Human Centered Design: A Crash Course

Proactively source problems by analyzing data from graphs and dashboards, review complaints and help desk questions, and be your own customer to uncover growth beyond the status quo.

Shift your mindset to view the problem through the customers' lens and uncover why they aren't buying ice-creams, using a human centered approach and the Double Diamond.

Explore the discover phase of the double diamond, a divergent step to go large, to gain insights, reframe the problem, and ensure you're solving the right thing.

Talk to your customers using a mix of interviews, focus groups, and surveys to capture diverse insights, balance engagement with efficiency, and avoid group think.

Map the customer journey with a simple flow chart on paper to trace the steps a customer experiences your service, using an ice-cream parlor example to spot pain points.

Empathize with your customers by walking in their shoes and experiencing your service in real time. Observe navigation and have them vocalize thoughts and feelings to reveal authentic experiences.

Map the customer journey, empathize with customers, and distill insights in an ice-cream scenario to reframe the problem, then define a single quality-focused question.

Identify how discovery work clusters related insights, from overly cold air conditioning to high prices, and highlight non-dairy needs for vegan customers and lactose-intolerant families seeking rich ice-cream textures.

In human centered design, prioritize problems by letting customers vote with three dot stickers to reveal the most pressing issues, as illustrated by non-dairy dietary priorities.

Learn to craft how might we questions that crystallize the problem, avoid solution-first bias, and balance generality with specificity for dairy-free contexts within the double diamond model.

Define your problem statement, involve customers, and develop a solution. Use how might we to invite creativity, go large, and list three things you can do in this divergent step.

Explore effective brainstorming: write ideas on sticky notes, voice them publicly, and build on each other with 'yes, and' while avoiding on-the-fly evaluation to spark feasible solutions.

Cast the net wide to crowdsource ideas from many people, using surveys or social posts, then synthesize the volume with word clouds or artificial intelligence, and explore crowdsourcing platforms.

Introverts in the workplace often think deeply and generate better ideas when given time to prepare answers in advance or revisit later, even in high-energy environments.

Choose the idea with the best chance of success, launch it, and translate your ideas into a deliverable solution through a convergent step emphasizing quality over quantity with three steps.

prioritize ideas using the dvf framework and the importance/difficulty matrix, guided by customer votes; in an ice-cream scenario, plant-based options top priority, followed by coconut milk and salted caramel.

Cross check what customers say with what they actually do to validate the priority in human centered design, using objective data over subjective feedback.

Test your solution with customers using lo-fi prototypes, from storyboards and paper versions to mockups in PowerPoint, gathering honest feedback to iterate until the product is ready to launch.

Involve customers in the design process with the double diamond to solve the right thing and solve it right.

Release a minimum viable product by delivering a good enough version to a small test market, learn quickly, fail small, fail fast, and iteratively expand through human centered design process.

Demonstrates how a fictional scenario uses the Double Diamond to design a human-centered solution, and emphasizes that diverse customer problems yield different preferred solutions, which you discover by exploring.

Apply a basic human centered design framework today by sourcing a problem and conversing with a customer to uncover problems, guided by the Double Diamond and a practical job aid.

Talk with customers to advance in human centered design. Explore resources on design thinking, user experience design, and customer experience design to continually improve as a minimum viable product.