Approach
Some digital projects fail even though the technology works. They fail because no one needs them. For your project to succeed, you need the right methods and approaches as well as the right technology.
Design Thinking or Human-Centered Design?
The two approaches are treated as different working methods. Even so, they have a great deal in common, and both benefit your innovation process. So why not combine the best of both? Here you can see where the approaches differ and where they go hand in hand.
Design Thinking
Design thinking starts from the idea that interdisciplinary teams can create outstanding innovations. The method is solution-oriented and tackles complex problems from different professional perspectives. What matters is less working out ideas in detail than experimenting a lot and developing strong ideas.
Human-Centered Design
In human-centred design, the ultimate goal is to embed customer focus deeply in a company. This includes a culture of open knowledge sharing and collaboration among everyone involved, inside and outside the company. The result is a product that meets users’ needs and even exceeds their expectations.
Differences
So what is the difference between the two approaches? In a nutshell, design thinking takes a broader view than human-centred design. It focuses on innovation and on creating something new, and it deals with new products and services, even with solutions to social problems.
Human-centred design, by contrast, sets out to improve the usability and user experience of a particular product or service. These are two different areas, even if they are often treated alike. Still, it pays to look at what they have in common.
Commonalities
Design thinking and human-centred design are easy to combine because they have a lot in common. First, both approaches involve users and other stakeholders in every phase of development, from analysis to evaluation. Second, and no less important, their development processes are alike: both approaches work iteratively.
Human-centred design comprises four phases, which are repeated until the best result is achieved:
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Work out the context of use
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Understand the requirements
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Design solutions for the product
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Evaluate the designs
The design thinking process, on the other hand, follows six iterative phases:
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Understand
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Observe
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Define the point of view
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Generate ideas
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Create a prototype
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Test
The number of phases differs, but the activities within them overlap.
The starting situation plays an important role in both processes. Both analyse the problem, the characteristics of the users and the environment of use. Both also work with a prototype of the product and test it with real users.
Conclusion
Design thinking and human-centred design complement each other. Teams can first use design thinking to find visions and approaches to a solution. Human-centred design then leads them to a concrete implementation built around the users.
In this way, you make sure in the innovation process that your idea becomes a product that genuinely serves customers and users.