Category Archives: Design

Applying Human-Centered Design to Create Innovative Solutions

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Innovation is the lifeblood of any successful business. In today’s competitive market, organizations must stay ahead of the curve in order to remain competitive. In order to do this, companies are turning to Human-Centered Design (HCD) to create new products and services that meet the needs of their customers.

At its core, HCD is a process that focuses on the customers’ needs and wants in order to create meaningful products and services. This process involves understanding the customer’s experience and expectations, defining the problem, and then creating a solution. HCD is not just focused on creating products; it is also used to create processes and services.

The goal of HCD is to create innovative solutions that are tailored to the customer’s needs. By understanding the customer’s experience, companies can develop products and services that accurately reflect the customer’s needs. This helps to ensure that the solution is not only effective, but also attractive and attractive to the customer.

HCD is an iterative process that involves several steps. First, companies must understand their customer’s needs and wants. This can be done through market research, surveys, interviews, and focus groups. Once the customer’s needs are established, companies can begin to develop a solution.

The next step is to design the solution. This involves creating a prototype and testing it with customers to gather feedback. The feedback can then be used to refine the design and make improvements. The goal is to create a product or service that is intuitive, efficient, and suitable for the customer’s needs.

Finally, companies must ensure that the solution is tested and verified before it is released for use. This helps to ensure that the product or service is safe and effective. The feedback gathered during the testing phase can also be used to further refine the solution if necessary.

As you design your product using human-centered methods, be sure and keep in mind the five secrets of successful product design:

1. Understand customer needs and develop a product to meet them: The first step in creating a successful product is to perform market research to gain insight into customer needs and preferences. Develop a product that meets those needs and provides a solution to a problem.

2. Create a unique product: Research the market and make sure the product you are creating is unique and different from what is already available.

3. Focus on quality: Quality is essential for a successful product. Ensure that your product is reliable and meets the customer’s expectations.

4. Utilize effective marketing: Marketing is a key factor in the success of any product. Utilize effective marketing strategies to spread awareness of your product.

5. Listen to customer feedback: Getting feedback from customers is essential to understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your product. Use the feedback to refine and improve your product.

Human-Centered Design is an invaluable tool for any company looking to innovate and create solutions that meet the needs of their customers. By understanding the customer’s needs and wants and developing a solution that reflects those needs, companies can create products and services that are attractive and effective. HCD is a powerful tool that can help companies stay ahead of the competition and create meaningful solutions for their customers.

SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

“The Problem Finding Canvas should help you investigate a handful of areas to explore, choose the one most important to you, extract all of the potential challenges and opportunities and choose one to prioritize.”

Image credit: Pixabay

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Design Thinking and Its Benefits for Businesses

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Design Thinking and Its Benefits for Businesses

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Design thinking has become an increasingly popular concept in business circles in recent years, primarily due to its potential to help businesses drive innovation and create successful products and services. Design thinking is an approach to problem-solving that emphasizes the human element and focuses on understanding the needs of customers. It involves elements from both design and engineering, and encourages collaboration between product developers, engineers, designers, and other stakeholders to create new solutions.

1. Design Thinking Creates Customer-Centered Problem Solving

At its core, design thinking involves putting the customer at the center of the problem-solving process. Rather than starting with a solution and working backwards, design thinking encourages businesses to look at the problem from the customer’s perspective and work towards a solution that meets their needs. This allows businesses to create products and services that are tailored to customers’ needs, and that offer a unique experience.

2. Goes Beyond Traditional Problem Solving

One of the main advantages of using design thinking is that it allows businesses to move beyond traditional problem-solving methods. By examining the problem from the customer’s point of view, businesses can come up with innovative solutions that may not have been possible using traditional approaches. Additionally, by collaborating with different stakeholders, businesses can ensure that all relevant perspectives are taken into account when designing a product or service.

3. Helps Create More Efficient and Effective Products and Services

Another benefit of design thinking is that it can help businesses create more efficient and cost-effective products and services. By understanding the customer’s needs, businesses can design products and services that are more likely to be successful in the marketplace. This not only allows businesses to save money on research and development costs, but also helps them ensure that the final product meets the customer’s expectations.

