Icentered is a viable option for establishing a new web of life for each user through different lenses for user centric approaches. User centricity looks at the individual as the center of systems designed around the user and offers a new vantage point for web based relations. As the web’s ubiquity becomes a given and an increasingly growing part of interactions is web based, the issue of user centricity takes a more significant meaning, not just as a design principle. In 21st century web and business culture, user centricity and trust become essential elements, combining philosophical, social, economic, technological and design approaches.
Icentered believes that once the user is truly at the center, user centricity requires balancing the interests of all parties involved, users, providers, institutions and architecture designers, by looking at all as equal partners and respecting the rights and interests of all, through transparent mechanisms that enhance trust.
Icentered takes a prismatic view of the individual as the hard core nucleus of any user centered system. It represents the individual in the conceptualization of a user centric blueprint. How the world, interactions and relations should be seen through this lens, once the users are really at the center, with the reins of control in their hands.
Icentered focuses on the user centered prism through the user’s lens, on the individuality of each user, where reversing the paradigm to put the individual at the center is natural. Users’ data, users’ context, belong to them. Users actually own it and they are the only ones who can proactively manage their privacy and sharing, the author stated.
With this new user centric approach, Icentered.com elaborates more on the fundamental set of values and concepts that are at the heart of Icentric blueprints:
• Open ended systems, interoperability protocols, design premises.
• User control over data, privacy, identity management…
• User controlled data portability
• Transparency
• Users own conversations, interactions, privacy, and sharing
• Simple, intuitive usage design and inclusive user experiences for the weaker digital populations.
User centricity in existing paradigms is based to a large extent on top down siloed approaches that claim to be focused on the user, but confuse users with consumers from a corporate/institutional point of view. It is motivated by hegemony wars and business dominance of corporate and service providers, that do all they can to cultivate approaches that put constraints on customers’ disengagement, as they try to keep their customers captive for corporate profit building plans. It is in complete contradiction to the open, free, and transparent spirit and culture of the web and of us, its users.
For more on Icentricity and user centric approach visit Icentered.com
