Why Human Centred Design is Important for Small Business Websites?

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The human-centred design is genuinely essential for small and medium business websites. However, creating a human-centred design is not a piece of cake. You have to know the life and desires of different people at the core.

However, the question is what is known as Human-centered design? Let’s take a look.

What is Human-centred design?

People encounter different problems in their daily life among which the intractable ones are gender equality, poverty or clean water and a lot more. Human-centred design believes all these problems are solvable and the key to the solution is known to the people who face these problems in their daily life. Human-centred design offers the answer to those problems which are rooted deep in people’s life by providing innovative ideas.

The importance of Human-centred design

If you are designing a site for your business, your primary focus should be on the user experience. If you solely concentrate on different business objectives, fancy features, and technical capabilities without focusing on the user experience, you will make a big mistake. The real perspective of Human-centered design is enhancing the usability and the accessibility of a site. It depends on diverse factors among which valuable information and navigability are truly crucial. The content should be entirely relevant, and the ease of use decides the usability of a site.

In short, the Human-centered design always thinks from the perspective of the users. It also concentrates on the satisfaction of them while using your site.

It is fundamentally a linear process. Each project has different character and contours. You may have to face the multiple types of designing challenges, but all these challenges ideally have to go through three distinct phases, Ideation, Inspiration and Implementation. You can build up a great empathy with the communities you are designing for if you follow these three crucial phrases wholeheartedly.

Human-centred design Process

The first phrase – Inspiration

In this phrase, you will learn and observe people’s lives, their hopes, and expectations.

The second phrase – Ideation

After hearing every aspect of the people, start working on your ideas. Find out different designing opportunities and test your solutions.

The third phrase – Implementation

Now it is time to bring life to your solutions. You have to figure out how to market your ideas and what are the impacts of them in the world.

You can turn your learning to create a new solution. You will grow new innovative ideas which will help to solve these severe problems in the world. Multiple design challenges can be tackled by this human-centred design, starting from a design for social enterprises to medical devices or even communication campaigns. This creative approach to human-centred design is useful for every sector.

The utilisation of tools

Human-centred design projects are entirely different from each other. However, we can use the same tool for each of them. Here tools are quite distinctive from other projects. As human-centred designers, at first, we conduct interviews of different people whom we want to serve. We always work as a team so that the creativity and the enthusiasm can be maintained. Tangible prototypes of different ideas make your thinking sharp and generative. It does not mean you will always be right in the very first attempt. However, if you share your thought with people, you can continually emphasise your ideas based on people’s feedback on it. These comprehensive set of high activities will help you to frame the design challenges and lead you to a path of different innovations. You can use these methods several times or not at all, but it will connect you to the community which is the centre of the work.

You have to trust this process completely

If you always follow the same path, you cannot innovate something new. The conventional approach towards every design challenges is not always helpful too. That is why a unique approach has been build to solve different problems, which is known as human-centred design. Sometimes people find it madness more than method. However, you have to trust this unique process wholeheartedly even if you uncomfortable to get the world-class result.

In this process, you have the opportunity to learn directly from the individuals. You are going to learn and encounter multiple creative possibilities, and gradually, you will understand what’s most viable and desirable for the people. As a result, it will enhance the excellence and quality of your work. You have to shift your gear frequently as you start working through those three phrases. Sometimes you will have detailed observations; sometimes you will have abstract thinking, and sometimes you will be back to your prototype thinking process. In this Ideation phase, different kind of solutions will come to your mind. However, if you want to make a significant impact in the world with your ideas, then you have figure out the best shot among those constellations of different approaches. It is a diverging and converging process through which you will gradually discover different market-ready answers.

How to create genuine impact?

Human-centred designs are inevitable in providing desirable, viable and feasible solutions. We start with people’s hopes and needs, and gradually we discover what’s most beneficial and helpful to them. We have different approaches. After determining the diverse range of impactful solutions, we concentrate on what is technically feasible and financially viable. It is fundamentally a balancing act or process. Your primary focus should be on sustainable and prosperous designing solutions.

