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Henry Glassford Comments 3/4 

GIANG, YOUR ESSAY INSPIRES ME. Creative thinking is the essence of life,  and so...SO much more. When you spoke on how you cant move forward without setting your own opinions to the side and giddying up and getting to the bag! Absolutely brilliant! I also enjoyed the work cited page you used, very intellectual and insightful. What i thought was especially cool was the part you said about finding positive critiques inside of your own critiques, and figuring out how to help the person your critiquing develop your critique into a new idea. All in all, 10/10 essay.

Creative Thinking

Arguably, everything we do requires creative thinking. In Anne Manning’s article for harvard.edu,“4 Ways Creative Thinking Drives Professional Success”, she explains that professional success includes seeing with fresh eyes, making no assumptions, spewing ideas like confetti at the Super Bowl, and starting positive when it comes to critiques.

Manning explains that in order to sharpen your creative thinking skills, “fresh observations are the result of noticing and recording the details of situations”. Being able to look at things with different perspectives allows you to see things in ways you haven’t thought about it before. Without having an open mind to things, you are forced to set aside your own opinions and feelings about something in order to expand your thinking. When people have a set way of doing things, they completely neglect other possibilities for new ideas. By recording details of situations, you are able to truly assess its pros and cons which, in turn, allows for you to be able to come up with alternatives and solutions.

The second piece of advice is to not make assumptions. When making assumptions about something, you cannot view it in its entirety. “Challeng[ing] what you know” lets you put your own opinions aside. Manning displays this with a simple exercise. Come up with a list of five new salad dressings. By eliminating your assumptions about salad dressing, — i.e. it’s cold and liquid — you can come up with many more ideas for salad dressing than what’s typically thought of or have been done. For example, salad dressing can be in a pouch you heat up in the microwave instead. Diving into a new idea without making assumptions about its precedents gives room for newer ideas to formulate.

“Spewing ideas like confetti at the Super Bowl” seems like an odd piece of advice, but it is very helpful. In the creative process, no idea is a bad idea. The more ideas you can generate the better. Something that seems like a bad idea at first may be able to stem into something great with more time and effort. Even small ideas are good and can be combined into new ideas.

Lastly, Manning advises us to start positive when critiquing. Thinking positive helps to fuel morale. Realizing that there are good ideas on the table can help you realize that your creativity is getting somewhere. “It’s easy to crush an idea” because finding faults in something and throwing it away is easier than amending it to be better. By starting off criticism positively, it forces you to run with an idea until it is acceptable. Starting out with negative critiques will decrease motivation and drive, killing your creative thinking.

In conclusion, creative thinking is crucial to professional success. Anne Manning suggests four ways in order to maximize productivity. Creative thinking is necessary to everything you do from work to school to leisure. It’s important to take into consideration the way you are using your creativity in order to produce the best content that you are capable of.

Works Cited

Manning, Anne. “4 Ways Creative Thinking Drives Professional Success”. Harvard.edu. https://www.extension.harvard.edu/professional-development/blog/4-ways-creative-thinking-drives-professional-success. Accessed 29 April 2019.

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Henry Glassford Comments 2/4 //  All in all, i think that your essay correctly and easily conveys what human centered design truly is. I like the structure of your essay and that you proceeded to explain what human centered design is. Followed by elaborating on Human Centered Design, i like that you explained the 3 steps of human centered design. Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. Everything was clear and precise. I also liked the sources you used. They were very interesting and give examples and insights to what human centered design really is. 

Human-Centered Design

Greta Marney

Palak Modi

ARTC 1302

Blog #1

Human-Centered Design

Human-Centered Design occurs when a designer takes into account the physical or mental capabilities of humans, especially when intended for a specific audience. Medium.com describes this design method as, “…a process, mindset, and approach to solving complex problems”. Human-centered designs end up being the ones that are most useful in our daily lives and leave the biggest impact on the audience and their lives. The concept proves that there is more to design than making things aesthetically pleasing; design is also about creating things that are useful in our daily life. Just because something is beautiful does not mean it is a successful design. Wired.com makes the connection that colors and images are just one small part of creating a product that can be considered well-designed.

The main focus in human-centered design is on creative problem solving. This doesn’t necessarily require a completely original idea, but can simply be an improvement of another concept to better fit the needs of humans. Wired.com writes, “When done well, a human-centered approach fuels the creation of products that resonate more deeply with an audience…”.

The organization IDEO, a big promoter of human-centered design, profess that there are three steps in the process: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Beginning with simply gathering ideas while being open to unusual possibilities, and going onto brainstorming, and finally into implementing what was learned into the design. Even the craziest of ideas can be useful in the early stages of the process, and should always be considered since it may lead to another great idea. By eliminating the bad elements of an idea and boosting the good elements, a crazy idea can become a useful design. Although, one of the most vital elements of human-centered design is adaptability. Once the design is tested and can be observed in use, it is important to be open to adjustments or improvements where necessary. This way, the design can slowly but surely evolve into an innovative and successful composition.

Another big part of human centered design is feedback. Being able to evaluate how a product or design performs and then editing accordingly helps tailor aspects to fit the exact needs of the intended viewer or user. Getting various perspectives and the ability to be flexible during the creative process ensures a quality human-centered design. This can be achieved with a simple prototype that evolves into a complete design eventually. The input of others is what truly allows a designer to evaluate the success of their creation. Overall, human-centered design is all about innovative solutions that are discovered by truly understanding people and the human condition, and how we can improve our lives. Human-centered designs are some of the most useful and innovative creations that truly make a difference in our lives. It is a technique that can be used by anyone, and should be used by everyone. It only serves to benefit the human race since the designs are for everybody. It is a concept that should be taught and practiced more often.

