Why Human-Centered Design is Fundamental to Products

Imagine you have come up with an incredible design concept that has excellent intentions — but, those intentions don’t match up to your consumer reality. In the past, this was the case. A common approach to designing was to come up with an idea, build it, and hope that consumers would use it. However, this approach does nothing but satisfy the designers own needs and desires — and puts the consumer in the backseat.

The concept of designing with the end user in mind is not new to product design. Nor is the need to understand and emphasize with their wants and needs. At its core, designing successful products requires a designer to create with the intention of solving a problem or improving an aspect of the consumer’s life. In other words, a designer must take upon a human-centered approach to designing.

What Is Human-Centered Design?

At the heart of it, human-centered design is a problem-solving approach that incorporates end users throughout the design process, to ensure solutions are tailored and suit consumer need.

IDEO explains, “when you understand the people you’re trying to reach — and then design from their perspective — not only will you arrive at unexpected answers, but you’ll come up with ideas that they’ll embrace.”

So you see, human-centered design shines a light on the people that have the problem and the underlying cause of it, rather than on the problem itself. This helps designers properly emphasize with the real issue the consumer’s face and come up with a solution that they are more likely to embrace.

An Approach for Innovation

In this technological age, there’s no limit to the new advancements rapidly changing the market. This, coupled with consumer ever-changing and demanding expectations, puts a lot of pressure on a company to ensure the products they create are useful. In essence, if a company wishes to stand out and beat the competition, they must be open to new approaches to lead innovation. With its ability to recognize the problem at hand and match up a solution, the human-centered approach is one that can accomplish this.

But don’t just take our word for it. Here are a few companies that have adopted and continue to use this approach.

Airbnb

At one point, Airbnb found themselves faced with financial difficulties — due to a low number of bookings. They took on board the human-centered approach to determine what was not working on their site and discovered their low-quality photo listings were the culprit. People weren’t booking due to the fact that they couldn’t see what they were paying for. Airbnb decided to upgrade all images with more visually striking ones, which doubled their revenue and solved their issue in no time.

Spotify

Before Spotify, purchasing and listening to our favorite songs wasn’t easy — and added up, fast. Spotify succeeded in empathizing with users struggle to listen, stream, and share music by taking on board a human-centered design to create their platform. This transformed the way users interacted with music, as with their platform, users can access all their music in one place, receive customized music suggestions and playlists, and helpful service — all for one monthly fee. This is an example of a product that solved a big problem before people realized it was one — and it was all due to their ability to empathize.

Oral B

Oral B took on adopted this approach when designing children’s toothbrushes. They decided to observe children brushing their teeth to determine any differences that needed to be accounted for. They found that children hold their toothbrushes in a different way to their adult counterparts, due to their small hands — and so they were finding regular ‘adult’ toothbrushes difficult to use. To solve this, they redesigned children’s toothbrush to include a squish gripper to make it easier for them to manipulate the brush in their mouth — and in the process, innovated children’s toothbrushes, to what we know today.

The Phases of Human-Centered Design

So, like the examples above, how do you implement this approach in your design strategy? Well, there are four main phases of the human-centered design process, and they are:

• Phase one: Inspiration. This phase requires designers to engage with the target audience directly to determine their main issue and pain points. During this phase, it’s crucial to fully research the audience to find out what makes them happy, frustrated, their routines, likes, dislikes, and so on. Essentially, you want to know them inside and out, so that you can begin to empathize with them.
• Phase two: Ideation. This is the brainstorming phase, where you imagine all the possible ways you could solve the consumer’s issues and needs — until you have a realistic, and human-centered solution envisioned. Don’t forget, you are not the user — so put your research to good use while brainstorming. In this phase, you can use tools such as empathy maps, customer journey maps, and more.
• Phase four: Prototyping and user testing. After coming up with the right design, you can create a prototype and begin to test it on your users. This is crucial to find out if the product actually solves a problem, and if it’s usable. In this phase, you will receive a lot of feedback which should be used to understand what part of the design requires improvements.
• Phase three: Implementation. By now, you should have fully tested your product, received feedback, and refined the product accordingly. Therefore, it should be ready to be released and marketed to the target audience. In this phase, it’s important to come up with an effective marketing strategy that speaks to the end users. Remember, you should market to the audience from their point of view — seeing as you are attempting to solve their problem.

Conclusion

Hopefully, by now you understand why taking a human-centered approach is fundamental for product success. Like the successful examples above, this approach will help you create long-lasting, innovative products, that solve the target audiences needs and pain points.

So, take it on board and try to create from a more ‘human angle’ you’ll see how easily it helps you stand out in the competitive market.