A Primer in (Human-Centric) Design
June 2018, New Delhi.
I was in my cubicle, during lunchtime. The entire floor was empty. I still looked around just to be sure none of my teammates were nearby; the coast was clear. One might think I was trying to hack the corporate servers or watch questionable content on the office’s network. To their disappointment, I was just trying to draw the balcony view from my home.
I’d been working 12 hours shifts for weeks with no break. I’d been returning home each day, exhausted. Not only was there no time for creative pursuits, but my job as a software engineer left me brain-dead. The only ray of sunshine in this everlasting gray fog was the secret sketching. Halfway through the doodle, I realized was happier with it than I was with my job at Samsung Research. That’s when I wondered,
“Can I transform my love for problem-solving into a creative endeavor for myself?”
One resignation letter and 17 months later, I’m fully immersed in the field of design, and I’m loving it.
My name is Hardik, and I’m currently pursuing my Master’s in Interaction Design at California College of the Arts, San Francisco. I have my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, so this is a new adventure for me.
I believe that each conversation, whether it’s between two humans or between humans and systems, is essentially an interaction. Interaction design can, therefore, be applied anywhere, which is one of the reasons why I decided to get into it. The other reason is I simply get to sketch more. So, without further ado, let’s see what human-centric design brings to the table.
Empathy — “Someone Else’s Shoes”
When someone cuts me off in a line, my natural response is anger, “Who does this guy think he is?” My mind shuts down and assigns the blame, instead of analyzing the situation. But keeping my instinctive reactions aside, I sometimes give this hurrying person the benefit of the doubt. This, I believe, is analogous to removing personal biases and judgment before listening to someone else’s side of the story. In the realm of design thinking, this is termed as practicing empathy. Authors Jane Connor and Dian Killian point out in their book Connecting Across Differences -
“When offering empathy, we want to foster acceptance and connection.”
Before having a conversation, whether it’s with ourselves or someone else, we should arrive with a truly open mind. Practicing empathy keeps our prejudices in check, and helps to humanly address the needs and feelings of the people we design for, instead of treating them as mere users. Putting it in simple words, sometimes our feet need to adjust before we decide to put them in someone else’s shoes.
Qualitative Data — “But Why Though?”
When people use the word data, we might think of big numbers, bigger spreadsheets, and nearly useless pie charts. For example — “Market data says 83% of our users are experiencing frustration while using (insert product name here)” but it is far more crucial to realize why this frustration occurs.
Design thinking helps bring qualitative data into the equation — nuanced insights generated from people’s stories.
We keep asking “why?” until we get to a point where it boils down to fundamental emotions and needs. Once we understand that, we can design solutions that leverage emotional value as well as functional or financial value. Emotions build stronger and longer-lasting relationships, numbers just dehumanize our audiences.
Reframing — “Problems or Opportunities?”
How many times have we said this to ourselves, “I’ve run into a wall”, “I’m stuck”, “Well, I did all I could.”
If it’s like we’re playing a game of tennis — once we’ve hit the ball, all we can do now is wait for it to be back in our court.
Design thinking made me realize that the ball is in our court, always.
We get overwhelmed by the intensity of the hurdles we face. It’s just a matter of looking at them from a different angle (I say several different angles, if possible). Reframing is the process of breaking a problem down and restructuring it until new opportunities can be identified. As long as we stay optimistic, stay aware of the surroundings and keep reframing, we might find that our backs were facing the answer all this time.
Storytelling — “Be Yoda, not Luke”
No matter how much work we’ve done, how diligent and meticulous we were in doing it, at some point we’ll need to explain it to someone else. What if they don’t know our thinking and process? For this situation, mastering the art of storytelling is critical. Nancy Duarte, in her book Resonate, writes -
“You are not the hero who will save the audience; the audience is your hero.”
We are NOT the protagonists, the audience is. We’re the mentor, the guide, the one who shows the way. The listeners have the power to take action. As presenters, our biggest challenge is to educate and to persuade. My professor for Foundations, Nathan Shedroff, once told me, “As a storyteller, your job is not to be a ‘sage on the stage’ who makes everything about himself, but to be a ‘guide on the side’ who inspires others to take action.”
Collaboration — “A Closed Fist”
Thousands of designer jobs are posted on LinkedIn, and I was surprised by the most common requirement for these jobs — it’s not visual skills, nor projects, nor experience.
It is the ability to effectively communicate and collaborate with a team, that’s diverse in every sense of the word.
Design thinking might help us translate ideas into intentions, but to do that, we need to be good at communications and better at teamwork. This entails understanding our team’s strengths, weaknesses, working schedules, means of sharing knowledge and much more. We should seek to instill a sense of teamwork so strong, that the team of five fingers comes together to function as a hand.
December 2019, San Francisco
My team’s presentation just ended — we were working on a project to enhance Sustainable Ocean Alliance’s communications with their leadership community. They said we were on-point in discovering what their needs were, and how we addressed them. I’m pretty sure that counts as a good review. I wouldn’t have made it this far without these principles I learned along the way.
And even though they might fall under the domain of design, I feel they are applicable everywhere. Practicing empathy helps our thought process to go from “He just cut me off!” to “Maybe he’s having an emergency.” The quest for qualitative data helps us ask the right questions. Reframing enables us to overcome our failures by thinking of them as untapped opportunities. And finally, who doesn’t want to be a great storyteller and a great teammate? I believe it’s easy to create something out of thin air, and put it out into the world. It’s much harder to strive for the right people using it the right way. Human-Centric Design is not a field, it is a mindset.
The dive into this mindset continues to take my breath away, pun intended.
Here’s to looking at the world through a new lens.
The ̶e̶n̶d̶ beginning.
What are your thoughts on these principles? Do you agree/disagree? Why? I’m always happy to take comments. Reach out to me at trax@trax.design