I like to discern between ‘user-friendly’ and ‘user-centric’. To me, user-centric is more about the manner in which I would like to consume IT and is focused on my personalised experience of software; user-friendly is an important part of this experience but its definition often suggests nothing more than a pleasant user interface. My phone and pad ‘apps’, for example, provide me with a personalised IT environment that’s focused on getting the job done – quickly. The interaction with them, their ‘elegant simplicity’ and high degree of automation, helps me focus on what’s important ‘here and now’ without needless involvement of adjacent tasks.
