EM-513Human Centered Design Thinking ADM
- 1. UNIT 4 Human-Centered Design (Thinking) in the Alternative Delivery Modes in Education LESSON 1 Human Centered-Design (Thinking) in Education ALLEN MAE A. DIVINAGRACIA Discussant
- 2. INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN The human world is complex and interesting. It presents countless combinations of novel problems which are open to interpretation and potential solutions. The domain of education is no exception to these complexities. Human- Centered Design offers an approach to solving problems in ways that designers do and in ways that keep humans at the heart of the solution.
- 3. WHAT IS HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN? Human-Centered Design is a problem-solving approach that is focused on learning from the customer of the intended solution, particularly through empathic methods – its defining feature (Sklar & Madsen, 2010). As an “outside-in” approach, Human-Centered Design is based on the philosophy that developing useful products, services, environments, organizations, and modes of interaction requires learning from and understanding the people for whom the solution is being designed.
- 4. Human-Centered Design is part of the family of Design thinking; in practice these terms are used synonymously (Brown, 2008). The relation between the two could be considered the distinction between design thinking as a property of the “thinker” and Human-Centered Design as a set of principles and processes to solve a particular problem in ways that preference the “user’s” needs (Roschuni, Goodman, & Agogino, 2013). Furthermore, some design research literature present user interactions primarily as learning opportunities to advance the design, not in empathic terms (Stoker & John, 2009). For of these reasons, the term Human- Centered Design better aligns with the practical orientation of this paper and on the importance of the empathic mindset.
- 5. THE PEOPLE IN HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN Human-Centered Design terminology varies depending on the field of expertise of the writers. For example, writers with a design background tend to focus on the “users” and “designers”, whereas writers with backgrounds in the human services tend to use the language of “stakeholders” and “practitioners”. The intentional blurring between these roles promoted by Human-Centered Design is captured in the varied use of this language which is used in the literature as presented in Figure 1. “Users” and “customers” are interchangeable terms, depending on the context, referring to individuals that will have direct experience with the solution that is being designed. They may also be beneficiaries; those that stand to gain from the solution.
- 7. MINDSETS A particular pattern of mindsets, or perhaps more accurately, the acceptance of particular practices, are considered to set Human-Centered Designers apart from other problem solvers. These need to be adopted to successfully engage with the Human-Centered Design process (IDEO.org, 2015). These mindsets reflect openness to ideas and solutions unrestricted by current operational limitations or dogma.
- 8. EMPATHY At the cornerstone of Human-Centered Design, empathy is a key mindset that is required to understand different people, scenarios and places. It provides a way to include the people you’re designing for into the design process, to leave behind preconceived ideas and old thinking and to keep work grounded in the reality of users. In order to get to new solutions, you have to get to know different people, different people, different scenarios, different places -Emi Kolawole, Editor-in-Residence, Stanford University d.School
- 9. OPTIMISM Practitioners must hold the belief that design is inherently optimistic, that an answer is not yet known but that a way is out there to be found. Optimism is necessary for perseverance throughout the iteration process. Optimism is the thing that drives you forward. -John Bielenberg, Founder, Future Partners
- 10. ITERATION Iteration is integral to Human-Centered Design. It requires feedback, which presents an opportunity to further the participation of those being designed for. Essential to iteration is the need to venture outside of the design team to test and reflect. Being open to iteration is important because there will be a need to revisit initial ideas and strive to constantly improve on them. By iterating, we validate our ideas along the way because we’re hearing from the people we’re actually designing for. -Gaby Brink, Founder, Tomorrow Partners
- 11. CREATIVE CONFIDENCE This mindset relates to the confidence in the ability to act on ones ideas combined with the belief that everyone is creative in the way that they understand the world. Creative confidence involves trusting intuition and going forth with ideas that you haven’t quite mapped out in detail yet. Creative confidence is the notion that you have the ability to act on them. -David Kelley,Founder, IDEO
- 12. MAKING The ability to make is about being able to first convey an idea and then to turn it into a solution. This mindset builds on the notion that theory (the idea behind a solution) and making (a solution without a theoretical grounding reasons) in isolation less powerful as the two combined. The making mindset is required to prototype, which needs to be done throughout the process. You’re taking risk out of the process by making something simple first. And you always learn lessons from it. -Krista Donaldson, CEO, D-Rev
- 13. EMBRACING AMBIGUITY This mindset requires an acceptance that not all the factors involved in a problem can be known at once, if at all. It involves being open to the idea that there will always be more ideas; there is no need to hang on to any one of them. It is this inability to know all of the answers that allows innovation to happen, since it means that the boundaries of the problem space are not clear and open to possibility. We want to give ourselves the permission to explore lots of different possibilities so that the right answer can reveal itself. -Patrice Martin, Co-Lead and Creative Director, IDEO.org
- 14. LEARNING FROM FAILURE It’s rare to achieve the right solution the first time, so the ability to learn from failure is essential to Human-Centered Design. Refusing to take risks limits designers to only incremental solutions rather than opportunities to innovate through radical departures from the norm and known. Mindsets are important throughout all phases of Human-Centered Design, although some of them will become more relevant at particular phases than at others. Don’t think of it as failure, think of it as designing experiments through which you’re going to learn. -Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO