Human-centred design: What's the fuss?

Why Human-Centred Design?

The term ‘human-centred design’ (HCD) has certainly morphed into a buzzword among many corporate managers, design practitioners and executives alike. However, I often wonder if we truly understand its potential impact. How can a company with tens of thousands of employees in multiple geographies with a solid global brand effectively imbed a human-centred design philosophy in its digital transformation strategy? Better yet, how can a tech start-up, manufacturing or engineering company do the same with a handful of employees? The truth is, there’s no apparent panacea. The answer lies in strategically addressing myriad complexities within each business to create a fertile ground for an HCD philosophy to thrive. In Part 1, we focus on the holistic benefits, tangibles and intangibles of promoting an HCD-led design approach across your organisation. In Part 2, we dive deeper to explore HCD at a more granular level by interrogating how businesses of varying scalability can create a robust ecosystem that enables rapid iterations of new features, products and services designed in a user-centred way for the intended market segment.?

A brief trip down memory lane: The story of IDEO

Global design and consulting firm IDEO’s co-founder, David Kelley, is often credited with coining the term “human-centred design”. Contrary to belief, the framework already existed, although worded differently. With that said, he popularised HCD, which led to several compelling inventions of the past century. IDEO was founded in 1991, and its reputation for designing revolutionary products and services is legendary. The business has been a market leader in applying the HCD framework to engineer a wide range of products and services, whether consulting for a furniture manufacturing business, tech company, medical devices creator, or redesigning organisational systems. In the early 1990s, the company toyed with the idea of merging creative design ideas with practical engineering capabilities to create products that worked. Little did they know (at the time) that they’d stumbled on the foundations of what today is widely known as HCD. They meticulously articulated an efficient yet highly effective process to get this done. In the words of Kelly, “Design thinking gave us a way to explain what design was to people who didn’t understand it.”

Some of their memorable collaborations

IDEO’s ethos of helping successful companies of the past become successful companies of the future is evident in some of the projects they took on.

1. The first modern-day computer mouse: IDEO designed the first computer mouse for Apple in the early 1980s (known then as Hovey-Kelly). The mouse was clearly a groundbreaking invention that revolutionised the way we interact with computers.
2. One of the first successful handheld personal digital assistants (PDAs), The Palm V: IDEO worked with Palm to design the Palm V, which was considered a sleek device in the 1990s. It was praised for its user-friendly interface and portability.
3. They even designed chairs. The Steelcase Leap Chair: IDEO collaborated with office furniture manufacturer Steelcase to design the Leap Chair, one of the early adjustable and ergonomic office chairs that became one of the world’s most famous pieces of office furniture.
4. The Kaiser Permanente Innovation Center: IDEO designed the Kaiser Permanente Innovation Center. The centre has been recognised as a model for innovation in healthcare design and has been widely praised for its patient-centric approach to healthcare delivery.

The lesson here is for consulting firms to think critically about societal problems by advocating for user-centred solutions and partnering with relevant businesses to bring these innovations to fruition. In the words of IDEO CEO and President, Tim Brown “Design is an opportunity to reimagine the world, the objects, the institutions that help to reinforce the ways in which people relate to these systems.”

What about us??

The challenge for Africa is that many businesses don’t see the measurable value of HCD, nor do they apply design thinking to solve complex problems because traditional business metrics are archaic in quantifying 5th industrial revolution problems. We should ask ourselves how to leverage AI and machine learning computing to improve food security. How can we leverage the power of AI and machine learning to reduce fatalities in the mining sector and reduce threats like illegal mining? How can we solve climate change through technology? How can we reduce inequality due to increasing automation and digitisation? How will we deal with social media privacy violations and ethical concerns, such as biases, racism and hate speech? The HCD framework allows us to start thinking deeply about society’s problems while improving digital commercialisation for businesses.?

Notable examples of HCD excellence

Apple

One of the most-cited examples of HCD is Apple’s iPhone. The design team focused on creating an intuitive product that was easy to use, which led to creating a touch interface that allows users to navigate their phones without needing buttons. The iPhone’s revolutionary design was heavily influenced by Apple’s ethos, which is centred on simplicity and minimalism. Apple’s design team sought to create a phone that was clutter-free and without distractions, which led to creating a clean and simple interface that allowed users to focus on the immediate task. The first iPhone also included a range of features designed to enhance the user’s experience. For instance, the phone’s accelerometer allowed the screen to rotate when a user rotated the phone, making it easier to view content in landscape mode. Ultimately, with the iPhone, Apple created a product that fundamentally changed the mobile phone experience and overall market forever.?

Google

Google Search is another prominent example of HCD and how it was designed with the user’s needs in mind first. Their design team was tasked with building a search engine that would rival the biggest at the time, Yahoo, and boy, did they do that. While Yahoo dominated internet search in the 1990s, it had several limitations; the most notable was its high search results inaccuracy. Yahoo predominantly relied on keywords to determine the relevance of a web page, often returning irrelevant or low-quality results, which made it difficult for users to find the information they were looking for. Meanwhile, Google revolutionised internet search by creating a more accurate and efficient search engine. Legendary founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, developed a new algorithm called PageRank that used links to determine the relevance of a web page. Although Google’s algorithm was far superior to Yahoo’s, their approach was simply based on the idea that the more links a page had, the more authoritative it was likely to be and, therefore, more relevant to what the user searched for. This unwavering obsession with HCD engineering would go on to propel Google into one of the most prominent and influential tech companies of the 21st century. Arguably, only second to Apple Inc.?

Several other companies approached designing new products and services with similar ideologies in mind. Take Tesla’s revolutionary Model S and Fitbit’s incredible product development of creating wearable devices that can track your movements, workouts and sleep—even Airbnb for creating a platform that directly competed with hotels in the accommodation industry.?

The golden thread here is many forms of human ingenuity bud from a laser-focused obsession of catering to human needs. Maybe 99% of companies will never create outstanding successes on a global scale. However, these case studies validate the increasing importance of creating a design ecosystem that fosters HCD creativity and application. In the words of Steve Jobs, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

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The markets will speak?

Today the internet is flooded with information, academic theory and analysis on design thinking and HCD and how companies can harness this seemingly simplistic framework to create powerful experiences. Easier said than done, right? Like many theoretical concepts, the challenge lies in its execution- particularly for larger organisations. While much of the theory is valid, the truth is we’ve just scratched the surface in terms of its application at scale and figuring out how digital transformation strategies will shape businesses in the next 3, 5 or 10 years and beyond.?

If there’s one thing the 5th industrial revolution is teaching us is: adapt or die. It’s that simple. The number of corporate failures during the DotCom era in the late 1990s and early 2000s is well-documented. Some of the largest global companies collapsed because they couldn’t adapt to a rapidly changing world. It’s happening once again. Businesses that survived the 4th industrial revolution aren’t guaranteed a profitable pathway into the future. The reality is that the market will inevitably weed out the weak among us. Is your business a digital transformer and enabler or a lagger? Maybe not tomorrow or next year, but soon enough, we’ll know.?One of the challenges we must accept as experience curators and engineers is creating the conditions for innovation to happen over and over again. Once in a while, we should ask ourselves: What does the world need from us, and how can we design it from scratch?

By: Dumile Sibindana