Human Centred Design

Human-centered design is the approach that designers use to ensure the needs of the target audience/users/stakeholders are at the center of the design process.

It ensures that deep consideration of the persons being designed for is an essential part of solving the design problems posed.

APPLYING TO THE DESIGN PROCESS

Designers should aim to apply human-centred methods to each stage of the design process.

Discover: Learning about the problem. Learn about the target audience. Understand the needs of the target audience.

Define: Making sense of the gathered information & data to clearly define the problem. Summarise key learnings about the target audience to accurately define their needs.

Develop: Gather inspiration & combine with conclusions about the target audience to conceptualise solutions with the target audience in mind,

Deliver: Select best concepts to meet the needs of target audience. Test & refine ideas. Gather stakeholder & target audience feedback. Conduct user-testing.

SURVEY

Surveys are a valuable tool for designers to gather both qualitative and quantitative data during the Discover and Define stages of the design process.

Use interviews to understand your client:

Discover: Collect quantitative data on the client's preferences, priorities, and expectations. Create a survey with closed-ended questions that allow the client to rate or prioritize different aspects of the project.

Define: Analyze survey results to identify key client preferences and expectations. Use statistical methods to analyze survey responses, identifying patterns and trends. Create visual representations, such as charts or graphs, to convey quantitative findings.

Use interviews to understand your Target Audience:

Discover: Gather both qualitative and quantitative insights on the target audience's habits, preferences, and needs. Include a mix of closed-ended questions for quantitative data and open-ended questions for qualitative insights. Use closed-ended questions to collect quantitative demographic data.

Integrate quantitative findings (statistics, percentages) with qualitative insights to provide a comprehensive understanding.

Define Use survey results to create user personas and identify common themes. Analyse open-ended responses using thematic analysis to identify recurring themes and insights. Refine user personas based on both quantitative and qualitative findings.

Create effective surveys:

Prepare: Clearly define the objectives of the survey to guide the design process.

Use a mix of closed-ended and open-ended questions to gather both quantitative and qualitative data.

Conduct a test survey with a class-member to identify and address any issues with question clarity or survey flow.

Analyse: Use data analysis & visualisation of data to make results clear.

Code open-ended responses thematically to extract qualitative insights.

Benefits:

Quantitative Insights: Surveys provide numerical data, offering quantitative insights into user preferences, behaviors, and opinions.
Efficiency: Surveys allow designers to gather data from a large number of respondents efficiently, especially when time and resources are limited.
Standardization: Closed-ended questions in surveys provide standardized responses, making data analysis more straightforward.
Diverse Perspectives: Surveys can reach a diverse audience, ensuring a wide range of perspectives are considered in the design process.

INTERVIEW

Interviews play a crucial role in the Discover and Define stages of the design process, helping designers gain insights, gather information, and define the problem they are solving. Here's a guide for student designers on how to use interviews effectively:

Use interviews to understand your client:

Discover: Gain a comprehensive understanding of the client's needs, goals, and expectations for the design project. Research the client's background, industry, and any existing materials.
Ask about the project's objectives, target audience/s, values, and any specific preferences or requirements.

Seek clarification on any ambiguous points discussed during the initial interview.

Draft a Brief document based on the information gathered, outlining deliverables, timelines, and expectations.

Use interview to understand your Target Audience:

Discover: Understand the target audience's preferences, behaviors, and pain points related to the design problem. Conduct preliminary research on the target audience's demographics, habits, and preferences. Craft open-ended questions to explore the audience's experiences and expectations regarding the design problem.

Define user personas and identify key challenges and opportunities based on audience insights. Develop user personas based on common themes and patterns observed in the interviews.

Use Affinity Mapping to group insights from interviews into categories to identify overarching themes.

Create effective interviews:

Prepare: Clearly define the objectives of the interview to guide the conversation. Conduct background research to ask informed questions and show understanding. Design questions that encourage detailed and thoughtful responses.

Document: Plan for ways to record responses that ensure detailed information is captured. Film, audio record, and take notes.

Pay close attention to responses, ask follow-up questions, and seek clarification.

Analyse: After each interview, synthesise key insights and identify patterns or recurring themes. Compare findings across multiple interviews to identify commonalities and discrepancies.

Benefits:

User-Centric Design: Interviews ensure that the design process is centered around the needs, preferences, and experiences of the client and target audience.
Insightful Data: Interviews provide rich and qualitative data, offering insights that quantitative methods alone may not capture.
Problem Definition: Through interviews, designers can clarify and refine the design problem, ensuring a focused and relevant solution.
Client Collaboration: Interviewing clients fosters collaboration and aligns the design team with the client's vision and goals.
Empathy Building: Engaging with the target audience through interviews builds empathy, helping designers connect emotionally with the end users.

EMPATHY MAP

Empathy mapping is a visual representation and analysis of user experiences, emotions, and perspectives. It's a collaborative tool used in design thinking to understand and empathise with the target audience. By mapping out the users' feelings, thoughts, actions, and needs, designers can gain valuable insights that help define and clarify design problems.

Key Components of an Empathy Map:

Says: What are the verbal expressions and quotes from the users? What do they talk about regarding the topic or situation?
Thinks: What are the thoughts and considerations going on in the users' minds? What are their concerns, aspirations, or goals related to the design problem?
Feels: What are the emotions, attitudes, and sentiments of the users? How do they emotionally respond to the situation or context?
Does: What actions and behaviors can be observed in the users? What are their behaviors, routines, or habits related to the design problem?

Use Empathy Mapping

Discover: In research & observation. Gather data on user experiences, preferences, and challenges related to the design problem.

Define: In presentation of findings from research. Workshops with team members or stakeholders can be used to share and discuss findings from user research.

Benefits:

Deep Understanding: Empathy mapping helps designers gain a deep understanding of the users' experiences, emotions, and motivations.
Visual Representation: It provides a visual representation of user insights, making it easy for designers and stakeholders to grasp and communicate user needs.
Collaboration: Empathy mapping is a collaborative tool that encourages team members and stakeholders to work together to understand the user perspective.
Problem Definition: By identifying pain points and gains, empathy mapping aids in clearly defining and articulating the design problem.
Human-Centered Design: It promotes human-centered design by putting the user at the center of the design process, ensuring that solutions resonate with their needs and experiences.

Affinity Mapping: A collaborative method of sorting and organizing ideas or information into related groups to identify patterns and insights.

Discover Stage: Conduct an affinity mapping session to group and organize user insights gathered during interviews.
Define Stage: Identify common themes and patterns from affinity mapping to refine the design problem.
Develop Stage: Use insights to inform ideation and prototype development.
Deliver Stage: Present affinity mapping findings to showcase the journey of insights.

Card Sorting: Involves participants in categorizing content or concepts on cards, helping designers understand users' mental models and preferences for information architecture.

Discover Stage: Use card sorting to understand how users naturally group and categorize information.
Define Stage: Analyze card sorting results to inform information architecture decisions.
Develop Stage: Implement user-validated information structures in the design.
Deliver Stage: Ensure the final design aligns with users' mental models.

Co-design: A collaborative approach where designers and end-users work together to create solutions, ensuring the inclusion of diverse perspectives.

Discover Stage: Engage end-users in co-design workshops to gather insights and ideas.
Define Stage: Collaboratively define design goals and requirements with end-users.
Develop Stage: Co-create design solutions with end-users, ensuring their involvement.
Deliver Stage: Showcase the collaborative design process to stakeholders.

Contextual Inquiry: Directly observing and engaging with users in their natural environment to understand their behavior, needs, and challenges.

Discover Stage: Conduct contextual inquiries by observing users in their daily environments.
Define Stage: Extract user needs and pain points from contextual inquiry observations.
Develop Stage: Incorporate real-world insights into the design process.
Deliver Stage: Present design decisions grounded in observed user behaviors.

Desktop Research: Gathering information from existing sources such as data sources like the census, research articles, reports, and documents to inform the design process.

Discover Stage: Conduct desktop research to gather background information on the design problem.
Define Stage: Summarise relevant findings from existing literature and data.
Develop Stage: Apply insights from desktop research to support design decisions.
Deliver Stage: Present a comprehensive overview of the existing knowledge base with the Pitch.

Additional Research Methods

Focus Group: Focus groups are like team discussions where a small group of people share their thoughts and feelings about a product or idea. It's like having a conversation with friends about what they like or don't like.

- Discover Stage: Gather a small group of potential users for a focus group discussion about their likes, dislikes, interests, and current understandings.
- Define Stage: Listen to their opinions and find out what features are important to them.
- Develop Stage: Seek feedback on your design, ensuring it meets users' preferences.
- Deliver Stage: Present the final design, highlighting how it reflects the input from the focus group, ask for input on final refinements that might be made.

Design Sprint: A time-constrained, intensive process that includes ideation, prototyping, and testing to quickly address design challenges.

Discover Stage: Initiate a design sprint to rapidly generate ideas for a specific design challenge.
Define Stage: Use the sprint to refine and prioritize design concepts.
Develop Stage: Prototype and test solutions within the sprint timeframe.
Deliver Stage: Showcase the design sprint outcomes to stakeholders.

Diary Study: Participants document their experiences and activities over time, providing longitudinal insights into user behavior.

Discover Stage: Distribute diaries to participants to record daily experiences related to the design problem.
Define Stage: Extract longitudinal insights from diary entries to understand evolving needs.
Develop Stage: Apply insights from the diary study to refine design solutions.
Deliver Stage: Present a narrative of user experiences throughout the design process.

Expert Interviews: Gathering insights from subject matter experts to enhance understanding and inform design decisions.

Discover Stage: Conduct expert interviews to gain specialized knowledge relevant to the design problem.
Define Stage: Incorporate expert insights to deepen the understanding of the design challenge.
Develop Stage: Validate design decisions through expert consultation.
Deliver Stage: Acknowledge and showcase expert contributions in the final design presentation.

Heuristic Evaluation: Involves experts assessing a system or interface using specific usability principles (heuristics) to identify potential issues.

Discover Stage: Experts evaluate a website's navigation based on usability heuristics.
Define Stage: Identify key usability issues that users might face on the website.
Develop Stage: Propose design improvements to address identified issues.
Deliver Stage: Validate the effectiveness of changes through usability testing.

High-Fidelity Prototyping: Creating a detailed and realistic version of a product or interface to closely simulate the user experience.

Discover Stage: Develop a high-fidelity prototype to test specific user interactions.
Define Stage: Refine and iterate the prototype based on user feedback.
Develop Stage: Finalize the high-fidelity prototype for implementation.
Deliver Stage: Present the realistic prototype for stakeholder approval.

Landscape Review: Examining the broader context and existing solutions related to a design problem.

Discover Stage: Investigate existing products and solutions relevant to the design problem.
Define Stage: Summarize the current landscape and identify gaps or opportunities.
Develop Stage: Incorporate insights from the landscape review into the design.
Deliver Stage: Provide stakeholders with an overview of the design context.

Literature Review: A systematic examination of academic and professional literature relevant to the design problem at hand.

Discover Stage: Review academic papers and articles related to the design problem.
Define Stage: Summarize key findings and theories from the literature.
Develop Stage: Integrate relevant theoretical frameworks into the design.
Deliver Stage: Support design decisions with evidence from the literature review.

Stakeholder Engagement & Interviews: Involving relevant parties throughout the design process to ensure their perspectives and needs are considered.

Discover Stage: Conduct stakeholder interviews to understand their perspectives and expectations for the project.
Define Stage: Use insights from stakeholder interviews to refine project goals and objectives.
Develop Stage: Continuously engage stakeholders for feedback on design concepts and iterations.
Deliver Stage: Acknowledge stakeholder contributions and present the final design aligned with their expectations.

User Testing: Evaluating a product or prototype by observing and gathering feedback from actual users interacting with it.

Discover Stage: Begin with usability testing to observe how users interact with current products or prototypes.
Define Stage: Use user testing to validate or refute assumptions and refine design concepts.
Develop Stage: Iteratively test prototypes to gather insights for continuous improvement.
Deliver Stage: Showcase the impact of user testing on the final design, emphasizing user-centric decisions.

Presenting Data

Sharing gathered data helps design teams make informed decisions based on user insights and preferences.

Presenting data fosters alignment among stakeholders, ensuring everyone is on the same page regarding user needs and project goals.

Presenting data to stakeholders and team members allows for validation and refinement of assumptions, leading to more accurate problem definition.

Well-presented data helps align diverse stakeholders on project objectives, reducing misunderstandings and enhancing collaboration.

By presenting data effectively, designers empower themselves and stakeholders to make informed design decisions grounded in user needs and preferences.

Infographics

Use visual representations like infographics to condense complex data into easy-to-understand graphics, making it accessible to a wider audience.

Infographics

Use visual representations like infographics to condense complex data into easy-to-understand graphics, making it accessible to a wider audience.

Gather Relevant Information:

Collect data, facts, and insights related to the design problem and its effects on the audience.

Ensure that the information is accurate and relevant.

Choose the Right Type of Infographic:

Different types of infographics serve different purposes:

Statistical Infographics: Use these for presenting data, percentages, and comparisons.
Timeline Infographics: Ideal for showing a sequence of events or processes.
Process Infographics: Visualize step-by-step procedures or workflows.
Comparison Infographics: Compare two or more elements (e.g., before vs. after).
Geographic Infographics: Display location-based data on maps.
Hierarchical Infographics: Show relationships between elements (e.g., organizational structures).

