User-centered design (UCD) or human-centered design (HCD) has become a recognized element of design theory that is gaining increasing prominence in many areas or disciplines related to design. The aim of this paper is to introduce the concept of HCD/UCD in the areas of design so that it contributes to the communication and development of theories in this area. This paper presents a content analysis of HCD/UCD academic literature and demonstrates a lack of agreement on the use of the term ‘user’ or ‘human’: a significant variation of meaning of the terms used, definitions with distinct levels of abstraction, high variation of elements and distinct preference by the acronym usage. A selection of definitions was analyzed and summarized into a framework that considers all levels of abstraction and proposes seven HCD/UCD elements. Finally, recommendations about the use of this framework to bring researchers close to a common understanding about HCD/UCD are presented. This work contributes to bring together knowledge about the theme under a single umbrella and to integrate design theories and methods based on the concept of HCD/UCD. This will facilitate the transdisciplinary and will build up all the knowledge acquired in a single body of knowledge.

中文翻译：

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为新的设计理论世界重申UCD和HCD的含义

以用户为中心的设计（UCD）或以人为中心的设计（HCD）已成为设计理论的公认要素，在与设计有关的许多领域或学科中，其重要性日益提高。本文的目的是在设计领域介绍HCD / UCD的概念，以便为该领域的理论交流和发展做出贡献。本文介绍了HCD / UCD学术文献的内容分析，并证明在使用“用户”或“人类”一词方面缺乏共识：所用术语含义的显着变化，具有不同抽象级别的定义，高元素的变化和首字母缩写词的不同偏好。分析了一些定义，并将其汇总到一个框架中，该框架考虑了所有抽象级别，并提出了七个HCD / UCD元素。最后，提出了有关使用此框架的建议，以使研究人员对HCD / UCD达成共识。这项工作有助于将有关该主题的知识集中在一起，并基于HCD / UCD的概念整合设计理论和方法。这将促进跨学科的发展，并将在单一知识体系中积累所有知识。