“In order to get to new solutions, I have to get to know new people. I have to get to know different people, different scenarios, different places. I have to travel. I have to immerse. I have to dive into something completely different.”
— — Emi Kolawole, Editor in residence at the D School at Stanford.
Passionate Learner
I really agreed with what Emi said when I first watched the video, and actually this was one of the reasons I decided to join this Human-Centered Design online course.
Few weeks ago, I was invited by one of my friend, who is working as a UI/UX designer, to join an online course of Human-Centered Design, which is designed for about 7 weeks and a group, project-typed course by the famous design firm IDEO.ORG and +ACUMEN on the social learning platform NoVoEd.
Design Kit: The Course for Human-Centered Design
I am really interested in exploring and learning something about “design”, especially in UI/UX and Human-Computer Interaction, which I believe those are essentials for making a product or service, and they are getting more and more important now. However, the fact is I did not have such education backgrounds or the real working experience about design. I studied MIS (Management of Information System) in college, and worked as a marketing / social media intern at a startup in my college senior year, so I am just an amateur in design field who only has passion and some personal thoughts.
I saw it as a good opportunity to learn more about design, for I could have a chance to learn from the Design Kit and courses and most importantly, work with other people in different backgrounds as a team! I hope through participating in this online course, I could know better about how Human-Centered Design works, and how to use it to solve problems.
Design Thinking
Before the first meeting up with other team members, I finished some preview and researching, and that made me think of the documentary I watched before — -”Design & Thinking”, which is a great film discussing about the concept of “Design Thinking”, by having interviews with many great designers, businessman, even scientists. I found out the core concept of Human-Centered Design is quite similar to Design Thinking. It’s about the process and methods of how we come up a solution, or a cool idea.
In the definition, Design Thinking is a method for practical, creative resolution of problems and creation of solution, with the intent of an improved future result. And for the Human-Centered Design, it is a creative approach to problem solving and the backbone of work. I found some connections between these two design concepts, and this made me more excited to learn the Design Kit courses.
Formosa Rhythm
The course is designed to be conducted over 7 weeks in five classes, and required group meetings and discussion. Each class has its assignment to be finished, and it gives us materials like documents to read and videos to watch. During the meeting, the team need to follow the “Workshop Guides” it provided for every classes. Also, there are some additional resources for us to learn more. I think it’s a well-designed course, and people could really learn something from it by participating and putting efforts in it.
We are a six people team, and had two meetings so far. The first meeting was about “Course Overview” and also our first in person meeting. (We knew each others and decided to form a team online.) Also, we had the brainstorming and came up the team name “Formosa Rhythm”, for the reason we are all from Taiwan, which was called as Formosa by Portuguese in 16 Century, meant “Beautiful Island”. It was really fun during the brainstorming, which we came up many different and irrelevant names, like “Canned Pineapple Expired For One Day”, “Oo-Long Cha”, and “Taiwan Ali”.
Class One
In our second meeting, we started with the Class 1 course, and followed the instruction from the Workshop Guide. In one of the sections “Icebreaker: Visual Telephone”, we needed to complete the exercise by writing down one sentence(silly or serious) on the top of piece of paper, then folded over the top and passed to the person beside you. Then the person would draw a picture of your sentence then folded again and passed down. This little exercise was simple but quite interesting, because it might be a surprise when you got your paper back. This icebreaker showed us the importance for thinking visually as a human-centered designer.
Human-Centered Design Is About…
So, what is “Human-Centered Design” really about? It’s a creative approach and process to solve problems. Those are something I’ve learned so far from the reading materials for Class 1.
Three Phases
There are three phases in Human-Centered Design — -the Inspiration phase, the Ideation phase and the Implementation phase. During those phases, we need to use our imagination to diverge the ideas then converge those bold, wild thoughts, and by practicing this way, some creative and innovative ideas might come out in the end. It’s a process that can be applied in different industries and sectors to approach challenges from product and service design to space or system design.
Seven Mindsets
In the course, it shows us the mindsets for a Human-Centered Design, which is as important as the process. We should all keep those mindsets in the mind when applying the approach. There are seven of them: Learn from failure, Creative Confidence, Make it, Empathy, Embrace Ambiguity, Be Optimistic and Iterate. Each of them could help us conduct the approach of Human-Centered Design.
One of those mindsets I mentioned in the very beginning is “Empathy”. It is really important to step into other people’s shoes, and start to solve the problems from their perspectives. You can’t come up with new ideas if all you do is exist in your own life. I can’t agree with this idea more.
Another mindset I think it’s essential is “Embrace Ambiguity”. With the attitude, we can explore for more possibilities. Every problems we face might be the only one, or it might be different from all other problems we met before. It’s not like the test in school having correct answers. What we do is to pursue different ideas and explore for the solutions. Embracing Ambiguity allows to be more creativity,
Case Study: Clean Team
During the meeting, we discussed about our thoughts after finishing the case study in the Class 1 Reading. It was a case called “Clean Team”, which was about a In-House Toilets for Ghana’s Urban Poor. The Clean Team project was developed by IDEO and IDEO.org, working with Unilever and Water and Sanitation for the Urban Poor (WSUP). They created a service for those Ghanaians without in-home toilets, providing them a cleaner and healthier living environment by a sanitation system that gave them in-home toilets of subscribers.
I really like the way how those organizations solved the problem by using Human-Centered Design, which they realized the real problems with “empathy”. They went to the place, having some interviews and talks with the native people, not just sitting in the office and making plans after some discussion. The first process for solving problems with Human-Centered Design is to know what exact your customers/users’ problems are, then you come up with ideas for the solution, and make the prototype quickly and go try how it works. Share what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for, see what their responses are. Try it and fix it, then do the process again and again, and eventually come up a innovative, great solution.
Try to Embrace the Approach
What I’ve learned is with applying the method of Human-Centered Design, a problem could be solved in a more efficient way and accurate. The concept can apply in many different fields and industries. It might be a little strange or uncomfortable for many people to put Human-Centered Design into problems solving, because they might doubt themselves having that kind of creativities, but the thing is — no matters you are a designer or not, you do have the ability. I believe more companies and social enterprises should embrace the approach as the way they solve problems. With more practicing and open-minded attitude, we all could get benefits by solving problems with Human-Centered Design. I did learn something through the Class 1 and the meetings, and really look forward to the other coming courses.