However, to create a genuine impact, you have to know the proper methods. For example, people get confused about how they should start their journey. How they can conduct an interview or how they can use the tools to understand people. Let’s start with the Inspirational phrase.

Inspiration

Methods

Frame the design in your mind

While framing the design, you need to keep these things in mind.
Start writing what’s in your mind. It should be short and simple and try to explain it in a single sentence.
While scoping a design challenge do not follow too broad or too narrow lane. You will not get any idea how to start a project with a too broad-scoped challenge. On the other hand, you cannot explore any creative solution with a narrow-scoped challenge.
Run your challenge through different filters which are the key to reaching an excellent solution.

Create an excellent project plan

You can start with a calendar. Mark the important dates like deadlines travel dates, essential meeting dates or when the team members will not be available.
The next step is checking your budget. You have to ready for the constraints too.
Before heading towards the field, you have to figure out how much budget, time and workforce you need to finish this project successfully.

Team building

At first, you need to check how many people you need. Next, you have to confirm their availability. Then only you can start and finish the project on time.
You need to determine the accountability of the core members of the team.
If you do not have enough members on your team, you can always hire someone for a shorter period.

Interview plan

The human-centred design is all about talking to the right person. Always keep in mind that it is not about talking to so many people. So at first decide whom you want to interview.
You have to be sensitive enough towards the gender. Many communities are not comfortable if a man takes the interview of a woman. You have to be careful while interviewing sensitive issues like open defecation too.
Group interviews are more useful than anything else because you can easily find out whom you want to talk more about the topic.

How to take an interview?

Always keep in mind that you require only three members of a team to conduct a successful interview, interviewer, photographer, and note-taker.
Prepare a list of question that you want to ask. Start with general questions like the person’s habits, life, etc. Then go for the specific questions that you want to try.
Write accurately what the person said. Don’t guess anything. If you hire a translator, make sure he or she understands the direct quotes.
Apart from that, observe the person’s body language and surroundings.

The flow of resources

Take note and list everything which can help that house by bringing more funds.
Now list the most expensive things that they buy and where from they get money for that. In short, prepare a list of their full finances.

When the first step is complete, you should concentrate on the next step which is Idealization.

Idealization

Jot down your learning

Try to jot down everything. What you noticed, what information you have and the impression of your overall experience.
It will be the best idea if you can put all these things on wallboard. If anything is still not clear to you, don’t hesitate to ask a question.

Choose the theme

At first, choose different themes and put it on the wall so that everyone can watch it.
You are not seeking for your solution here. You are trying to convert your desired theme in the core insight of the research.
When you are done with the themes, look back to your previous designing challenge. Here three to four insights statements are needed. Show your insights statement to someone who is not on your team. Try to take his or her opinion about this.
Try to amalgamate everything that you have discovered. It is a difficult task. Don’t get overwhelmed by different information.

Concept creation

You must have bundled up so many different ideas, put all those ideas together. It is time to create a framework. Work systematically.
Don’t think about the solutions to the problems all the time. Try to find out the missing element in the solution.
If you create a concept which is not working for you, don’t get disheartened. Add different elements to your solution and convert it into a great solution.

Try to work on the feedbacks

After collecting the feedbacks, evaluate those feedbacks with your designing team.
If you do not like anything, change it according to the feedback you received.
Always keep in mind that you will not get the solution on your first attempt. Try hard, and reach your destination.

Now it is time for the last phrase Implementation when you will bring different solutions to the market.

Implementation

Live Prototype

Live Prototype is the best way to check your solution in the market. You can test different solutions. For example, if you are the proprietor of a business, you can check the channel strategy.
After testing, you need to check whether you need additional stuff or physical space or anything else.
You can run a few Live Prototypes to verify your ideas quickly.

Sit with your designing team

Sit with the design team, partners and critical stakeholders who are responsible for executing your idea.
Sit with a calendar and mark all the important dates.
Find out what you need in the next months or even in the next three months.
Mark the significant milestones like when you want to start the manufacturing process or when you want to launch your website etc.
Prepare a worksheet for resource assessment. You can easily keep track of what you will need and what already have in this way. You can divide it into different halves like Distribution, Responsibilities, Capabilities, and Activities.
Choose a team member who can track all these milestones.

