Identify Growth Opportunities Using Human-Centered Design
(originally published on the CX by Design Ideas blog.)
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is about understanding and meeting human needs in business, but how do you identify growth opportunities using Human-Centered Design?
As a business, you have customers (or at least prospects), just talk to them. Listen well. Take some notes. Do whatever people tell you they need. Viola, the business is human-centered. It all sounds so simple.
The problem is, people lie.
Sometimes it’s intentional out of embarrassment, pride, or cultural conditioning. More often, it’s subconscious, unintentional; they lie to themselves too, or simply just don’t know what they need. Not only that, the average person has a hard time articulating their needs, including separating a “true need” from a “want.” What a mess.
For example, imagine you need to figure out how to market & sell U.S. grown coffee beans. This is an exciting development in the coffee market since the coffee belt between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn owns most of current global coffee bean production. This is the first time farmers are planting and successfully growing coffee plants stateside, creating jobs and supporting our farm industry.
So in an attempt to understand how to connect to the coffee consumer, you go out and ask the most die-hard U.S. based coffee addicts how they feel about home-grown coffee beans. You find out that everyone is excited about supporting our U.S. based farm community and the creation of jobs. Seems like a fantastic idea, you all agree.
Then, you tell them that a 12oz bag of home-grown coffee beans will cost about $60. A price point that would give the average coffee drinker pause, considering that most gourmet 12oz coffee bags cost somewhere between $15-$20.
You next ask them if they’d still consider home-grown coffee. Some will tell you no; a lot of people will hem-haw, convincing themselves (and you, if you’re not careful) that they’ll try it. There are many reasons for this; pride, embarrassment, truly believing they’d try it, and so on.
As an HCD-oriented brand, you’ll have to parse whether people are truly ready to understand that while people may want that home-grown, coffee, they may not “need” it or buy it at $60/12oz bag?
Wading through the quicksand of “wants” disguised as “needs” to identify (and eventually meet) their “true needs” is a challenge for any business. If this sounds daunting, it is.
But, we’re here to help you, so please don’t run yet.
