How does “Human Centered Design” relate to innovation?
How does “Human Centered Design” relate to innovation?
(pic by Vanessa Loring for pexels)
I was chatting with a young entrepreneur at a conference I attended. She hadn’t fully formed the idea for her product yet, nor did she know how was going to take to bring her innovation to life. She had been guided by Human Centered-Design (HCD) in a previous role, and wondered in what ways it might provide insight in developing her tech-based innovation.
She was worried that HCD and technology innovation were mutually exclusive because, well, it was pitting human intelligence against machine intelligence. I pointed out that every technical product – for that matter, every product, service, or system – is used by people. Even AI is designed for the end user.
HCD goes beyond UX, in that HCD goes deeper into the user’s experience to find out more about their issue, how they respond to it emotionally, and the problem they really want to solve.
HCD is woven into Phase 1 of Light Bulb Thinking™ *, Planning. Before you and your team go into a brainstorming session, it’s important to determine the problem you’re trying to solve… otherwise you’re likely to spend valuable time and money coming up with the wrong solution. Knowing who will be using your product, service, or system, or who will be in the audience for your marketing campaign, is the first step to developing an innovative solution.
* Light Bulb Thinking™ (LBT) is our framework that helps managers and teams generate solutions no one’s thought of before, and lead to a culture of kickass innovation.
Here’s an example of how Human Centered Design can contribute to innovation:
Allcove
(with thanks to IDEO)
Allcove has redesigned the help-seeking experience for youth. Their mission is to provide space for youth to find community, support, advice or even just a moment of pause. Here’s the story of how it got started.
The Problem
Nearly half of all lifetime mental illness cases in the U.S. begin by age 14, yet 79% of the youth in need of care don’t access it – support is either not easy to find or not available to all. Stanford University’s Department of Psychiatry's Center for Youth Mental Health & Wellbeing wanted to make it easy for youth to walk into a supportive space and tackle challenges, big or small.
The Dept defined the problem as: How might we create a non-judgmental space where teens can press pause and seek help?
The Inspiration
To help answer this question, they took a Human Centered Design approach and asked: What does it feel like to be a 16-year old?
They came up with these pressure points:
· Parents expect support at home
· Siblings demand attention
· Teachers insist on excellence
· Friends want constant online engagement
Any one of these is a stressor. Taken all together, these expectations can feel unreasonable and produce an undercurrent of constant tension.
The Process
The team spent a lot of time co-designing with high school and community college students. A youth advisory group of 27 teenagers contributed to every step of the process—from sharing about their lives to determining what the physical spaces would look like and how staff would behave.
The design team created a low-tech prototype of what the space could look like from existing furniture, cardboard, and tape. Members of the youth advisory group acted out their ideal greeting experience when they entered the center, which led to an “experience playbook,” a model for interactions that would be carried out by service providers and support staff.
The Outcome
Based on the strength of the co-designing process and prototyping, California state allocated $15m in innovation funds to open two integrated youth mental health centers - the first in the nation.
Today both centers are going strong and provide support in the areas of mental and physical health, education support, career coaching, peer support, and community.
Food for Thought
What can you and your team draw from Allcove’s experience?
The more you push your brain to figure out how this could relate to your own operations, the more likely you are to come up with an innovative idea relevant to your organization. I’d love to hear if you come up with something exciting!
Want to get noticed for your creative problem-solving abilities?
You’ll have the opportunity to think about how different problem-solving approaches can be applied to your team, making you a highly valued manager in the process, through our coaching programs. Head on over to our website to learn more. Questions? Contact me at Ellia@ThePotentialCenter.com and we’ll arrange a time to talk.
I develop newly minted managers who want to stand out and become highly valued, by leading a team that comes up with solutions no one else could see before.
If you’d like to see what tapping into creative potential could look like at your place of work, contact me at Ellia@ThePotentialCenter.com to arrange a no-obligation call.