4. Fosters a Culture of Creativity and Collaboration

Finally, design thinking can help businesses foster a culture of creativity and collaboration. By involving multiple stakeholders in the problem-solving process, businesses can encourage employees to think outside of the box and come up with innovative solutions. This can lead to higher levels of engagement and motivation, which can in turn lead to better products and services.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, design thinking offers a number of benefits for businesses. By involving customers in the problem-solving process and encouraging collaboration between different stakeholders, businesses can create products and services that are tailored to customer needs and are more likely to be successful. Additionally, design thinking can help businesses create more efficient and cost-effective products, as well as foster a culture of creativity and collaboration. For these reasons, design thinking is an invaluable tool for businesses looking to drive innovation and stay ahead of the competition.

SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

Image credit: Pixabay

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What is Design Thinking?

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What is Design Thinking?

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Design thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that emphasizes the importance of understanding user needs and creating solutions that are both innovative and practical. It’s an approach that seeks to understand the user, context, and constraints of a problem and create solutions that are tailored to these needs.

Design thinking is based on the idea that through a combination of creativity, collaboration, and experimentation, it is possible to create solutions to even the most complex problems. This process involves a series of steps that encourage designers to go beyond the surface and consider not only the user’s needs but also the implications of their solution.

The first step of design thinking is to define the problem. This involves getting to the root of the problem, understanding user needs and expectations, and considering the broader context in which the problem exists. Once the problem is defined, the next step is to brainstorm potential solutions. This involves the use of creative methods such as brainstorming and prototyping to generate ideas and solutions that address the problem.

The third step is to test and refine the solutions. This involves testing the solutions with users and further refining them based on feedback. Testing also helps to uncover new insights that can be used to improve the solutions.

Finally, the last step of design thinking is to develop and implement the solutions. This involves taking the ideas, solutions, and insights generated during the process and turning them into tangible products or services.

Design thinking is a powerful and versatile approach to problem-solving that can be applied to a wide range of problems. It focuses on understanding the user’s needs, creating innovative solutions, and testing and refining solutions based on user feedback. By following this process, designers can create solutions that are tailored to the user’s needs and context.

SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Designing for the Extremes, Benefiting the Middle

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The “Dark Horse” Customer

LAST UPDATED: December 25, 2025 at 10:59AM

Designing for the Extremes, Benefiting the Middle

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Organizations often say they are customer-centric, yet their design decisions quietly optimize for convenience, averages, and assumptions. The result is a polished experience that works well until reality intervenes.

Human-centered design reaches its full power when teams stop designing for the mythical “average” user and start learning from the edges. The Dark Horse customer — underestimated, inconvenient, or misunderstood — holds the key to building experiences that scale under real-world conditions.

“When a system works for people under stress, constraint, or uncertainty, it doesn’t just survive the real world — it earns trust in it.”

Braden Kelley

Why Extremes Predict the Future

Extreme users are not anomalies; they are early signals. Aging populations, increasing cognitive load, language diversity, and economic pressure all push more people toward what was once considered the edge.

Designing for extremes today is how organizations stay relevant tomorrow.

The Hidden Cost of Designing for the Average

Average-based design creates fragile systems. When stress increases — time pressure, emotional intensity, technical failure — these systems collapse.

Dark Horse customers experience these breakdowns first, but never last.

A Practical Framework for Designing at the Edges

1. Seek Out Struggle

Do not recruit only confident or successful users. Study frustration, confusion, and improvisation.

2. Design for Recovery

Extreme users make mistakes under pressure. Systems that allow easy recovery benefit everyone.

3. Reduce Cognitive Load

Clarity is the ultimate inclusive design strategy. If the experience works for someone overwhelmed, it will work for anyone.

Case Study 1: Healthcare Appointment Systems

A healthcare provider redesigned appointment scheduling after observing patients managing chronic illness and limited digital skills.

By reducing steps, clarifying language, and confirming understanding, the system improved no-show rates and satisfaction across the entire patient population.

Case Study 2: E-Commerce Under Time Pressure

An e-commerce company studied last-minute shoppers during high-stress periods. These users abandoned carts due to unclear delivery expectations and complex checkout flows.

