What does it mean to be a human-centered designer? To me, it's putting people first when designing. This means creating services, campaigns and products that focus on the needs of the end user. It takes empathy. You've got to get outside of your own mentality and desires and seek to understand someone who may be radically different than you. When you learn to design from someone else's perspective you'll increase the likelihood that people embrace your design and you'll come up with unexpected solutions along the way.
So how do I practice human-centered design, you ask? It's a process that works best when you follow 3 key steps:
1. Insights
The discovery phase involves opening yourself up to new viewpoints and perspectives. Here you learn about the people you're designing for, their needs and motivations. It requires the mindset that as long as you stay focused on people, your ideas will lead to the right solution. Go out into the world and learn as much as you can about your audience. Whether they are Millenials, Boomers, married, single, beach bums, metal heads, football fanatics, earth lovers or Trekkies, you've got to learn about what they value and the shared stories they hold dear and cherish.
2. Ideation
Once you've gotten to know your audience a little better it's time to generate ideas. Lots of them. This requires taking risks and not being afraid of coming up with a bad idea. You've got to embrace the ambiguity that you might not have all the right answers but if you trust the process you'll be able to synthesize disparate ideas into the right solution. It's a process of convergence (narrowing in on an idea) and divergence (deviating to create new ideas and solutions). Once you've generated an ample amount of ideas, move on to selection. Pick your best ideas then get people's feedback on the potential benefits or drawbacks of each one. Involving your audience in this step is key to ensure that your final idea is right for them.
3. Implementation
The final step is implementing the ideas selected by your audience. This involves feedback loops and the building of partnerships to increase the likelihood of usefulness and adoption of your design. Once this is done, launch your design to the world but don't stop there. Measure its' success. Continue to get feedback. Refine, tweak and improve your idea until it has reached its' most ideal state.
You might be wondering why human-centered design is so important to me. As a user experience designer, I don't just want to fulfill my creative whims. I want to create meaningful products and experiences that improve people's lives. I feel that if everyone took a little more time to focus on people over profits, this world would be a better place.
If you'd like to learn more about human-centered design, I recommend visiting IDEO's Design Kit. It's a great site full of videos, how-to's and case studies to teach designers more about how they can utilize the principles of human-centered design.