A Concept-Integrated Human-Centered Design Method: Making Design Decisions Explicit from Requirements to Evaluation

Human-centered design (HCD) provides an iterative framework for understanding contexts of use,specifying user requirements, and producing and evaluating design solutions. However, translatingmultiple, potentially competing requirements into a coherent design direction involves integrativedecisions whose rationale is not necessarily explicit in general descriptions of the HCD process.Conceptual design, design rationale, requirements traceability, and Verification and Validation (V&V) areestablished concerns in design and systems engineering. This working paper does not claim tointroduce those principles. Instead, it proposes a concept-integrated HCD method that connects themthrough a structured sequence of activities and design artifacts. The method distinguishes provisionalInitial Framing from requirements-informed Concept Formation and Refinement, records decisionsabout the relationships among requirements, and links design concepts to governing design directionsand subsequent conceptual design solutions. It also uses V&V perspectives to organize potentialevaluation issues and distinguish revisions to design solutions from reconsideration of the underlyingdesign direction. A hypothetical network management service illustrates the connections amongassumptions, requirements, integrative decisions, concepts, design directions, and review points. Theillustration neither involves actual users nor tests a functioning system. The contribution is adocumented methodological configuration, not evidence of practical effectiveness or superiority overexisting design methods. Empirical feasibility, utility, and applicability in different design contextsremain open questions.