Simplifying choices and emphasizing reassurance increased conversion rates not only during peak times, but year-round.

Designing for Dignity

At its core, designing for the Dark Horse customer is about dignity. It acknowledges that people are human, not idealized users with unlimited time, focus, or confidence.

This mindset shift transforms inclusion from a compliance exercise into a competitive advantage.

The Middle Benefits the Most

When organizations design for extremes, the middle experiences ease, clarity, and confidence without realizing why.

That invisibility is the mark of great design.

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ

Are Dark Horse customers rare?
No. Most people become extreme users under certain conditions.

Is this the same as inclusive design?
Inclusive design is a result; designing for extremes is a method.

Where should teams start?
Start where customers struggle the most.

Extra Extra: Because innovation is all about change, Braden Kelley’s human-centered change methodology and tools are the best way to plan and execute the changes necessary to support your innovation and transformation efforts — all while literally getting everyone all on the same page for change. Find out more about the methodology and tools, including the book Charting Change by following the link. Be sure and download the TEN FREE TOOLS while you’re here.

Image credits: Unsplash

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Metrics for Systemic Human-Centered Design Success

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Measuring Empathy

LAST UPDATED: December 23, 2025 at 1:51PM

Metrics for Systemic Human-Centered Design Success

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

Empathy is frequently praised and rarely operationalized. In too many organizations, it lives in sticky notes, inspirational posters, and kickoff workshops — disconnected from how decisions are actually made. As human-centered design matures from a project-level practice into an enterprise capability, empathy must become measurable, repeatable, and systemic.

Measuring empathy is not about stripping humanity from design. It is about ensuring that human understanding survives scale, complexity, and quarterly pressure.

Re-framing Empathy as a Capability

Empathy is often misunderstood as an individual trait. In reality, sustainable empathy is an organizational capability supported by structures, incentives, and feedback loops. The question leaders should ask is not “Are our designers empathetic?” but rather “Does our system consistently produce empathetic outcomes?”

Metrics provide the answer.

A Practical Empathy Measurement Framework

1. Human Insight Integrity

These metrics assess whether decisions are grounded in real human understanding:

Percentage of strategic initiatives informed by primary research
Recency of customer insights used in decisions
Inclusion of marginalized or edge users

Outdated or secondhand insights are a hidden empathy killer.

2. Experience Friction Reduction

Empathy should reduce unnecessary effort and stress:

Time-on-task improvements
Drop-off and abandonment rates
Emotion-based experience ratings

3. Organizational Behavior Change

Look for evidence that empathy is shaping behavior:

Frequency of cross-functional research participation
Leadership presence in customer interactions
Reuse of validated insights across teams

4. Long-Term System Health

At scale, empathy improves system resilience:

Reduction in rework and failure demand
Employee engagement and retention
Trust and loyalty over time

“Empathy is not proven by how deeply we feel in a workshop, but by how consistently our systems change behavior in the real world. If you can’t measure that change, empathy remains a belief instead of a capability.”

Braden Kelley

Case Study 1: Retail Banking Transformation

A large retail bank invested heavily in digital channels but continued to see declining trust. By introducing empathy metrics focused on customer anxiety and clarity, the bank discovered that customers felt overwhelmed rather than empowered.

Design teams simplified language, reduced choice overload, and measured success through emotional confidence indicators. Within eighteen months, complaint volume dropped while product adoption increased — a clear signal of systemic empathy at work.

Case Study 2: Public Transportation Services

A metropolitan transit authority applied empathy metrics to rider experience. Beyond punctuality, they measured perceived safety, clarity of wayfinding, and stress during disruptions.

By addressing emotional pain points and tracking their reduction, the authority improved satisfaction without major infrastructure investment, proving that empathy can outperform capital expenditure.

Embedding Empathy into Governance

Empathy metrics only matter if they influence decisions. Leading organizations embed them into:

Executive dashboards
Investment prioritization
Performance reviews

When empathy metrics sit alongside financial and operational metrics, they shape trade-offs instead of reacting to them.

