The importance of human centred approaches in challenging times
Boutique Innovation uses a combination of innovation acceleration and user-centred design methods along with in-depth industry experience and insight to enable teams to think and work differently.
Many of us working in technology led businesses are naturally biased towards seeking out and designing solutions for technical challenges. Whilst this is often the most relevant approach for technology led companies, it’s equally important to consider the ‘human centred’ approach to design, addressing the problem to be solved with a strong sense of empathy. Human centred design has long been a successful route to delivering customer satisfaction for products and services. In the current challenging environment, those companies driven by this genuine sense of empathy combined with an inquisitive nature, recognise this time to be a unique opportunity to strengthen relationships externally with clients, suppliers, customers and end-users.
Design thinking (as this human centred approach is known), practiced by companies like Procter & Gamble, Apple, Amazon, Nike & Starbucks takes teams on a journey from problem statement to solution via a series of workshops and hands-on activities including field research, insight generation, idea creation, prototyping and testing before finally implementing the solution. More than ‘just another brainstorming session’ running projects using design thinking as a framework is a powerful and creative way to ensure solutions meet or exceed end user expectations. Teams can be co-located or digitally connected and workshops can be hosted over virtual platforms when necessary.
Design thinking can be embraced and practiced by all sectors and subject matters and is broadly applied to solve challenges from product and service design, proposition and process improvement to organisational change. For even better business outcomes, combining design thinking with the culture and principles of innovation acceleration expedites solution generation, delivering end results at pace. Innovation acceleration or ‘sprints’ i.e. short bursts of focused project work leading to an initial prototype solution, have more successful outcomes when tackled with a human centred focus, ensuring teams are designing solutions for the biggest needs of end users.
How can this thinking be put into practice? Once the ‘fire-fighting’ phase of the COVID-19 lockdown is established, it’s time to redirect some attention towards the business’s biggest asset – people. Ramping up the first phases of design thinking (field research and insight generation) in the form of engagement with customers, clients, suppliers and end users is critical during challenging times. Fortifying these connections, however, needs to be done from a genuine position of empathy and seeking to understand. Reaching out to explore current challenges and needs leads to useful insights which can be acted on quickly or parked for future attention. This empathic gesture builds priceless goodwill for engaged brands and companies and the insights generated from these discussions form the bedrock of ideation & prototyping to deliver new solutions for customers now and in the future.
Elaine Baxter, founder, will be running a webinar for IBioIC members on 4th June entitled ‘Think and Do Differently - Introduction to Design Thinking by Boutique Innovation’.