Why is Human-Centered Design more needed than before?

The Human-Centered Design aims to solve problems creatively by focusing on customer behavior and their desires instead of their demographics. Companies begin to focus on their user’s experiences more than they focus on product deliver. The Human-Centered Design is a unique approach as it merges between four main characteristics;

• HCD focuses on the customer’s needs (empathic).

• Involves the customers in the development process (collaborative).

• Believes that we can find solutions (optimistic).
• Depend on learning by doing and prototyping (experimental).

The question is:

Why do we need Human-Centered Design? And why is it important?

The below advantages have proven to have a positive effect on the company’s innovation, And competitiveness capabilities which appear in business success, value, and profitability.

Define the problem clearly

We can find a solution for any problem if we have a clear definition for this problem before anything. So, all tend to make wrong decisions when they face their problems. Because they didn’t have enough time to think well. Ok, don’t be worried.

We can help you to have an appropriate product or service that is suitable for your audiences. If you don’t have clearly understand for the problems that you face, This will lead to taking the wrong way that will end with the wrong solution.

For example:

When you want to take self-development training, you at first need to; detect the missing skills before moving forward to the desired learning path that can help you in your career life.

Focus on the users

When you learn about HCD it can help you to: Focus more and more on humans instead of other approaches such as profitability or technology.

The term “human” refers to the human factor in the process. It might be customers, employees, or society in general. Focusing on the human contributes to increasing the satisfaction ratio, which has a good impact on profitability. Microsoft is one of the successful examples of applying a Human-Centered Design approach.

According to the British Design Council report, a Study of the Design Process Focusing on; employees and creating a creative atmosphere inside the organization, Has been shown to have a positive impact on their productivity, creativity, and ability to contribute to business success.

Microsoft has been known as a technology-driven business. Now, the organization has adjusted its approach to be more user-centered; By implementing a design process that puts the user at the heart of the process. if you want to apply Human Centered Design within your organization, you are welcome and we will do our best to help you.

The organization noticed that as apps became more complicated, The expanding technological capabilities had a negative impact on the user experience. as a result, Microsoft has determined that; Design is the strategy that should be used to refocus the user on their software development process.

Microsoft’s user-centered design process consists of five steps:

1. Understanding – at this stage, the designers hope to gather knowledge about the needs of their users.
2. Envision — based on the information gathered in the first phase, the designers think widely about the solution.
3. Specify — the designers and stakeholders submit thorough product specifications.
4. Implement – the generating and delivering the product.
5. Maintain – the final product is frequently evaluated as consumer needs evolve and change.

Understand your users

To achieve success and identify an effective solution for problems, you should have a clear understanding of the user’s needs and behavior. Above all, This helps us to produce products and services with our users in mind.

The HCD is part of the design process models such as:

• D.school design thinking process,

• IBM design thinking,

• The Design Council Double Diamond process.

 In the same vein, all these models focus on building and Human-Centered Design, by understanding the users’ needs and problems, which are usually placed in the first stage.

like, the D.school Design Thinking model, have five-stage;

• Emphasize
• Define
• Ideate
• Prototype
• Test

Certainly, the first stage, Empathize, aims to research and collect data about the users and the current problem, before moving forward to the Define stage that focuses on clearly defining the problem. So, we can help you to have empathy with your users.

In the Design Council Double Diamond model,

The first stage includes the design research and aims to understand the users through different research methods.

As a result, understanding the users is one of the ways that can help the organization to achieve innovation, By developing new products that target the user’s needs or improve existing products.

Creating Design-Driven Culture

The design-driven culture aims to engage the users in all the development stages to; provide an effective solution for problems through the adoption of a Design Thinking process. That is to say, this target can be only achieved by placing the user as part of the stakeholders of the process.

According to McKinsey Company, there is increasing importance to the user’s experience; as it is hard to separate the two-stage of buying the product and using it. Therefore, the user’s experience becomes a competitive advantage for companies; Who would like to transform their business or improve their position in the market.

For example,

• Walmart revamped their online shopping experience for their users, the number of visitors to the website increased by 200 percent.

• Also, when the Bank of America redesigned its account registration process to focus on the users, their online-banking traffic increased by 45 percent.

Building Empathic Design

The goal of empathic design is to truly understand people’s emotional reactions to a product or service.

Unlike market research, empathetic design helps to understand customers’ feelings, experiences, and how they like and dislike products. This entails going on field trips and observing user experiences, as well as taking these data during all the product development stages.

For example;

IKEA and Apple are two firms that have achieved global success by driving users to love their products. As we can see from several examples of successful stories of creative firms, that put the customers at the heart of their product development process, Human-Centered Design is becoming increasingly essential for businesses to achieve competitive advantages.

The implication of the human-Centered process reflects positively on the enterprise; by giving it the capabilities to acquire the above advantages that can help the firm to be more innovative and user-centered.

If you want apply HCD within your business we can help you Contact US.

References:

• BCG.com.
• Building a Lasting Vision e-book.
• The Design Council Double Diamond process.

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• 10 Ecommerce UX Design Elements for a Perfect Experience.
• What are the parts of a strong e-commerce UX?