The Future of Human-Centered Measurement

As AI and automation accelerate, empathy will become a primary differentiator. Organizations that can measure and manage it will design systems that are not only efficient, but humane.

The goal is not perfect empathy. The goal is continuous human understanding at scale.

Frequently Asked Questions

FAQ

Why are empathy metrics necessary?
They ensure human needs remain visible and actionable as organizations scale.

Do empathy metrics replace qualitative research?
No. They amplify and sustain qualitative insights over time.

What is the first empathy metric to implement?
Track how often real customer insights directly inform decisions.

Image credits: Pixabay, Google Gemini

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The AI Ethics Canvas

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A Human-Centered Approach to Responsible Design

LAST UPDATED: December 20, 2025 at 12:39PM

The AI Ethics Canvas - A Human-Centered Approach to Responsible Design

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

AI systems increasingly mediate how people access healthcare, credit, employment, and information. These systems do not simply reflect reality; they shape it. As a human-centered change and innovation practitioner, I believe the central challenge of AI is not intelligence, but responsibility. This is why ethics must move from abstract principles to practical design tools.

The AI Ethics Canvas provides that bridge. It translates values into design considerations, helping teams anticipate consequences and make informed trade-offs before harm occurs.

From Principles to Practice

Most organizations already have AI ethics principles. Fairness, transparency, accountability, and privacy are widely cited. The problem is not knowing what matters, but knowing how to act on it.

The AI Ethics Canvas operationalizes these principles by embedding them into everyday innovation workflows. Ethics becomes part of discovery, not an afterthought.

Designing for Power and Impact

AI systems redistribute power. They decide who is seen, who is prioritized, and who is excluded. The canvas explicitly asks teams to examine power asymmetries and unintended consequences.

This perspective shifts conversations from compliance to stewardship. Teams begin to ask not only what they can build, but what they should build.

Case Study One: Recalibrating Healthcare Diagnostics

In one healthcare organization, an AI diagnostic tool showed promising accuracy but failed to perform consistently across populations. Rather than pushing forward, the team used the AI Ethics Canvas to examine data bias, user trust, and accountability.

The outcome was a redesigned deployment strategy that included broader datasets, human oversight, and transparent communication with clinicians. Performance improved, but more importantly, trust was preserved.

Ethics as a Learning System

Ethical AI is not static. Contexts change, data evolves, and societal expectations shift. The AI Ethics Canvas supports continuous learning by encouraging teams to revisit assumptions and update safeguards.

This makes ethics adaptive rather than brittle.

Case Study Two: Building Trust in Financial AI

A financial institution faced backlash when customers could not understand automated credit decisions. Using the AI Ethics Canvas, the team re-framed explainability as a customer experience requirement.

By introducing clear explanations and appeal pathways, the organization strengthened trust while maintaining operational efficiency. Ethics became a differentiator rather than a constraint.

Leadership Accountability

Tools alone do not ensure ethical outcomes. Leaders must create incentives that reward responsible behavior and allocate time for ethical reflection.

The AI Ethics Canvas gives leaders visibility into ethical risk without requiring technical expertise, enabling informed governance.

The AI Ethics Canvas

Conclusion

The future of AI will be shaped by the choices we make today. Responsible design does not emerge from good intentions alone. It requires structure, dialogue, and accountability.

The AI Ethics Canvas is not a checklist. It is a mindset made visible. Used well, it helps organizations innovate with integrity and earn lasting trust.

Frequently Asked Questions

What problem does the AI Ethics Canvas solve?

It helps teams move from abstract ethical principles to concrete design decisions in AI systems.

Who should participate in an AI Ethics Canvas session?

Cross-functional teams including designers, engineers, legal experts, business leaders, and affected stakeholders.

Is the AI Ethics Canvas only for regulated industries?

No. Any organization building AI systems that affect people can benefit from ethical design.

Image credit: Google Gemini

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Beyond the Prototype – How to Test and Iterate on a Business Model

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LAST UPDATED: December 10, 2025 at 12:12PM

Beyond the Prototype - How to Test and Iterate on a Business Model

GUEST POST from Chateau G Pato

The journey of innovation often starts with a flash of insight, proceeds through design thinking, and culminates in a beautiful, working prototype. Unfortunately, too many organizations mistake this technical milestone for ultimate validation. They assume that because the product works, the business model — the economic engine that funds and scales that product — will also work. This is the most dangerous assumption in the innovation lifecycle.

