This week a new podcast went live on This is HCD (Human Centred Design) that Christine Hemphill, Managing Director at Open Inclusion did with Gerry Scullion about making HCD more human. Gerry’s a fabulous service designer and design thinking leader from Dublin, Ireland and we spoke on his “Bringing Design Closer” channel.
We discussed how Human Centred Design and Design Thinking as it is practiced today can limit the value of products or services if it fails to consider the very broad diversity of users.
We all sense, think and move differently, whether we define ourselves as “disabled”, realise that in some conditions and situations we have specific different needs such as when we are injured or trying to work in difficult or limiting environments, or we may still be blissfully ignorant of our differences. They will likely emerge more clearly as we age. Most of us think we are pretty normal. It’s just that there are many significant differences between “normals”. Designers need to take our full breadth of human and context/situation diversity into account in order to create consistently great experiences.
Getting insight from people with more extreme differences will not only ensure the design works for their needs, it will also likely highlight improvements that a very broad base of users will appreciate some or all of the time.
Have a listen and I hope you enjoy it.
- The podcast link is here
- Here is a link to the model Open Inclusion’s Customer Experience Canvas that we discuss in the episode
If you wish to talk about inclusive human centred design or the approach that we discussed in the podcast please feel free to contact us to find out more.
Wishing you all a safe and happy holiday.
