in the technology-driven or product-centric processes, we start from the bottom up by defining the technology foundation, and we build all concepts by linear, rational and quantitative methods; we generalise the large majority, and we conclude well-averaged solutions. 

in the human centric approach, we start from the top down by understanding people, and we apply qualitative methods to examine the organic influences and emotional drivers that cascade from meanings to values to think and feel; we pinpoint specific niche minorities for inspiring newness and uniqueness for the innovation and new product new service creation.

the technology-driven and product-centric approach is robust since it is built from linear rational processes.  the pitfall is the absence of users in the process, and many technology-driven and product-centric programmes are facing go-to-market difficulty.

although the human centric approach is more powerful, it is somewhat organic and intangible to most.  the human centric approach relies heavily on the definition of the process and the creativity behind the team and the process.  today, matching to available technologies is no longer a concern, as technologies are widely available through open innovation and technology collaboration. 

the physical domain and the rational domain are familiar to most of us, whether from a technology, product, or marketing perspective.  we already have all these vocabularies (on the right) in everyone's notebook.

now, when we move into the abstract and conceptual domains of emotional and meaning, they are new to most.  we have to understand and to learn new sets of terms and vocabularies - interactions between people and people, and people and solutions, actions with solutions, anticipated experiences and emotions, rational and emotional motivations, value and emotional drivers, intrinsic and extrinsic user values, user attitudes and behaviours, meanings to user, and purpose in life . . .

in the learning journey of this abstract and conceptual knowledge, creativity and conceptual techniques are certainly the best learning support !

1.4/ user insight and idea-to-emotion

in the technology-driven and product-centric approach, once we understand the expectations, strengths and limitations of the systems and platforms, we immediately jump into the process of creating ideas and concepts that focus solely on the idea-to-solution.

in the human centric approach, once we understand the user values, user think and feel, we immediately frame these new values new findings into user insights, instead of creating the solutions.  user insights become the new subjects; they are compelling high-level ideas-to-emotion; at this point, we also challenge the value proposition - what would we want the user to be ?

once the user insights are validated and agreed upon, we kick off exploring ideas and concepts that focus on the idea-to-solution.  one user insight from the top, we create many downstream idea-to-solutions, many technologies, products and services, functions and features.

for example, True Coffee has a different user insight than Starbucks.  True Coffee focuses on people who want to get things done on the go.  therefore, they have a functional setup and services in their cafes, like kiosk for IT gadgets and power sockets at the bench level.  with this user insight, they could continously explore and develop more idea-to-solutions.