The business model itself is the largest, most complex hypothesis we launch. It encompasses everything from how we acquire customers and what they are willing to pay, to the cost of our key resources and the nature of our partnerships. If your revenue streams are a guess, your cost structure is a hope, and your channels are a pipe dream, your product, however well-designed, is destined for the scrap heap. In the realm of Human-Centered Innovation, we must unlearn the product-first mentality and embrace the model-first testing philosophy. This requires shifting from testing product usability to testing business viability using model-specific metrics.

The Three Hypotheses in Business Model Testing

Testing a business model means breaking it down into its core, measurable assumptions. We focus on three interconnected areas:

1. The Value Hypothesis (Customer/Value Proposition Fit)

This is the foundation: Does the product or service actually solve a problem for a defined customer segment? While prototyping addresses product usability, model testing addresses willingness-to-pay and actual usage patterns. We test whether the perceived value aligns with the revenue model.

Test Focus: A/B test pricing tiers (monthly vs. annual, premium vs. basic), run “smoke tests” to gauge initial sign-ups for a non-existent product, or use Concierge MVPs where services are manually delivered to deeply understand the customer journey and price sensitivity before automation.
Key Metric: Willingness-to-Pay (WTP), Net Promoter Score (NPS) for the specific value exchange.

2. The Growth Hypothesis (Channel/Acquisition Fit)

A great product fails if you cannot affordably get it into the hands of customers. This hypothesis tests the efficiency and scalability of your customer acquisition channels and your key partners.

Test Focus: Run small, contained experiments across different channels (e.g., paid social vs. SEO vs. strategic partnership referrals) to compare costs and conversion rates. Test various partner roles — do they act as distributors, co-creators, or merely service providers?
Key Metric: Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), Lifetime Value (LTV), and LTV/CAC ratio. This ratio is the ultimate test of viability.

3. The Operational Hypothesis (Cost/Resource Fit)

This tests the internal engine: Can we deliver the value proposition at a cost that is significantly lower than the price we charge? This involves testing key activities, resource assumptions, and supply chain scalability.

Test Focus: Create a “Shadow P&L” for the new model, tracking variable costs associated with early customer acquisition and service delivery. Run controlled pilots focused on simulating the Key Activities (e.g., if a new service requires 24/7 support, test that support capability with real, paying customers for a month).
Key Metric: Contribution Margin, Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) as a percentage of revenue, and scalability metrics (e.g., cost to serve the 10th customer vs. the 100th customer).

Case Study 1: The Subscription Anchor That Was Cut

Challenge: Failed Launch of a Health-Tech Diagnostic Device

A medical device company (“MedTrack”) developed a portable diagnostic device. The initial prototype was technically perfect, but the business model relied on a mandatory high-cost monthly subscription for data analysis software. The subscription revenue stream was designed to create recurring revenue and offset the low upfront device cost.

Model Testing Intervention: Value Hypothesis Pivot

Initial pilot testing revealed that while customers loved the device, the high subscription created massive churn after the first year. MedTrack tested the Value Hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1 (Failed): Customers will pay $150/month for comprehensive data analysis.
Test: Offer three options: $150/month (current model), $25/month for basic data (new tier), and a $1,500 one-time software license.

The Innovation Impact:

The test showed that the $25/month basic data tier attracted 80% of new customers and had 95% retention. The $1,500 one-time fee also proved attractive to institutional buyers. By iterating on the Revenue Stream (a key business model block) from a rigid subscription to a tiered and licensed model, MedTrack dramatically improved its LTV/CAC ratio. They realized their innovation wasn’t the device; it was the flexibility of the pricing model tailored to different customer segments, a critical element of Human-Centered Innovation.

Case Study 2: Testing the Delivery Channel of Services

Challenge: Scaling an Expensive B2B Consulting Service

A strategy firm (“StratX”) wanted to scale a high-value, bespoke market entry strategy service without proportionally increasing its headcount — a severe constraint in its Cost Structure block. Their initial Growth Hypothesis relied on high-touch, senior consultant sales.

