How a Successful Business Journey Starts with Human-Centered Design
5 reasons why HCD is not just a trending acronym
Other than going for walks at the nearby park after a long day of work, watching Korean dramas at night is a good way for me to decompress. The current series I am following is Start Up, a story about South Korea’s fictional Silicon Valley and young entrepreneurs in the world of startup companies.
What drew me to the show is how relatable the premise of the story is. It tells a tale of young people with dreams of success. I, too, dreamed of success when I co-founded 55 Minutes, a company under the wings of Potato Productions focusing on providing design services based on the human-centered design (HCD) methodology. I was excited to watch HCD in action as it was suited for startup founders just like the ones in the drama; they had an idea to solve a problem, tested and refined the solution, before demonstrating it to the investors.
Now that we are approaching the end of 2020 — a tumultuous year that caused many dreams to come to a halt due to a pandemic — it is a good time for year-end reflections. There were scenes in Start Up where a mentor emphasized the importance for these young entrepreneurs to know their “whys”. I was thus reminded to revisit my own whys too. Why did I co-found this new startup? Why did I adopt HCD?
Human-Centered Design
Before diving deep into the whys, let’s have a quick recap. What is human-centered design? For a more in-depth walkthrough, head over to another story to see what our UX Lead has to say! But if tl;dr means anything to you, here is HCD on steroids:
What?
Human-centered design is a creative problem-solving process that keeps people we are designing for at the center of our work. Our goal is to understand them so well that we create innovative answers that not only meet their needs but are also fully accepted by them.
How?
We gain a deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people we are designing for, by conducting research on them. Some research activities include user interviews, bodystorming, focus groups, surveys, usability tests, and user feedback sessions.
But, why?
A successful plot has all the necessary elements to keep the viewer following along from start to finish. HCD provides exactly that. It is a model that steers designers to start by discovering new insights about users, followed by defining the problem, and finally finish by testing the solution with users.
But why does a human-centered methodology bring value to your business? While I waited for the next episode of Start Up to be released, it gave me some time to dig into the values this approach brings. Let’s walk through these five key benefits:
1) More problem-solving, less designing stuff no one needs
It is easy to get distracted by wanting to implement many features to digital products that make people go ‘wow’, especially when designers naturally have a strong personal sense of what is beautiful or useful. Simultaneously, product owners often believe adding more features are better. But HCD puts in place a strict discipline towards creating things that people really need and would readily use, not something out of our own wishful thinking. Listening to the voices of your target audience keeps designers and product owners grounded.
No matter how technology progresses, innumerable human needs are still unmet. I want to spend time unearthing how we can improve people’s lives — some of the projects that 55 Minutes has worked on so far include looking at the needs of dressing the elderly with physical disabilities, making education more accessible online, and creating more awareness of mental well-being. HCD has been immensely effective in helping us unearth user’s needs in all these cases.
2) Create with confidence, not chaos
Design can be a chaotic exercise because creativity does not happen in a linear fashion. But HCD streamlines the process of creativity, making it a step-by-step system that efficiently highlights the specific area of need. Innovation is still facilitated because the method, being flexible, allows designers to manage how much time and resources are to be dedicated to each design phase by considering varying requirements, timeline, and budget. Resources like time and finances can be a tight constraint, especially for startups, but this means regardless of the limitations or design challenges you might have — digital, spatial, physical — you can count on HCD to facilitate a systematic and pragmatic approach towards a solution.
For most startups, putting your product out there for the whole world to see can also be daunting. Will people like it? Can they navigate it easily? Will it help them in their task at hand? If only you could open up the heads of your customers, making decisions would be so much easier. HCD prioritizes user research and user tests at every phase of the design process. The findings give designers and product owners the confidence that their creation is validated, driven by data; it is not based on personal taste, the designer’s assumptions, or stakeholder demands. It gives businesses assurance of the designs’ effectiveness because real people on the ground have given their insights and feedback. Their feedback helps to increase confidence that you are on the right path for future versions of the product.
