Human-centered design is a type of design thinking that involves the belief that all problems are solvable and that the people who face the problems are the key to their solutions. Human-centered designers differ from other problem solvers through their seven mindsets: empathy, optimism, iteration, creative confidence, making, embracing ambiguity, and learning from failure.
- Creative Confidence – Creative confidence is what helps designers make progress. It requires belief in one’s own ideas and trusting one’s intuition to identify new solutions. Human-centered designers find solutions that don’t work as part of the creative process, so it is important to have confidence that continuing to iterate will bring success. As these successes grow, so does the designer’s creative confidence.
- Learning from Failure – Failure is a necessary part of experimentation and designing. It is important to adopt a mindset that views failure in a positive way in order to retain one’s creative confidence as discussed above. Learning from failure allows the designer to approach the problem from new perspectives, take risks, and find new ways to innovate.
- Iteration – Iteration is a key component to design thinking and designing in general. Solving problems is never straightforward and requires taking feedback, refining, and improving. Iteration also saves time in the design process. The designer can approach multiple solutions without investing time and resources into it before being sure it is the best one. An ideal solution often takes several iterations to get right.
- Create a Project Plan – A project plan can help designers get organized, identify their strengths, and start working towards effective solutions. This involves identifying the timeline, staff, budget, skills, and resources necessary for each step of the project. Having this information in one place can help a team stay organized and on track. The project plan can also change as time goes on and goals, deadlines, staff, and other factors may shift.
- Top Five – Top five is a method of brainstorming in which each member of a team identifies the top five ideas that stick out to them. This helps the team strategize, uncover themes, isolate key ideas, and reveal design opportunities. The team should keep the top five ideas on a post-it note or sheet of paper in a visible spot in the workplace so team members can refer back to them as the project evolves.
- Find Themes – Themes help the team identify similarities between ideas that could make for an effective solution. This involves gathering notes from previous interviews, ideation sessions, and analogous inspiration. Finding consistent themes allows the team to sort, organize, and rearrange ideas in order to better identify the most effective solution.
- Create Frameworks – A framework is a visual representation of a system and can be used to make sense of data, highlight key relationships, and develop strategies. A framework is not any one specific visualization. It can be a diagram, relational map, journey map, matrix, etc. It is up to the designer to find a visualization that effectively represents the concept they are working with in a way that team members can easily comprehend. Much like a project plan, frameworks are live documents that can be changed and updates as the project advances.
- Rapid Prototyping – Rapid prototyping is the practice of building just enough to test an idea, and beginning to iterate as soon as one receives feedback. Once the designer has decided which idea to prototype, they want to build their first iteration quickly in order to identify unresolved problems and get initial feedback. If the design has a fatal flaw, it is best to know about it sooner rather than later so the designer can either find a solution or move onto another idea.
- Get Feedback – Honest feedback is absolutely crucial to the design process. Peers, mentors, and clients will all have valuable insight for how to improve a design. Feedback, whether it be positive or negative, is a valuable learning tool. Capturing this feedback and taking it into consideration is an opportunity to push one’s ideas further.
- Build Partnerships – The design process, and more specifically, human-centered design, revolves around a team of people working together. One may find that in the implementation phase, they need to rely on team members and partners more than before. Building relationships is necessary for having successful partnerships and expanding your network of resources. Successful partnerships have parameters that identify what is needed from each person, how much one can reasonably be expected to contribute, and what deadlines there are for each task.