Let's say you have to get a gift for a friend. The first thing that you're likely going to do is think about what they want. If you don't know, you might ask some people what they're into, you might look at websites to see what people their age or with their interests might like, or poke around at stores and see what's out there. Chances are, you'll get some ideas that might be good for them and decide that some others are not. You'll probably think about the promising options, considering how much you think your friend might like the gift, how much it costs, and if you can get the right thing in time. You'll make a decision based on these factors and move forward. This is human-centered design.
So at it's simplest, human-centered design is a way of understanding people's needs to solve problems and create solutions to meet those needs.
There are two foundational parts of HCD that you do when you're considering a gift for a friend or designing a product & service offering strategic roadmap for your company for the next 5 years. The first, the Balanced Breakthrough model, is a mindset to adopt to make sure that you are always choosing ideas that people want, are technically feasible, and that can earn money. The second part is a process that requires considering all of the possible options before choosing one.
The mindset to adopt is the Balanced Breakthrough model, where desirability (what people want and need) is balanced by feasibility & viability.
- Desirability: Maybe obviously, is we always start with humans. Putting your users, whether they are consumers, customers, partners, members, or anyone you are trying to create a solution for. This is what is desirable.
- Feasibility: Usually means what is technically possible in the world or within your capabilities.
- Viability: What's going to make you money or be the most cost effective.
These parts need to be balanced. If you decide on something that is very desirable but not feasible or is too expensive, it won't work. If you decide on something that is very feasible but people don't want it, no one will buy it. If you start with how to make the most money, you'll likely create something that no one wants.
The second part is the process that we go through to find the best solutions. We don't rush to the first idea we have. We take the time to understand the current situation, think of all the possibilities, and choose the best one.
First we find out everything we can about what is currently happening. We do trend and competitor research, review past work that might be relevant, send out a survey to people to gauge their sentiments around a topic, and conduct deep ethnographic research.
As we are gathering information, we are synthesizing it all so that we can make it actionable.
Once we feel like we know what's going on with reference to the topic, we think broadly to come up with as many solutions as possible that might suit people's needs. Based on what we think might work, we narrow down the hundreds of ideas to fewer than ten to test out in the world, usually both quantitatively and qualitatively.
From the final options, we decide which ones to discard, which ones to merge or improve, and which ones to move forward with basically as they are and plot them on a strategic roadmap.
Once chosen, we work with teams to implement them and make them real. If you don't do anything with all this work it was a total waste of everyone's time and money.
Let's go through an example of how this looks in a client situation. I have done a lot of projects with food companies, including Tyson Foods, RXBAR, Ocean Spray, CLIF Bar, and Hostess and they all go from having an idea about a product space that they would like to get into but not knowing what to do about it.
With the Balanced Breakthrough model in mind, we first explore everything we can know about the topic area. Let's say it's creating a new snack for Gen Z. We do trend research to understand what they're into and the products they're buying. We look to older and younger generations to see how they might be influenced. We look at what our competitors are doing and if they are serving this generation's needs. We go back to previous work the company may have done to try to capture this generation's attention and wallet. We might do an attitudinal survey with our target audience. We might have a bunch of people record videos about their behaviors and motivations related to the topic. We talk to people and do in-depth interviews with them to understand what they do and why. We're looking into manufacturing capabilities, financial modeling, and legal implications of what we might come up with. All the while we are analyzing and synthesizing information to narrow our focus by generating patterns that lead us personas, user journeys, guiding principles for design or "how might we" questions, and frameworks that describe what we have learned and what to do about it.
We then come up with as many ideas as possible that might suit Gen Z's needs while being feasible and viable. Based on our understanding and knowledge, we choose five or six that we think might be winners to create really rough prototypes. (Prototyping allows us to learn more in real-life-ish situations than waiting until the final product is created.) These prototypes are very simple and basic – hand sketches with a product name and one sentence description. We create a survey to judge interest and talk to a handful of people one-on-one.
From here, we either toss ideas away because we've learned that they are not as desirable as we thought, we merge some that are similar or complementary, we improve some, and we choose some as they are to move forward with. At this point it's really not about choosing one, but creating a strategic roadmap full of products or options that will last for the next 3-5 years or so. These products concepts then move to marketing, chefs, packaging, legal, food science, finance, and manufacturing facilities to make them real.