Design is pervasive in our lives, as we spend most of our time interacting with human-made tools, objects, services, and information spaces. All these interactions are mediated through design, through structures and processes which are meant to optimize our relations with our environment. Design then is not only about form, but also about function, purpose and meaning.
User-centered design (UCD) is a process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. User-centered design can be characterised as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyse and foresee how users are likely to use a product, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regard to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively what a first-time user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like.
The chief difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product, rather than forcing the users to change their behaviour to accommodate the product.
Look at page 8 in The Design Of Everyday Things (revised and expanded edition) by Donald A. Norman.
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