Human-Centered Design
Human-Centered Design (HCD) is a creative approach to problem solving that starts with the people you’re designing for and ends with new solutions that are tailor made to suit their needs. HCD is all about building a deep empathy with the people you’re designing for; generating tons of ideas; building a bunch of prototypes; sharing what you’ve made with the people you’re designing for; and eventually putting your innovative new solution out in the world.
HCD consists of three phases. In the Inspiration Phase you learn directly from the people you’re designing for as you immerse yourself in their lives and come to deeply understand their needs. In the Ideation Phase you make sense of what you learned, identify opportunities for design, and prototype possible solutions. And in the Implementation Phase you bring your solution to life, and eventually, to market. And you’ll know that your solution will be a success because you’ve kept the very people you’re looking to serve at the heart of the process.
HCD consists of three phases. In the Inspiration Phase you learn directly from the people you’re designing for as you immerse yourself in their lives and come to deeply understand their needs. In the Ideation Phase you make sense of what you learned, identify opportunities for design, and prototype possible solutions. And in the Implementation Phase you bring your solution to life, and eventually, to market. And you’ll know that your solution will be a success because you’ve kept the very people you’re looking to serve at the heart of the process.
+Acumen Course Materials
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Videos
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What is Human-Centered Design: This video provides a brief summary of what Human-Centered Designed is, and it's three phases. |
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Impacting Through Human-Centered Design: TEDxMSU: Evan Fried from MSU describes a project developed through Human-Centered Design that brought a mag-lev train experience to children in Lansing's elementary schools. |
Articles
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Listening in the Hardest Market: Equipping a Local Social Enterprise to Communicate Ideas Using Prototypes
Rapid prototyping is a core human-centered design skill. Design that Matters uses prototypes to better communicate with stakeholders across languages and cultures, quickly testing assumptions to efficiently converge on a final solution. This essay includes six examples of insights they gained using prototypes and how theytaught these methods to our social enterprise partner, MTTS. |
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Designing for Humans: An Introduction to Human-Centered Design:
be competing with staff fundraisers and experienced consultants for a piece of that grant-writing pie. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to carve out a niche for yourself in this market. |
Resources
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The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design IDEO's Field Guide has everything you need to understand the people you're designing for, to have more effective brainstorms, to prototype your ideas, and to ultimately arrive at more creative solutions. |
Documents
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