What is human-centred design?
Ultimately, we are people designing for people. Design thinking is a process, mindset and approach to solving complex problems. So, the philosophy of human-centred design is essentially the best problem-solving ideology to incorporate into all purposeful design. It is personally one Puraest embodies with everything we create. Human-centred design empowers an individual or team to design products, experiences, systems and services that acknowledge and address the core needs of those who experience the problem. It is a fanatical focus on putting oneself into the shoes of the consumer, enabling you to understand the perspective of the person who would experience the problem, their needs, and establish whether the solution is truly effective in meeting their needs.
Here is the human-centred practice we incorporate into all of our designs:
“People ignore designs that ignore people” — Frank Chimero
Here is the human-centred practice we incorporate into all of our designs:
01 | EMPATHISE
Empathy is by far the strongest asset in a designer's toolkit - we actually believe it to be one of our superpowers. Empathy is about understanding the problem by immersing yourself in the community that will be affected by your design. Designers spend time talking directly with those who experience a problem, observing how their environments work, and consulting experts on the issue to fully grasp all the challenges that need to be overcome in order to create a solution. This stage, and the design process as a whole, is about asking questions instead of making assumptions about why things are the way they are. Those who can adopt a “learner’s mindset” when approaching problems that affect other people will have the greatest success in creating solutions that make an impact.
02 | DEFINE
After learning as much as you can about the issue you’re looking to solve, define the problem by focusing on the key action that you want to accomplish. A good human-centred design will always be asking why, why is this problem so important to solve. The answer to these questions is the true problem you want to focus on. After learning as much as you can about the issue you’re looking to solve, define the problem into one single statement. With this statement, designers can come up with a variety of potential solutions. This statement will act as the ideology that the team can repeatedly refer back to throughout the process to ensure that they’re actually tackling all aspects of the problem.
03 | IDEATE
Now, that you have a better understanding of the perspective of the person who experiences the problem from your work in the empathy phase and having defined an actionable problem during the define stage, it’s brainstorm time. Literally, jot down as many solutions to the defined problem as possible - there is no such thing as a good or bad idea at this stage. Have fun with it, you can be as wacky or wild as you like - we want to stretch your creative muscles and not be limited by judgement. Often a seemingly far-fetched idea can be scaled back to create the ideal solution. We also encourage you to involve the real people that experience these problems in their daily lives. This will bring nuances to light that you wouldn’t gain from typical research or brainstorming and can allow you to tap into something extra special to inspire the solution.
04 | EXPERIMENT
Now is the time to bring the chosen ideas to life and test them out with the people who live with the problem. This is a good practice and an important stage for designers and participants to incorporate into the development of the ultimate solution. Having multiple prototypes and experimenting allows you to see which one is best suited to meet the needs of the person you are designing for. Ask yourself, your team and the participants what - what is and isn’t working? What isn’t working? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Workshop each idea as a collective and analyse it as if it were out in the real world.
05 | EVOLVE
This is where designers take the flaws, weaknesses, and gaps in the design that they have pinpointed in the experiment phase and improve it along the way. Even once it is out in the market, you should continuously questioning it efficacy and looking evolve it to be the best it can possibly be in connecting and solving the problem. Continue to ask the people experiencing it - What do they like about it? What don’t they like about it? Why is that? If you can look at this as an opportunity to learn more about what the best solution would look like for those who need it, you’ll be able to produce a solution that has significantly more uptake than one where you forced your ideas through and rush it. Good design takes time and deep consideration.
If you are in the business of good business then we would love to hear from you and help you create impact through human-centred design.
Empathy is by far the strongest asset in a designer's toolkit - we actually believe it to be one of our superpowers. Empathy is about understanding the problem by immersing yourself in the community that will be affected by your design. Designers spend time talking directly with those who experience a problem, observing how their environments work, and consulting experts on the issue to fully grasp all the challenges that need to be overcome in order to create a solution. This stage, and the design process as a whole, is about asking questions instead of making assumptions about why things are the way they are. Those who can adopt a “learner’s mindset” when approaching problems that affect other people will have the greatest success in creating solutions that make an impact.
02 | DEFINE
After learning as much as you can about the issue you’re looking to solve, define the problem by focusing on the key action that you want to accomplish. A good human-centred design will always be asking why, why is this problem so important to solve. The answer to these questions is the true problem you want to focus on. After learning as much as you can about the issue you’re looking to solve, define the problem into one single statement. With this statement, designers can come up with a variety of potential solutions. This statement will act as the ideology that the team can repeatedly refer back to throughout the process to ensure that they’re actually tackling all aspects of the problem.
03 | IDEATE
Now, that you have a better understanding of the perspective of the person who experiences the problem from your work in the empathy phase and having defined an actionable problem during the define stage, it’s brainstorm time. Literally, jot down as many solutions to the defined problem as possible - there is no such thing as a good or bad idea at this stage. Have fun with it, you can be as wacky or wild as you like - we want to stretch your creative muscles and not be limited by judgement. Often a seemingly far-fetched idea can be scaled back to create the ideal solution. We also encourage you to involve the real people that experience these problems in their daily lives. This will bring nuances to light that you wouldn’t gain from typical research or brainstorming and can allow you to tap into something extra special to inspire the solution.
04 | EXPERIMENT
Now is the time to bring the chosen ideas to life and test them out with the people who live with the problem. This is a good practice and an important stage for designers and participants to incorporate into the development of the ultimate solution. Having multiple prototypes and experimenting allows you to see which one is best suited to meet the needs of the person you are designing for. Ask yourself, your team and the participants what - what is and isn’t working? What isn’t working? What are the strengths and weaknesses? Workshop each idea as a collective and analyse it as if it were out in the real world.
05 | EVOLVE
This is where designers take the flaws, weaknesses, and gaps in the design that they have pinpointed in the experiment phase and improve it along the way. Even once it is out in the market, you should continuously questioning it efficacy and looking evolve it to be the best it can possibly be in connecting and solving the problem. Continue to ask the people experiencing it - What do they like about it? What don’t they like about it? Why is that? If you can look at this as an opportunity to learn more about what the best solution would look like for those who need it, you’ll be able to produce a solution that has significantly more uptake than one where you forced your ideas through and rush it. Good design takes time and deep consideration.
If you are in the business of good business then we would love to hear from you and help you create impact through human-centred design.
