Understanding Human-Centered Design

Don Norman describes Human-Centered Design as “An approach that puts human needs, capabilities and behaviour first, then designs to accommodate those needs, capabilities, and ways of behaving.” (Source)

Human-Centered Design puts the user at the center of the whole design process. It’s a set of procedures that should be followed to ensure that the solution designed matches the actual needs of the user for whom it is intended to be used and along with that provide good user experience. It helps in understanding user requirements, their behaviour, the environment in which the solution is intended to be used, the problems they face and all the factors involved.

A bad design can result in many difficulties ranging from minor inconveniences, frustrations and stress to fatal ones like injuries, accidents and even deaths. Designing by taking the logical thinking approach without taking into consideration how the user thinks, behaves and uses the product can lead to bad design as output. Similarly coming up with an idea, creating the product without involving the user and then hoping that the target audience will like the product is more likely to give negative output. Making assumptions about the users without understanding and involving them into the process won’t lead to positive outcomes in most of the situations.

I want to choose Hindi, which button should I press? ATMs do cater to user’s need but the options and buttons misalignment confuses the user thus not providing good user experience

Need for Human-Centered Design approach arises with realization of coming up with good design solution. Good design solution can be described as one which clearly communicates about what can be done (possible actions that can be taken), feedback to the user about what is happening when they are using the solution and what they should expect as an output of using the solution. It creates good communication from the product be it either physical or digital to the user. Not only that, it is essential for the product to communicate clearly if in case any problem arises while the user is using the product to make them aware about what went wrong and help them take the correct steps to achieve desired output.

Google maps for navigation is an appropriate example for good design in which everything is clearly communicated and features like voice search, detour, route elevation, etc. helps in finding the location easily (Source)

Many companies were able to change end outputs, increase revenue and solve their existing problems using Human-Centered Design approach and continue to do so.

Netflix

Netflix being one of them, was able to increase its customer base tenfold by incorporating human-centered design approach and testing everything they have on their platform. One of the strategies used by Netflix for this is providing the user with personalization with the recommendations shown for streaming. The thumbnails shown with the video also differs based on the stream history and preferences of the user.

The reason behind using different thumbnails is because a study conducted by them showed that they typically have 90 seconds for grabbing a user’s attention. A viewer usually spends less than two seconds on each title and from that 82% selected video based on the thumbnail for the video shown. (Source)

Multiple thumbnails to cover different themes in the show (Source)

Showing the thumbnail based on user preference. Someone watching romantic movies more will see the first thumbnail and someone watching comedy movies will see the second one (Source)

Airbnb

Airbnb was able to solve their financial problems due to low booking by using human-centered design approach and finding out that their low-quality images listings was the reason and solved that by upgrading all the images. They did this by launching the Airbnb photography program in which they offer free professional photography services to the hosts doing listing on the platform. (Source)

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Spotify

Spotify is the result of using human-centered design approach and realizing the user’s need for having one single platform for listening, streaming and sharing music with others and solved that. They provide personalized playlists and recommendations based on preferences helps enhance user experience.

Spotify also gives the option of personalising the playlist cover to the user. (Source)

Spotify continues to use this approach for continuously improving user experience. The way they have developed their personas tool and how it is used today and how it helps them enhance user experience is a sought after discussion in the user research and product design communities. (Source)

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Oral-B

Oral-B’s kid’s toothbrush has been designed using the same approach by IDEO and it helped them understand the problems children face because of their way of holding the toothbrush differently from adults due to it’s size. IDEO came up with a new style of toothbrush known as the squish gripper for kids. (Source)

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Please share the examples you have of Human-Centered Design approach being used in the comments below!