100 topics · Read, check sources and follow your curiosity.

A little room to wonder

Human-centred Design

Human-centred design begins with what people are trying to do and the barriers they meet. A proposed solution remains an assumption until suitable evidence supports it.

How can you tell whether a design solves the person’s problem rather than your first guess?

Paperclips overlap in different colours, coatings and shapes.
An everyday paperclip can start a human-centred question: what does someone need to hold, find or open? The photograph alone is not evidence of anybody’s preferences.Dietmar Rabich · Source · CC BY-SA 4.0

Describe the need without choosing the solution

A need concerns an outcome: “I need to find the return place for a borrowed object.” “I need a blue sign” already selects a possible solution. Keeping the outcome separate makes it possible to compare several approaches instead of defending the first one.

Design Council’s Double Diamond describes opening out and focusing during a process of discovery, definition, development and delivery. The useful habit is to explore a problem before narrowing it, then explore options and test them. It is a model of work, not a guarantee that four labelled boxes produce a good result.

Distinguish observation, interpretation and proposal

An observation records what happened. An interpretation suggests why it happened. A proposal describes something that might help. Writing them separately prevents a confident guess from turning into an invented user finding.

People can have different needs and access requirements. Designing for an imagined average person can hide important barriers. A fictional scenario is useful for early thinking, provided it is labelled as fictional and does not pretend to replace research with actual users.

Worked example: the fictional return shelf

In an invented library scenario, four of ten borrowed model kits are placed on the display shelf instead of the return shelf. Observation: four were placed in the wrong location. One interpretation is that the return label is difficult to see. Other possibilities are an unclear process or a shelf that looks like storage.

Option A enlarges the label. Option B moves the return tray beside the exit. Option C combines a clearly labelled tray with a matching instruction on the borrowing card. A fair comparison would define the task and record correct placement, hesitation and questions. Merely asking which option looks nicest would answer a different question. These counts are a teaching scenario, not a finding about a real library.

A decision needs evidence and limits

Suppose a fictional walkthrough finds that a label improves visibility but still leaves people unsure whether a kit needs checking before return. The design question has become clearer: the process information is missing. The next revision should address that gap rather than keep increasing the lettering.

For your own enquiry, begin with a supplied or invented task and inspect it yourself. Any future research involving other people needs suitable consent, privacy and support arrangements. You do not need to interview strangers, collect personal experiences or publish anybody’s difficulties to practise design reasoning.

Only if you feel like trying

Separate three kinds of statement

  1. Write one fictional observation about an object-return task.
  2. List two possible explanations and two different solutions; keep them in separate columns or spoken lists.
  3. Choose one solution and specify an observation that would help evaluate it.

Optional. Work on paper, point to the example or talk it through. No account, purchase or public sharing is needed.