Why designers can't understand their users Verhoef, L.W.M.

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Why designers can't understand their users

Verhoef, L.W.M.

Citation

Verhoef, L. W. M. (2007, September 19). Why designers can't understand their users.

Human Efficiency, Utrecht. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/12347

Version: Corrected Publisher’s Version

License: Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the

Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden

Downloaded from: https://hdl.handle.net/1887/12347

Note: To cite this publication please use the final published version (if applicable).

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Curriculum Vitae 227

Curriculum Vitae

Leonard Verhoef was born the 21^st of January 1950 in Utrecht. After primary school and teacher training college (1971) he studied educational psychology (Universiteit Utrecht, 1975) and applied experimental psychology (Universiteit Utrecht, 1986). He performed research on the development of human thinking and the implementation of that knowledge in mathematics at school. As a psychologist at Netherlands Railways he was involved in the evaluation and development of several systems for train traffic control, drivers of high speed trains and passengers information systems. He is the intellectual ‘father’ of the interface of several generations train ticket vending machine. Another main project he was extensively involved with was the European Train Control System. This system enables the driver of a high speed train to understand what all computers in the cab are doing and at the same time to control the train in a save, efficient and comfortable way.

For more than twenty years now, he is work ing as an independent consultant in the application of psychological knowledge in all kinds systems (domotica, electronic banking, GUI, management information systems, process control, public transport information systems for passengers, traffic control, way finding, web). In all these projects he tried to maintain a psychological approach, even when the approach of the project was practical or technological.

• The methodology applied is reported in the thesis 'Why designers can't understand their users, developing a systematic approach using cognitive psychology’.

• He applied this methodology in the book: ‘GUI, webdesign, psychologie en human efficiency’ describing how to unenslave Windows users. Several hundreds of designers participated in a seminar on that subject.

• Another application is ‘Public information systems, psychology human efficiency’ describing how to present information on complex systems to passengers, drivers, tourists and other humans that get lost in the information presented in streets and stations.

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Why designers can’t understand their users

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• Now he is working on ‘How to organise our life in a technical future’

that specifies daily life using technology disconnected from today’s interfaces and completely driven by the characteristics of psychological processes.