Plan Your Content:

Outline the key points you want to include. What aspects of the design problem impact the audience the most?

Prioritize information based on its relevance and importance.

Use clear and concise labels to guide the viewer.

Design Elements Matter:

Use appropriate colours: Stick to a consistent colour palette that complements your content.

Icons and Illustrations: Use visuals that enhance understanding and reinforce your message.

Create a Logical Flow:

Arrange your content logically. Start with an attention-grabbing title or introduction.

Follow a sequence that guides the viewer through the impact of the design problem.

User Personas

Create user personas summarizing key traits, needs, and preferences, providing a humanized understanding of the target audience.

Create a Persona Profile:

Develop a fictional character that represents your typical user, informed by your Target Audience profile & research. Give them a name, age, and background.

Include details such as:

Demographics: Age, gender, location, education, etc.

Goals and Tasks: What are their objectives? What tasks do they need to accomplish?

Challenges and Pain Points: What obstacles do they face?

Motivations: What drives them? What are their desires?

Behaviour: How do they interact with products or services?

Visualize the Persona:

Create a visual representation of your persona. Use a photo (even if it’s stock imagery) to make it feel more real.

Add the persona’s details around the image – like a mini-biography.

Empathize and Role-Play:

Put yourself in the persona’s shoes. Imagine their daily life, struggles, and aspirations.

Consider how your design decisions impact this fictional user.

Role-play scenarios: “What would our persona do in this situation?”

Use the Persona Throughout Design:

Continuously refer to your persona during the design process.

Ask questions like:

“Would our persona find this feature useful?”

“How would our persona react to this interface?”

“Does this solution address their pain points?”

Charts and Graphs

Utilise charts and graphs for quantitative data, presenting trends and patterns in a visually compelling manner.

Analyze Survey Data:

Begin by thoroughly examining the survey data. Look for patterns, trends, and correlations that stand out.

Identify any outliers or unusual data points that could provide valuable insights.

Select Relevant Data:

Focus on data points that directly relate to the design problem or pain points you’re addressing.

Consider both quantitative (numeric) and qualitative (text-based) responses.

Choose Appropriate Chart Types:

Different types of survey data require specific chart formats:

Binary Results (e.g., “yes” or “no” questions): Use a pie chart to show the proportion of “yes” vs. “no” responses.

Use bar chart to compare response rates across multiple groups2.

Rating Scale Results (e.g., Likert scale or Net Promoter Score):

Use a bar chart or line chart to display average ratings or scores.

Multiple Choice or Demographic Results: Use bar charts, pie charts, or stacked bar charts to visualize these responses.

Text-Based Responses: Create a word cloud to highlight common themes or keywords.

Colour and Label Thoughtfully:

Use colours that enhance readability and convey meaning. For example, use contrasting colours for different response options.

Label your axes clearly and provide context for each chart.

Highlight Key Insights:

Annotate your charts with relevant findings or observations.

Use titles, subtitles, and captions to guide the viewer’s understanding.

Tell a Story:

Arrange your charts in a logical order to tell a coherent narrative.

Explain the significance of each chart and how it relates to the design problem or pain points

Visual Journey Maps

Create visual journey maps illustrating the user experience, emphasizing pain points and moments of delight to guide design decisions.

Choose a specific scenario or use case that aligns with your problem. For example, if you’re designing an online shopping platform, consider the journey of a user from product discovery to checkout.

Understand what the user expects at each stage of their interaction.

Create a visual representation of the user’s experience. This can be a flowchart, grid, or any other format that suits your needs.

Start with the initial contact or discovery point (e.g., a user searching for a product online) and follow their journey through various touchpoints.

Include steps like browsing, decision-making, purchasing, and post-purchase interactions.

At each step, assess the user’s emotions, motivations, and overall satisfaction.

Identify pain points, moments of friction, and areas where the user experience could be improved.

Consider both positive and negative experiences.

Use the user journey map to pinpoint areas where enhancements are needed.

Look for opportunities to optimize touchpoints, streamline processes, and enhance user satisfaction.

Consider how design changes could address pain points and improve the overall experience.

Information is Beautiful

"Information is Beautiful" is a project led by David McCandless, a data journalist and designer. It revolves around transforming complex data sets into visually stunning and understandable visualizations. McCandless explores various topics, from global issues to pop culture, presenting information through charts, graphs, and interactive visualizations. The project's focus is on making data accessible and engaging for a wide audience.

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