3) Increase traction, adoption rate, revenue
Insights to what customers need ensure that what we create will be something people would embrace. As other aspects like cultural, linguistic, and geographical considerations play a huge role in the success of the product of service rolled out too, we use HCD to draw out these nuances since what worked for one market may not necessarily apply to another.
A common example would be an e-commerce app. Through HCD, we can find out what features are considered primary to users, or what to strip away. Other important findings include what causes users to not complete their shopping experience, what to put in place to encourage them to complete their purchase, and most importantly figure out what kind of pricing models fit them. Through these discoveries, we can create a product suited to the user, which can drive increased adoption rate of the product, higher conversion rates, and reduced drop off rates.
4) Reduce waste, gain positive return on investment of time and money
It is not always only about the users. HCD integrates business goals and technology requirements by making certain the conversations at the design table is a well-balanced one. Only when all three aspects of user, business, and technology are carefully considered, can we ensure a sustainable business model moving forward.
With HCD, development and design costs can be managed wisely because every step of the way is shaped by insights, not guesswork. The insights are like the blueprint of a house. Without a proper blueprint, the worker goes about laying the bricks one at a time. Upon the realization that the structure is unstable and no homebuyer would live in it, the poor construction staff would have to tear the whole building down in order to reconstruct a new house. Think of all the time and effort gone to waste.
Especially when it comes to building digital products, development time and cost can be saved as making last minute changes or having feature creep can be minimised. What you want is a positive return on investment instead.
It is not always only about the users. Human-centered design integrates business goals and technology requirements by making certain the conversations at the design table is a well-balanced one.
5) Win through brand loyalty & innovation
Oftentimes, users can appear as just a statistic and designers can feel disconnected with the users. But connecting with our target audience and their experiences will make sure good design can take place in a more facilitated manner. HCD drives that connection. When your customers sense you are listening to them and care enough to build something bespoke to their context, they will stick with your brand a lot longer. There is less fear of competitive products or services because what sets your brand apart is your ability to empathize with them.
Moreover, people change, all the time. The dreadful Covid-19 expedited even more changes in terms of what humans need, how we behave and what we expect from products and services. How can businesses innovate quickly and correctly, to meet such sudden changes? With data collected via listening to your customers regularly, it builds agility for your business due to the common understanding and shared goals established across the team. Otherwise different teams of marketing, branding, sales, design, development, etc would have worked in silos, making the organization slow to react to changes. When everyone in the company is aligned, you are one step ahead in terms of winning over your users.
Now, how do you win the game if other players also applied the same strategy? Herein lies the art and science of this method. HCD does not operate in silos; it brings into the conversation your business strategy and goals. If there is differentiation between you and your competitors, using HCD in the right way will help spotlight where areas of innovation lie. Leveraging innovation helps you arrive at different conclusions since HCD doesn’t produce the same results — the method will help you find your own area of innovation, letting you offer something unique yet relevant to your clients.
Leveraging innovation helps you arrive at different conclusions since human-centered design doesn’t produce the same results — the method will help you find your own area of innovation, letting you offer something unique yet relevant to your clients.
The HCD process, which involves activities like user research, journey mapping, ideation, prototyping and testing, aims to bring us to one focal point — to gain deep understanding of humans. With understanding, designers can better address pain points and opportunities for innovative design. But the human perspective evolves, often and quickly. Thus, steps we take need to be efficient to ensure sharp execution of solutions, or to pivot when needed, quickly and confidently.
For the typical drama, audiences can pretty much assume the leads win the day and everyone has a happy ending. Contrasting this to real life, making assumptions in the design journey often leads businesses astray to an unnecessary winding path of confusion and frustration, much like love triangles or family conflicts in soap dramas. My dream is that organisations will avoid the headaches and messes by appreciating the beauty of a human-centered world and applying this empathetic method to drive decisions. Whether you are a startup or an established business, the bottomline I want is to journey with you and set you up for success.
Wendy is the co-founder of 55 Minutes, a UX design studio based in Singapore. Combining her experience in co-founding companies and client management, she seeks to bring value to clients by creating solutions for businesses through a creative, collaborative and empathetic approach. Being able to share with others the significance of empathy—a key element in human-centered design—energizes Wendy in her entrepreneurial journey.
