An open space for human-centered design

In October, Knowit Insight’s Business Design team hosted their first event with the newly established practitioner network focusing on human-centered design and its many applications within business and organizational development. The goal of this network is to create an open space for sharing experiences and learn from each other’s efforts within human-centered design.

What is human-centered design you may ask? Human-centered design is an approach to problem solving that incorporates the human perspectives throughout the process. This broader approach takes into account the users, employees, colleagues and competitors. Involving all stakeholder perspectives utilizes empathy to create a deeper understanding of the problem and a sense of urgency to motivate co-creating a solution. This lays the foundation for anchoring the change needed within the organization in question.

The Business Design team shared some challenges organizations have faced in their projects: Servitization of a Product, Inclusive design, Incremental Innovation for the Future and Transforming Culture. The team explained how they have approached these challenges with a human-centered perspective. Together with attending practitioners, the Business Design team defined the respective challenges facing the participants organizations today and found that five themes were collectively identified:

Managing Knowledge in Organizations
To unfold everyone’s creative potential in order to create meaningful products, services, and cultures

Transforming Cultures
To create a shared understanding of success criteria that inspires, motivates and guides people to work together

Designing for Tomorrow
To imagine and design better future scenarios and how it relates to the organization’s current roadmap

Knowledge of Design Methods
To create a shared understanding of success criteria that inspires, motivates and guides people to work together

Understanding your Users
To uncover needs, desires and aspirations of users to identify gaps in the experience and create holistic solutions

The event participants were surprised at how similar challenges could arise in all the different branches and sizes of organizations present. The next step for the Business Design practitioner network focusing on human-centered design is to dig into design methods that can help tackle these challenges. More to come!

If this sounds interesting or you have any questions, please contact Nils Kumar, management consultant and part of the Business Design Team within Knowit Insight.