Abstract

Human-centered design, or HCD, is one helpful process to begin sustaining the importance of people in one’s organization, as they are the primary individuals who carry out the organization’s advocacy. By focusing primarily on their hopes and needs, HCD allows for your organization’s systems to be more contextualized and thoughtful while remaining feasible. A simple, step-by-step process of the HCD process is provided, and the values of empathy, feedback, and creativity will continuously be embodied.

What are Organizational Systems?

Organizational systems are the different elements in an organization that work with one another in order to achieve a shared purpose.

Some examples:

Particular processes that members follow
Different departments or units that make up the organization

The way these systems are designed in an organization can influence the members’ ability to take part in the organization’s shared purpose.

Because of this, it is important to make conscious decisions on how these systems are ideated and being implemented in the organization; one such way to do so is to make use of human-centered design, otherwise known as HCD.

What is Human Centered Design?

HCD is the process of designing these organizational systems in a way that emphasizes the needs of those presently involved with the organization.

Key Definitions

Staying Grounded

By staying grounded to the needs of current stakeholders, the organizational systems are thoughtfully designed to their capabilities and resources.

Having Sufficient Understanding

With a sufficient understanding of who the organization’s stakeholders are, as well as their current situation, the design of these organizational systems not only become contextualized but also considerably feasible.

Stakeholders

Such stakeholders can be internal to an organization, such as its members, whereas an example of external stakeholders can be the particular sector that the organization aims to serve.

Assumptions for HCD to apply to your organization

Given the complexity of organizations, there are specific assumptions made when adopting the process of HCD into your organization.

Solvable by your people

HCD follows the belief that all systemic issues are solvable by the very people who have encountered and engaged with those systems. By constantly communicating and involving these people, the systems whom the design is for will be kept squarely at the center throughout the process.

Iterative Methodology

HCD aims for the design process to be less methodical but more iterative on continuous innovation. By embracing iterative design, feedback is allowed to play a more influential role, and the stakeholders not only become recipients but a constant part of the design process as well.

Impact Through Desire

HCD seeks to find impact through desire. By starting with the stakeholders’ hopes, fears, and needs, the organization can identify what is most desirable and thereafter consider what is financially and logistically viable.

Underlying Values & Principles of HCD

There are also underlying values and principles to HCD that one must be aware of when applying the process.

Empathetic

One such value is empathy; human-centered designers seek to build deep empathy with the people they are trying to serve by always asking questions.

Instead of making assumptions about why things are the way they are, they observe their environments and hold conversations with stakeholders.

They also believe that a solution is out there and that by keeping focused on the people they are designing for and asking the right questions, they will get there together.

Experimental

Other values are optimism and being experimental.

Human-centered designers are optimists, in the sense that they look for inspiration in unexpected places. They dream up lots of ideas, and despite some not working, they continue to learn from failure, rather than shy away from it.

They consult experts on the subject to fully grasp all the challenges that need to be overcome in order to create a solution.

Empirical

Human-centered designers are also empirical in the design process; they value observation and experience over mere soundness of ideas.

They are unlike other problem solvers, for they place more allowance on not knowing an absolute answer to the problem at hand. Hence, they make ideas tangible so that they can test them and refine what is necessary based on feedback.

1. Inquire

To commence the HCD process, recall that it entails starting with the hopes, fears, and needs of current stakeholders. The framework of an Empathy Map is one that is useful in uncovering these for any organization. As it is a means to practice empathy, the framework simply requires you to answer given questions in the shoes of the majority of your organization’s stakeholders; in doing so, it allows for the responses to construct a most representative “human” for the design process to be centered around.

As an exercise, you may apply the Empathy Map to your own organization by pondering on the following questions. The particular stakeholder of interest for these questions will be the members of your organization.

Think & Feel

What are the established advocacies in our organization?
How are these advocacies learned and fostered in the organization?
What are other advocacies do our members care about?

Say & Do

How do the members of our organization perceive themselves? How do external bodies perceive the members of our organization? Do these perceptions complement one another?
How do the members of our organizations interact with our sector?
What are the knowledge, skills, and abilities our members are equipped with in order to achieve our organization’s advocacy?

Pains

What are some difficulties that our members have been facing when it comes to fulfilling our advocacy? What gaps in our members’ knowledge, skills, and abilities are present?
What are the events or circumstances that prevent our members from carrying out their responsibilities?

Gains

What do our members gain from participating in our organization’s advocacy efforts?
How does the organization measure success (for both its members and initiatives)?

2. Identify

Once you have attained a comprehensive understanding of your stakeholders, it is possible to identify the main issue/s they experience in relation to the fulfillment of your organization’s advocacy. This can be done by following the steps:

Thematize Pain Points

From the Empathy Map you have created, encircle the pain points in the current stakeholders’ experience and try to identify one main theme that encompasses these.

Support with Insights

Supplement this main theme with 3-5 insight statements (e.g. “Members don’t attend events online because of internet connectivity issues.”)..

Reframe into Questions

Reframe each insight statement into a HMW (How Might We) statement (e.g. “How might we work around internet connectivity issues to enable members’ attendance in events?).

By writing HMW statements, your initial pain points are transformed into questions that can jumpstart your system ideation process.

3. Ideate

The next step is to think of ideas that address the concerns brought up in the different HMW statements. It may be productive to use quantitative measures to arrive at a decision when it comes to ideation. This part requires two main steps:

For each HMW statement, exhaust 3-5 ideas that can address the question. Disregard any hesitations concerning viability in finances, logistics, etc. for now.
Create a Decision Matrix for each set of ideas to a HMW statement.

The Decision Matrix allows you to assess the viability for your initial ideas. This can be made using the following steps:

Create a table similar to the example below.
In the first column, list down all important factors to consider in choosing the most viable idea. This will serve as the row headers of the table. (see examples below)
In the second column, identify the corresponding percentage weight of each criterion’s importance. These weights must sum up to 100%.
In the third to eighth columns, list down the ideas you made in the third to eighth columns. These ideas will serve as the column headers.
To your own judgment, score each idea from 1 to 100 to each criterion found on the first column.
Then, multiply the weight to each score, and sum up the subtotals for each idea to arrive at total figures that will determine the idea that is most viable in addressing each HMW statement.

4. Iterate

The final step is the iteration of the ideas you have come up with. As feedback plays an influential role in the HCD process, it is necessary to consult with peer/s of your organization on the soundness of the set of ideas that you have arrived at.

Learn More!

Resources. (2018). IDEO | Design Thinking. https://designthinking.ideo.com/resources

DC Design. (2017, August 14). What Is Human-Centered Design? - DC DESIGN - Medium. Medium; DC DESIGN. https://medium.com/dc-design/what-is-human-centered-design-6711c09e2779

Norman, D. (2019, July 23). The Four Fundamental Principles of Human-Centered Design and Application. Jnd.org; jnd.org. https://jnd.org/the-four-fundamental-principles-ofhuman-centered-design/

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