User Experience Innovation: User Centered Design that Works

User Needs vs. Fundamental Human Needs

Researchers recognize a fairly well-defined set of fundamental human needs. These include the need for affection, for leisure, for protection. You would seldom use these human needs directly as the starting point for your innovation, even though in some cases and for some products such needs may be relevant.

Instead, you want user needs expressed as more tangible desires (Figure 4-1), wishes, or even dreams for your specific product. And you want your user needs to already be specific for your target users, reflecting cultural and human differences.

In many cases you can actually relate user needs directly back to fundamental human needs like protection, creation, identity, freedom, and so on. In the example ...