Model Testing Intervention: Growth and Operational Hypothesis Test

StratX decided to test replacing the expensive consultant delivery with a technology-augmented channel. They ran an A/B test on their target customer segment:

Group A (Control): Full senior consultant engagement (high Cost Structure, high Revenue Stream).
Group B (Test): A “Hybrid Model” where the initial 80% of the strategy report was generated by AI/data science tools (saving Key Activities cost), followed by a single senior consultant review session (low Cost Structure, slightly reduced Revenue Stream).

The Innovation Impact:

The Hybrid Model achieved an LTV/CAC ratio that was300% higher than the Control Group. Customers in Group B were highly satisfied with the speed and data quality, accepting a slightly lower consultant touchpoint for a lower price and faster delivery. StratX had successfully validated a new, highly scalable Key Resource (the data science platform) and a new Channel, allowing the firm to expand its addressable market and free up expensive senior consultants for truly bespoke, complex client needs. This proved that innovation in service delivery is a critical component of the business model.

Conclusion: Business Model Validation is the Ultimate De-Risking

The successful launch of any new initiative, particularly in the realm of radical innovation, is determined long after the prototype is functional. It is determined by the rigor with which you test and iterate on your business model hypotheses. By dissecting your model into its core assumptions — Value, Growth, and Operational — and designing measurable experiments (MVPs, A/B tests, Shadow P&Ls), you move from guessing to knowing. This structured approach, rooted in Human-Centered Innovation, shifts the risk from catastrophic failure at launch to manageable learning throughout development. Stop perfecting the product; start proving the model.

“If your product is a masterpiece but your business model is a mystery, you have a hobby, not an innovation.”

Frequently Asked Questions About Business Model Testing

1. What is the difference between testing a product and testing a business model?

Testing a product focuses on usability, functionality, and desirability (e.g., does the app work, do people like the color?). Testing a business model focuses on viability and scalability (e.g., are people willing to pay enough for the app to cover the cost of acquiring them and running the service?).

2. What is a “Shadow P&L” in the context of innovation?

A Shadow P&L (Profit and Loss) is a separate, simulated financial statement created specifically for an innovation project. It tracks the real-world costs and simulated revenues associated with the new business model during the testing phase. It helps the team validate their Cost Structure and Revenue Stream hypotheses before integrating the project into the main corporate finances.

3. How do you test a distribution channel without a full launch?

Distribution channels can be tested using small, contained experiments. For instance, testing a partnership channel can involve a single pilot partner with clear, measurable KPIs (conversion rates, lead quality). Testing a direct-to-consumer channel can use A/B testing of targeted digital ads to measure Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) without building out the entire logistics infrastructure.

Your first step toward model testing: Take your most promising new idea, map it onto a Business Model Canvas, and circle the three riskiest assumptions in the “Revenue Streams,” “Cost Structure,” and “Key Activities” blocks. Design one small, cheap experiment for each of those three assumptions next week.

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What is Human-Centered Design?

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What is Human-Centered Design?

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Human-centered design is an iterative process that focuses on the needs of people and their environment when creating solutions to problems. It is a user-centric approach to product design and development that puts the user at the center of the entire process. This form of design puts the user’s needs, wants and desires first and foremost in the design process.

This type of design philosophy is often referred to as ‘design thinking’ and it involves taking a step back from the product, to gain an understanding of the user’s needs and desires. This allows designers to come up with solutions that are tailored to the user’s individual needs.

The process of human-centered design begins with research and understanding the user. This involves gathering information about the user’s needs and desires. This can be done through interviews, surveys, focus groups, and other research methods. Once the research is complete, the designer can begin to create a prototype or concept that meets the user’s needs.

The process of human-centered design is iterative, meaning it can be repeated over and over again until the best possible solution is found. This allows designers to make adjustments and improvements to the design until it is perfect.

The goal of human-centered design is to create products that users can easily understand and use. It should make the user’s experience as easy and enjoyable as possible. This type of design should also be intuitive, so users can quickly and easily understand how to use the product without reading a manual or instruction guide.

