A survey of user-centered design practice in China

This paper is the first time to report the results of a recent survey of user-centered design (UCD) practice in China, conducted in 2007. The survey involved over four hundred respondents who were at the User Friendly conference or attended other UCD related activities. The survey identified, e.g. practitioners' demographics and experience, the type of organization, the usage frequency of methods that are commonly used in usability community, and UCD process and assessment on it. The results indicate, UCD practice in China industries is very young, and growing fast; currently almost all UCD practice are applied in IT related business; practitioners need improvement on UCD knowledge. These findings have implications for solving the problem that how to use and integrate UCD methods and techniques into product development process.