Human-Centered and Participatory Design Methods

Today we tackle human-centered design (also known as design thinking) -- a

structured set of methods and tools -- for consulting with citizens -- the target
audience for our policy or service -- in order to arrive at innovative solutions
that truly respond to people’s needs.

Take the example of California’s food stamp program. While the state allowed people
to apply online, that application was 50 web pages long with over 100 questions.
Most families who started the process would end up abandoning it.

By using human-centered design or HCD, namely analyzing the process from the
perspective of the person using it -- the NGO Code for America was able to reduce
the time it takes to complete the application to less than 10 minutes,
substantially increasing enrollment.

HCD involves using ethnographic and qualitative research techniques like listening,
observing and interviewing to connect with people as part of an iterative problem-
solving process. Let’s get started.

By the time you finish this module you will:

1. Understand the principles of human-centered design and how they can be used in
the public sector to define your problem.
2. Understand why it is important to place residents at the center of your work,
and
3. Have an introductory knowledge of methods for using human-centered design in
practice.

Especially in this day and age of rampant inequality, incorporating more

participatory methods of problem solving -- doing things with people rather than
for them -- is essential for boosting the legitimacy as well as the effectiveness
of how we solve problems.

There are many practical strategies for qualitative and ethnographic research.

Bruce Hanington and Bella Martin’s Universal Methods of Design offer 125 different
methods from participant observation to interviews to artifact analysis to service
blueprinting.

Many of these call for the designer to “empathize” with the subject by putting
herself in his shoes. Many designers create personas – or fictional archetypes of
the people who will be affected. Others call for observing human behavior, the way
a zoologist studies an animal in the wild, by watching how people behave in a given
context such as online or in their workplace. Some practitioners even call for
meditation as the best way to empathize with others. But because we are focused on
strategies of engagement that help to make problem solving legitimate as well as
effective, we emphasize those approaches that involve talking to and design with
actual humans.

Observing people or their objects, while useful, misses out on the wisdom and
insight that people can share. It is harder to know how people feel about a problem
without engaging them more directly. Talking about fictional personas or archetypes
can lead one to miss important categories of relevant people, such as university
experts, businesspeople, philanthropists, or staff of local government agencies,
any of whom might have important information to share.

Qualitative social research has always involved speaking with people, usually
through an interview or a survey. The digital age creates new opportunities for
talking to more people more quickly, and in new ways. Just as the telephone
transformed the survey, the Internet, too, and the prevalence of big data will
create a multiplicity of new ways to ask questions.

We discuss five methods for engaging with people to define a problem: interviewing,
the related technique of service blueprinting, and the three online methods of
smarter crowdsourcing, wiki surveys and AI-based collaborative problem
identification. But there are literally dozens of additional ways you can structure
a conversation to elicit people’s lived experience and knowhow to inform the
problem definition process.

Interviewing

Interviewing is common to all human-centered design methods. Talking to outsiders

invariably probes, sometimes challenges, our assumptions about the root causes of a
problem. It allows us to collect first-hand accounts of people’s experience of a
problem. Such interactions may turn up memorable detail that enlivens the problem
statement. But good interviewing produces much more than just stories. By exposing
the visceral, lived experience of people affected by a problem, it can cast light
on the strength or weakness of our problem definition and help us pinpoint the most
important root causes. The challenge is to impart meaning to the detail and explain
why something is taking place while respecting and honoring what others have told
us.

Design-led innovators, as the OECD calls them, use ethnographic interviewing

practices to uncover the needs of people using a service or affected by a policy.
This form of research complements the traditional bench research that policy
analysts do in the library or at their computers.

Yet while interviewing is a time-honored form, even some of the most empathetic
adherents of design thinking do not use it, preferring to trust their observation
skills. Although it may seem easier to simply empathize and more challenging to
find “real people” with whom to talk, the handbook on Designing for Public
Services, co-authored by Nesta, IDEO and Design for Europe, emphasizes that
“people like to share, and you may be positively surprised by just how much! If you
approach the activity in an open and transparent way, and are clear about your
objectives, then you will be able to unlock invaluable insights.”

Interviewing people, either as individuals or in a group, about their understanding

of the problem and its root causes, involves developing a plan of attack, which we
discuss here (and summarize in exercises at the end of the chapter). Of course,
interviewing individuals and groups have different benefits – the former is more
intimate while the latter may produce useful and interesting deliberation and
reveal contradictions.

Project goals –Bearing in mind that ethnographic research aims for deep
understanding, but not prediction, of patterns of behavior, what do you need to
know to inform your problem definition? How can ethnography help you to learn that?
What kinds of things do you want to observe to confirm the problem and its root
causes?

Research and sampling design –If your goal is to study people who use a particular
government service or suffer from a given problem, you still need to select diverse
users and non-users of the service, identifying an average and an extreme user. How
many is enough? Ideally, you will keep observing or interviewing until you are no
longer surprised by what you learn. Your sample size is big enough when what you
hear starts to repeat. If you are iterating and evolving your work in an agile
fashion, then you will talk to people early and often throughout the problem-
solving process.

Recruiting participants – This can be the hardest step. If you are focusing on
face-to-face recipients of a government service, you might go to the office where
they receive that service. But finding willing participants can be hard. This is
where third parties come in. For example, you might find participants with the help
of interest groups and industry associations who regularly convene their members or
have membership lists.

Conducting research –Fieldwork should be undertaken in collaboration with

participants, not perpetrated upon them. Thus, coming up with conversation starters
– ice breakers to help build trust and intimacy with participants – ahead of time
can be useful, along with a written description of the research to share with
participants, informing them about the purpose of your research and the information
you plan to collect, to obtain their consent.

Interview and observation guide –Interviewing can be combined with other techniques
such as questionnaires or participant observation.
Service Blueprinting and Journey Mapping

Another technique that builds on good interview skills is service blueprinting,

also known as journey mapping (an exercise for this technique is provided below).
Service blueprinting involves developing a step-by-step rundown of a process. It is
frequently used in business to document a customer sales experience in order to
improve it. In the public sector, this approach refers to documenting how a
government service, such as applying for a benefit, is provided. Journey mapping is
often used to capture the experience from the individual citizen’s perspective
whereas service blueprinting documents the entirety of the process from the
institutional perspective.

This method, especially when done in collaboration with affected citizens and civil
servants, can help to lay bare “just how complex and uncomfortable the customer
experience” is and how much it deviates from expectations. Documenting the process
from start to finish – from both the perspective of the resident and of those who
serve him – helps to make the problems more readily visible. “A blueprint,” writes
one commentator about the practice in the Harvard Business Review, “encourages
creativity, preemptive problem solving, and controlled implementation. It can
reduce the potential for failure and enhance management’s ability to think
effectively about new services.”