ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a brief history of user-centered design (UCD), describing how this multidisciplinary field has transformed into the broader field of user-experience design. The chapter describes UCD as an ideal, as well as what UCD methods look like in practice after morphing to meet real-world constraints. The chapter then provides the reader with a real-life application of UCD (a user interface for operators of the Lockheed Martin Marlin Autonomous Underwater Vehicle, a 10-foot-long submersible primarily used to conduct subsea surveys and inspections for the oil and gas industry), describing how the UCD process was tailored to fit within the project's constraints and the ultimate outcome of that process. Finally, the chapter provides insights into where UCD in context is expected to go in the future.