Partnership

Build a good collaboration with the stakeholders and other partners.
You have to be flexible. Decide what you need from your partners. Decide the deadlines to complete your project too. The partnership is something like whenever you need them, you can ask them.

The strategy of funding

In this segment, you need your all your team members like the designers, the partners, and the stakeholders. If you want to raise the fund in any section, you can take the pitch from each of them. It will be beneficial.
Apart from the traditional channels, you can take the help of different crowd platforms like Indiegogo or Kickstarter.
From the initial strategy to the long-term Revenue plan, everything should be perfect and according to the plan.

Monitoring and evaluating is crucial for maintaining a balance between qualitative and quantitative measurements. Along with that, constant feedback is also needed to complete the project successfully.
Now, you know the process, and how you have to execute it. If you want to build a Human-centered web design successfully, you need to focus on these 7 seven steps.

Visibility of a site

Visibility is indeed crucial for any website as it refers to navigational aids. When a user visits your site, the first thing he or she notices is its ease of navigation. That person immediately comprehends what can be done here and what’s not. The navigation bar should be so smooth that whenever a visitor comes to your site, he can find the next section quite easily. It creates the order and confidence of the user.

You must have heard about Cisco. They are the manufacturers as well as designers of different networking equipment. Visit their website because they show how you can concentrate on the visibility of a site. You can visit any page of that site; it will always give you seamless experience.

Keep minimum memory load

The user memory should be least. There is nothing contrite than demanding users to remember everything like the site elements etc. The screen elements of the site should be consistent and purposeful, and it should be maintained on the whole website.

You can take the example of msn.com. The layout of the site is consistent on different pages. The navigation bar works so smoothly.

Focus on instant feedback

If you want to build a human-centred design, you have to depend on quick feedback from the users because it will tell you the actions of the users, like clicking on a button, etc. If a user is not happy with a particular button after clicking on it, you can change it instantly. Instant feedback will always help you to identify these little flaws.

If you visit the site of Microsoft and want to purchase a product, you have to click on the product segment, and a drop-down menu will appear in front of you instantly.

Concentrate on the accessibility

Nowadays, users expect fast information. The only thing that they hate is waiting. So from a primary feature on your website to the advanced function of a site, accessibility should be superior. Divide your content into small pieces so that people can understand it quite easily.

If you want to optimize the accessibility of your site to the hilt, you can follow the website of Apple. The readily absorbable section makes it meaningful and highly useful to a user.

Site orientation

You can achieve site orientation with the help of different navigational clues. It has various forms. Descriptive links, sitemaps are some of the examples. But the most crucial is the site elements which are highly visible. The users can easily find out how those elements are relevant to other pages and most importantly how to navigate different pages with the help of it.

You can take the example of PayPal sitemap. Too many links are associated with it, but still, people can find their desired link effortlessly.

A pleasant site

A pleasant site defines a simple website that looks awesome but simple. At the same time, it should be easy to use. If you want to boost the confidence of the users, you have to concentrate on the interface of the site. It should be user-friendly as well as flexible to use.

Unsplash is an excellent example of design principle. Here you will get different types of photos, but all are in sequence. Users can find their desired picture quite quickly, and the quality of those pictures boosts the confidence of the user.

Combine it with visual design

Visual designs always grab the centre stage. You can combine it with the entire interface to communicate and pass information to the users more efficiently. Excellent visual design should be simple but enjoyable. The use of colour plays a vital role here.

Always keep in mind that a website is primarily designed for the users. So a Human-centered design should be your priority. If the navigation part frustrates users, you will never get the desired result. So think before designing it. On the other hand, if a site like that shows you as a designer, it can act as a death knell for your career.

We have shared everything that you need to know about a Human-centered design. Excellent design always requires a great deal of thought. You cannot start and finish it haphazardly. So whenever you start your project, keep users in mind. Think from their perspective. Then only you can make their experience delightful.

Published by: Pjay Pokhrel

Last Updated on: 19 February 2021