Sources: 

Design, DC. “What Is Human-Centered Design?” Medium, DC DESIGN, 14 Aug. 2017, medium.com/dc-design/what-is-human-centered-design-6711c09e2779.

“Our Approach.” IDEO.org, www.ideo.org/approach.

Thomsen, Dave. “Why Human-Centered Design Matters.” Wired, Conde Nast, 7 Aug. 2015, www.wired.com/insights/2013/12/human-centered-design-matters/.

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Henry Glassford comments 1/4 ///  All in all, i believe that you communicated what human centered design is effectively and clearly. I enjoyed reading and looking over your sources, lots of interesting info. I especially agree with your statements about hoe human centered design being all around us. I also agree with your views on art vs design itself. All in all i think that you conveyed a message of what human centered design should be, despite people that like to put things like art and design in the same boxes. 

Human-Centered Design

According to designkit.org, human-centered design is the “process that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs”. People often think of design as something based solely on aesthetics when in reality, it contains many different elements as well. Human-centered design focuses on not only the way things look but also the practically of a product or item.

In a WIRED article by Dave Thomsen, he argues that human-centered design is important and crucial to the creative process and problem solving in everyday life. In 1894, W.K. Kellogg wanted to find a new way to make breakfast more easily digestible for hospital patients and ended up changing the way people eat breakfast forever. Thomson writes that a misconception that he often hears is that design is solely based on making something look pretty when in reality it’s that and much more. Human-centered design consists of many aspects that aren’t as shallow as simply “looking pretty”. It is a series of critical thinking and problem solving in order to find answers to questions customers don’t even realize they’re asking when they pick and choose which products to buy and to not buy. We, as people, value design because it is eye-catching. But also, we value the simplicity and efficiency of the way things work.

Human-centered design takes into consideration the aesthetic views as well as its practicality and innovativeness. Thomsen also states that a “well done approach” drives engagement and growth within the audience. For example, many companies like Warby Parker, Pinterest, Google, and eBay are all design-driven to enhance the user’s experience. It pans towards the customer or user’s views as well as creates a sense of practicality. This has everything to do with the way that the website or app is designed. Human-centered design can only be achieved through the constant flow of innovation.

It’s easy to categorize art into a box of pretty, something meant for us to view and enjoy. Design, however, is carefully thought out and intentionally created each time for the users’ experiences. Even if something seems visually appealing doesn’t mean it doesn’t have depth. There’s a reason people are more drawn to visually aesthetic things. When things look nice, people are more likely to buy or use it. The aesthetic aspect not only draws people in, but serves as a means of convenience. For example, with designing something like a website, when things are laid out with a purpose and reason, it is easier to navigate the page versus if there was no order or direction. Human-centered design is panned towards–shockingly–humans. The way things are designed is so important, and people tend to overlook the ways it makes life a little easier.

Human-centered design is all around us. Everything being made in order to benefit the lives and convenience of everyday living can be considered an outcome of human-centered design. It is not just art for art’s sake but for human’s sake.

Works Cited

Thomsen, Dave. “Why Human-Centered Design Matters”. WIRED. https://www.wired.com/insights/2013/12/human-centered-design-matters/. Accessed 27 February 2019.

“What Is Human-Centered Design?” Design Kit, www.designkit.org/human-centered-design. Accessed 3 March 2019.

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The Evolution of Human-Centered Design by Henry Glassford

According to ��The design of everyday things” by Don Norman”, human centered design is a design and management framework that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.

Human centered design has been around for hundreds of years. Essentially, It helps people help themselves. Its a creative way to solve problems. It normally starts with people, and ends with an innovative solution that is tailored to someone's needs. It involves a step by step process. Normally, you need to be able to understand the people you’re trying to reach. This will help you with designing from their perspective, which is very useful. Human centered design is a great example of how you think, and what you can do with the information you’ve thought up. According to a TED TALK by Evan Fried, which i found on the resources tab in my 1302 TRACS page, human centered design technically has 3 steps to it. Inspiration, Ideation, and implementation. The inspiration phase involves learning when possible and opening up your mind to creative ideas and possibilities. As long as you stay true to whoever your designing for and continue to listen in on their perspective, this plan seems pretty much foolproof! All the ideation phase consists of primarily coming up with new ideas, and trying to branch out those ideas to make new NEW ideas. Constantly be trying to design, refine, and branch off. This phase will eventually boil down to crossing out the bad and refining the good. Next, you would go about by building a prototype, which can/will make your idea tangible. It also can give you something to put right back into the hands of the people you’re designing for, just to let them know how your progress is coming! You need their input to visualize and see if your solution is on target.You will need to keep integrating, testing feedback, and more. This will make all the difference in the world. The implementation phase will mostly involve building business partnerships, and implementing and getting your idea/solution out and into the world. Anyone can practice human centered design, and EVERYONE can learn and grow from the outcomes.

All in all, human centered design is a great way to solve problems with creativity, brain power, input, and refining your work! In 2012, Innovating for people: Handbook of human-centered design methods. (2012). Pittsburgh, PA: LUMA Institute, LLC. was released and it changed human centered design forever! The rationale for adoption and a new international standard were created. People like this and design firms like IDEO are legends of the design industry for these reasons, they are pioneering a whole new creative way to brainstorm and problem solve. To me, that is one of the coolest things ever. People are naturally creative and like to bounce ideas off each other, so a brainstorming technique like this is a near perfect solution to group problem solving / brainstorming. Human centered design is a revolutionary technique that isnt going anywhere anytime soon.