designs. By contrast, model-driven approaches based on fine-grained task models have a proven record of leading to dramatic improvements in user performance through innovative designs.
Constantine, Larry L. Constantine and Lockwood (2006). Articles>User Centered Design>User Experience>EPSS
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There is an astonishing amount of disbelief that the users of web pages have learned to scroll and that they do so regularly. Holding on to this disbelief--this myth that users won't scroll to see anything below the fold--is doing everyone a great disservice, most of all our users.
Tarquini, Milissa. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Design>Web Design>Information Design>User Centered Design
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This Indian usability blog attempts to bridge the gap between user requirements research and UI design.
Pillai, Muthu. Blogspot (2004). Resources>Usability>User Centered Design>Blogs
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Boxes and Arrows is the definitive source for the complex task of bringing architecture and design to the digital landscape. There are various titles and professions associated with this undertaking—information architecture, information design, interaction design, interface design—but when we looked at the work that we were actually doing, we found a “community of practice” with similarities in outlook and approach that far outweighed our differences. Boxes and Arrows is a peer-written journal dedicated to discussing, improving and promoting the work of this community, through the sharing of exemplary technique, innovation and informed opinion.
Boxes and Arrows. Journals>Web Design>User Centered Design>Interaction Design
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Branding and the User Interface, Part 2: Tips on New Media Branding: Behavior and Color
A look at how branding differs between traditional applications, like printed corporate collateral, and emerging new media applications, such as software user interfaces, with a focus on behavior and color.
Fortin, Nate. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>User Interface>User Centered Design
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It takes research, humility, and skill to truly understand your customers well enough to serve them better than your competitors.
Cooper, Alan. Cooper Interaction Design (2002). Design>Web Design>Consulting>User Centered Design
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A Bright Idea: Web-Based Surveys
If you’re looking for a quick, simple, and cost-efficient way to survey your members, you may want to try a Web-based survey service such as Zoomerang. Zoomerang offers users the ability to create and design their own surveys, send the surveys to targeted groups, and download the results, which Zoomerang tabulates.
McEwen, Kathryn. Tieline (2003). Articles>User Centered Design>Methods>Surveys
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This paper identifies challenges for obtaining managerial buy-in for a user-centered design process using performance tasks. Initially, it presents lessons learned from a case study. Next, it provides strategies (leadership, persuasion, organizational conflict, active listening, and teamwork) for obtaining buy-in from work team and their constituencies. Last, it concludes with recommendations for obtaining buy-in from managers.
Carey, Jennifer and Gloria A. Reece. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Project Management>User Centered Design
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Building a Better Launchpad: A Case Study in Helping Users to Complete a Complex Task
A launchpad is a graphical user interface used for tasks that have too many steps or are too complex to fit into a single wizard. The launchpad acts as a central access point for launching a series of related wizards or dialogs, each of which completes one step of the overall task. Our launchpad design further aids novice users by providing a graphical and interactive preview of the steps required to complete the overall task, such as installing or configuring a component. This paper focuses on the process used to create the IBM Launchpad. The paper briefly describes the final design of the launchpad and concludes with process recommendations based on our experiences.
Pupons Wickham, Daina. STC Proceedings (2001). Design>User Centered Design>User Interface