Human-centered design is becoming increasingly popular in product design, as companies realize the importance of putting the user first. By creating products that are tailored to the user’s individual needs, companies can create products that are more successful in the long run.

SPECIAL BONUS: Braden Kelley’s Problem Finding Canvas can be a super useful starting point for doing design thinking or human-centered design.

Image credit: Unsplash

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Strategies for Incorporating Human-Centered Design into Your Organization

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Strategies for Incorporating Human-Centered Design into Your Organization

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach to product and service development that puts people first. It is a user-focused approach that puts the user’s needs and experiences at the center of the design process. This approach has become increasingly popular as organizations strive to create products and services that are tailored to the needs of their customers.

Incorporating HCD into an organization requires a commitment to a holistic approach to design. This involves understanding the customer’s needs, researching their behaviors and preferences, and designing a solution that addresses their needs. It also involves actively engaging with customers throughout the design process.

If your organization is looking to move toward an HCD approach to design, here are some strategies for getting started:

1. Understand your customers: Before you can design for your customers, you need to understand their needs. Conduct research to gain an understanding of who your customers are, what their needs and preferences are, and how they use your products and services.

2. Create an HCD team: Assemble a team of people who are dedicated to understanding and responding to the needs of your customers. This team should include people from all areas of the organization, including product and service designers, user experience designers, researchers, marketers, and customer service representatives.

3. Define goals and processes: Establish clear goals and processes for incorporating HCD into your organization. This should include processes for gathering customer feedback, incorporating user data into the design process, and evaluating the success of your design efforts.

4. Involve customers: Involve customers in the design process. This can be done through surveys, focus groups, interviews, and other methods. Make sure to listen to their feedback and use it to inform your design decisions.

5. Use feedback to inform changes: Make sure to use customer feedback to inform changes to your products and services. This will help ensure that your products and services are meeting the needs of your customers.

6. Monitor results: Monitor the success of your HCD efforts by tracking customer feedback and usage data. This will help you understand what is working and what needs to be improved.

By following these strategies, your organization can begin to incorporate a human-centered design approach. This will help ensure that your products and services are meeting the needs of your customers and will help you to stay ahead of the competition.

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Design Thinking for Digital Transformation Projects

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Design Thinking for Digital Transformation Projects

GUEST POST from Art Inteligencia

Design Thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that enables organizations to develop innovative solutions to complex challenges. The methodology has been used for many years in product development, but it is now being increasingly applied to digital transformation projects.

Digital transformation projects involve the implementation of new or upgraded technologies, processes, and systems. The goal is to make an organization’s operations more efficient, improve customer experience, and create new opportunities for growth. Digital transformation projects are often complex and involve a great deal of risk, so organizations must develop innovative solutions to ensure success.

Design Thinking is well-suited to these types of projects because it emphasizes the importance of understanding the customer. By focusing on customer needs, organizations can develop solutions that are tailored to the user’s needs. Additionally, Design Thinking encourages experimentation and iteration, which allows organizations to quickly test and refine their solutions.

When applying Design Thinking to a digital transformation project, it is important to first understand the current state of the organization and its customers. This includes understanding the customer’s needs, the current technology and processes in place, and any constraints that may prevent successful implementation.

Once the current state is understood, the next step is to identify the desired outcomes of the transformation project. This could include improved customer experience, increased efficiency, or a reduction in costs.

The next step is to brainstorm potential solutions. This should involve both the technical and non-technical stakeholders. The goal is to generate as many ideas as possible, and then narrow them down to the most viable.

Once potential solutions have been identified, they should be tested and refined. This can involve prototyping the solution or running a pilot project. The goal is to ensure that the solution is viable before full implementation.

Finally, the solution should be implemented. This involves developing the infrastructure, training staff, and rolling out the new system. Throughout this process, organizations should continue to monitor the results to ensure that the desired outcomes are achieved.

By applying Design Thinking to digital transformation projects, organizations can develop innovative solutions that meet the needs of their customers. The methodology encourages experimentation, iteration, and customer-focused solutions, which can help organizations ensure successful implementation.

Image credit: Pixabay

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