“Introduction to Human-Centered Design”
An online course provided by +Acumen and IDEO.org through NovoEd platform.
As part of my UX studies, I started to feel interested in the human-centred approach. I joined this course, on my wish to get deeper into the field.
The challenge was huge: “ An Introduction to the methods and tools of human-centred design, while tackling a real-world design problem”.
I also felt very motivated to be able to provide a Social Change, and just on time, I found a great remote team, with a topic of the big interest for me, regarding Inclusive Learning.
I explain in this article a bit about the project worked on and the Design Process.
The Human- Centered Design Process has three phases: Inspiration, Ideation, and Implementation. By keeping People at the focus of the process, it will guarantee a successful solution.
Traditionally designers have focused more on the aesthetic aspects. Recently, designers are solving more complex problems using their creative skills. This approach is known as Design Thinking. Non Profit Associations are making use of it too for Social Innovation.
INSPIRATION PHASE: RESEARCH
After some thoughts, our team decided to work on our own challenge within the field of Inclusive Learning, and crafted the following brief: “ How can building digital competencies improve social inclusion of the most vulnerable people in society?” ( find jobs, create their own company, generate income)
We put together our Team Knowledge & Assumptions about this field and shared together. That would give a start on what we know, what do we think we know and what do we need to learn.
Afterwards, it was time to plan our Research by getting deep into context and learning from people and experts.
We divided the research workload between us. The actions that we took were the following:
- Visited Simplon, a French nonprofit whose purpose is to train under-represented groups of people to work in the digital sector.
- Interviewed Thomas Simoni, Educational Designer at Simplon.
- Seek analogous inspiration in Radio ECCA, a well-known learning organisation in my home city, Las Palmas G.C. They offer open education through the radio.
- Interviewed my parents, who were once ECCA’s students.
- Seek other analogous inspiration in Al Jisr Association. They have developed a program, Green Chip, in which young people, (who are dropping out of school), learn hardware by dismantling old computers.
IDEATION PHASE: SYNTHESIS
This is one of the most challenging parts of the human-centered design process. Translating research learnings into design opportunities, that eventually will evolve into ideas that can be take them forward into the second major part of the Ideation phase — prototyping.
After the research stage, the team held remote meetings to share our inspiring stories and learnings. This was a valuable time in which we begin to identify key themes, and meaningful and actionable insights, that will become in the foundation and opportunities for design.
We write down notes and observations about what we were saying, one per Post-it note. This would give us flexibility in sorting and clustering later.
The following step we did was to identify patterns and cluster related information together. We spend some time, arranging and rearranging. It was an enriched experience to discuss, debate and talk through what was emerging. We stop when we were satisfied with the results of the cluster.
Afterwards, we identify themes and named the clusters, that would accurately represent our design research. This will help to guide our insights and “How Might We” statements.
What we did next is to Turn Themes into Insight Statements. We took a closer look at the stories that support these themes and transform each of them into a sentence. Each theme results in multiple insight statements, and we add a new cluster at this stage ‘ Flexible Education’.
We kept in mind our design challenge, that helps us to narrow down our insights to those are most relevant to it.
When creating sentences is helpful to make them short and memorable that get to the point. The insights should convey the sense of a new perspective or possibility.
Afterwards, we follow with the transformation of the insights statements into generative and actionable questions to brainstorm innovative new solutions. These questions are called “How Might We” (HMW) questions. This is an invitation for input, suggestions and exploration.
The key here is trying not to make questions that are either too narrow or too broad, as it may hinder creativity or won’t be actionable.
And then, we selected the three best HMW questions for the next brainstorm session. We chose the ones that were more important to address and feel like they have the biggest opportunity for design solutions.
IDEATION PHASE: PROTOTYPING
This is the stage to turn design opportunities into innovative concepts to prototype.
We divided our brainstorming sessions into sections from our HMW statements.
Brainstorming is the most creative part of the Human-centered design process. It can look unstructured, but it actually requires lots of discipline. It’s important while having fun, to keep in mind some guidelines to carry out the sessions, like be open, leave judgement, encourage wild ideas, build on the ideas of others, be visual, go for quantity.
The following step is to select the idea that brings more excitement in the team. We carried out to rounds of votes. On the first round we vote for the most innovative idea, on the second, we vote for the most successful one.
The idea that got more votes in total was: “ Participate in the circular economy for electronic waste as Al Jisr ( computers are donated, used in training, then recycled ).” This one would show more potential and innovation at the same time. We focused on this one for the prototype.
At this stage of the process, you would break apart your concept into smaller components, breaking down the User Experience, this would make easier for the idea to be made and be tested. On this way, it’s no needed a bit amount of inversion of time and resources to bring the idea to life.
As every service or product would have a beginning, a middle, and an end for a user experiencing it. How will a person find out about your idea? What will their first experience with the product or service be like? How does the experience end?
A good way to visualise how the user might experience the idea or service over time is by the creation of a Storyboard or Experience Map. This will help to identify which questions are the most important to answer first and what form of the prototype will best help answer those questions.
In our project, the most critical phase that we encountered was “The program information”. We were uncertain how much interest would have Josephine (character representing the program’s target ), in joining to the program we were crafting.
Therefore, we decide to prototype this phase, and the most appropriate prototype form would be by writing a Story.
We told the story of the idea from the future, describing what the experience would be like on the form of an article. If we then, share the articles to the target users, we could get feedback on how interested they would be in joining to the educational program, and from there iterate and refine the idea accordingly.
Every team member wrote their own article, you can have a look to mine on Article Link
Because time constraints our team stopped our process at the prototype step.
The following steps would have involved testing & getting feedback. On this way, you get what really matters to people, and what aspects of the design need improvement.
The cycle of prototyping and iterating helps to shape a more innovative and effective solution, by testing and gathering feedback to improve the ideas.
TAKEAWAYS
- I have to confess, every start of the session with my remote colleagues I felt uncertainty. I just didn’t know what direction we were heading to. For my big surprise after every session, we came up with very valuable outcomes. — This shows how valuable are The Mindsets of a Human-Centered Designer, in this case specifically “ Embracing Ambiguity ”.
- Another hint is not to think of prototyping as a linear process. As you test your concepts, you will have to jump between the following steps often. This cyclical process of testing your prototypes, getting feedback, and iterating is an important one in order to create an effective, innovative solution in the end. Mindsets to keep in mind here are “ Iterate, Iterate, Iterate ” and “ Learning from failure”.
- Lastly but not less important is the importance of following the process. Design thinking might look like unstructured, but it actually requires lots of discipline and following procedures is key for success.
A big thank you! :
- To +Acumen and IDEO.org to make this course possible and offering this free knowledge platform.
- To my team’s members Luis Arias and Sara Yahyaoui, for being the best remote team ever! and being able to learn from them on this experience.
