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Human-Centered Design

Human centered design is the method of designing based on understanding a person and their needs rather than working solely off of your own thoughts and methods. It gets you out into the world testing your ideas on real people rather than thinking it over on your own. This method is perfect for any project because the public's opinion and perception of your design will always matter.

This method can be broken down into four core principles. Inspiration, ideation, prototyping, and implementation. When creating anything feedback is key. You have to get out and discuss with others to make sure you are doing everything just the way it needs to be done. Even when you are in a rush to get something done it is usually faster to go out and get feedback rather than working from scratch on your own because you aren’t risking having to redo the whole design after it has failed to meet expectations.

Inspiration is arguably the hardest stage because you’re starting from scratch developing your design challenge. Team discussion is key here. Even if you are working on this project on your own it is important to discuss with someone who understands the topic to further develop the idea. In this stage you will also make yourself a research and interview guide to clearly lay out the process so everything runs smoothly.

Ideation is the step you will finally go out to interview, study, and discuss to develop the design. Discuss your basic idea to create understanding so others can give you insight. Once you have collected enough insight you will cluster that into themes. Then take those themes and turn them into statements to ask how you might further develop the idea.

Prototyping is when you will take the information you have gathered and brainstorm. Sort through the information and select your best idea. Once you have chosen something you are confident about hold another discussion to determine what exactly to prototype. Start work on your prototype and when it is done, once again, get feedback. Make sure others have a use for your design. The point is for it to be helpful to them.

Now you will make a plan to implement your idea. Create an action plan. Where and how you will pitch this design as well as choosing a perfect audience. Refine your pitch to fit the audience and any other circumstances. And finally, make that pitch. Share the solution you have come up with and really pay attention to the reactions and responses you get back since the work may not be done yet. You will reflect on those responses to further refine your design if need be. Discuss with others on how to move forward from this point.

Human centered design is much like design thinking in that it is a great way to solve of even avoid creative block all together. The main difference being that human interaction is the core of this method. The input of others is important for so many reasons. Mainly for insuring your design is perfectly suited for its purpose but also to keep you productive in new ways you may have never thought of. Working together is all around the best way to innovate today.

Sources:

Design Kit

http://www.designkit.org/human-centered-design

Wired- Dave Thomsen, Wanderful Media

https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/12/human-centered-design-matters/

+ACUMEN

https://www.plusacumen.org/courses/introduction-human-centered-design

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Design Thinking

Design thinking is a relatively new way of thinking. It’s an effective way of creating content in a way that will satisfy all parties included. I had a difficult time finding one specific description of how the process works, but the best example I found breaks it down into five different steps.

The first step is discovery. Realizing you’ve stumbled upon something really challenging for you and then figuring out how to begin to approach it. This means you’re not immediately trying to jump to the creating phase. You’re just figuring out a good starting point for your process.

Next is interpretation. At this point you’ve begun to figure out a good process to work with but you need to work on how to interpret it. Figuring out how to use it to best overcome your challenge. From here you can finally move on to producing the beginning of your product.

After you’ve interpreted a good process you will start on your next step, Ideation. You have a process, you know how it will work, but what do you create? In this phase you will be working with different beginnings of ideas until something works and you finally have a solid idea.

You will start experimentation from here. You take your idea and you run with it. Use it to build different creations. You just play with it until you create something you’re proud of and something your client will enjoy as well.

Now finally you will take your creation and evolve it. Finalize it into a product worth selling or worth simply showing to the world. Every step of this process could be specified to different fields of work but these terms were chosen specifically because design thinking isn’t just for designers.

From any work field you can think through these steps when you hit a wall, discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, evolution, companies everywhere are now including this process because it’s proven effective anytime a creator of any sort gets stuck. It may just be the cure to creative block.

Sources:

Design Thinking for Educators

https://designthinkingforeducators.com/design-thinking/

Stanford

https://dschool.stanford.edu/about/#how-we-do-it-image

A Medium Corporation

https://medium.com/design-ibm/design-thinking-not-just-for-designers-87cda32b0799 by Kelly Churchill