Introduction to Human-Centered Design Course — Worth your time?
I recently finished a Human-Centered Design Introduction course from Acumen Academy (+Acumen) partnered with IDEO (IDEO.org). In this article, I will be sharing the course outline, my project, and the respective learnings.
The course is divided into five phases, each including a workshop (individual or group) and assignments accordingly:
- Intro to Human-Centered Design
- Inspiration Phase
- Ideation Phase (Synthesis)
- Ideation Phase (Prototyping)
- Implementation Phase
This course is free and excellent for UX beginners who like hands-on classes and are looking to collaborate on projects with social impact.
I was fortunate to have joined a group where my teammates are working in the tech industries, looking to improve their design approaches. However, the only inconvenience was that our timezone was different. They were all from Ottawa, Canada and I am from Seattle, USA.
Nonetheless, my peers were understanding and we could always compromise on scheduling our meetings. We would take turns being the class leader and work together as a team during the activities of the course.
We started with the reading materials and short video clips provided by the course, followed by Mini Design Challenges. We scheduled our meetings weekly for about 30 minutes to an hour and researched on our own for the tasks.
Overall, my experience was fantastic and I couldn’t be more grateful to be working with a team of professionals. Collaboration projects are what I am looking for when learning UX because as a self-taught UI/UX designer, I always struggle with my design decisions. Having someone you can count on during your journey is indispensable.
So, without further ado, let’s jump to our project:
Design Challenge: How Might We Provide Healthier Food Options for People in Need?
Background Research
An estimated 1 in 7 (13.9%) Ottawa households are food insecure, with 9.5% experiencing moderate to severe food insecurity. Food insecurity is a serious public health issue. It impacts children’s physical and mental health and puts adults at a higher risk of suffering from chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
Objectives
- Provide more ways for people to have access to healthy food
- Help people with meal planning within their means
- Learn basic skills to cook healthy food
- Teach people how to make healthy food choices
Assumptions and Challenges
- Organic and healthy food is more expensive
- Food prices are growing exponentially due to inflation
- There’s a huge amount of food waste in restaurants, supermarkets, offices, in-person conferences (meeting food), and personal kitchen
- Restaurants and grocery stores are more likely to face regulatory restrictions on how to dispose of food.
- COVID-19 may have affected how food is handled.
Information we are missing
- Identify the regulatory restrictions limiting the sharing of spoiled or wasted food
- Agricultural & Nutritional programs already in existence
- Educational dietary program
- Stakeholder consultations (avoid assumptions)
Learn from People & Experts
We brainstormed and came up with two groups of users to understand more deeply about the problem.
After our research findings, we created sample interview questions for those two groups.
Personas
We interviewed four types of participants during our primary research phase, gathering insights and understanding the potential pain points of the users. We soon created our personas as shown below:
Synthesis
From the findings of the interviews, we moved to Miro Board to organize some ideas and found patterns to discover the “GEMS”, and turned them into How Might We’s.
How Might We’s
Through the GEMS Themes and Insights, we generated How Might We’s.
Ideate
We then proceeded to the ideation phase, sharing several ideas from the How Might We’s. We voted and evaluated the ideas we thought we could develop and prototype as a team.
Roadmap
To know how to create a community of volunteers to distribute food for low-income families, we created a roadmap of the services we were going to provide.
Prototype
Due to the time constraints (of the class and the team), we ended up with a simple landing page concept presented at the beginning of this project. The website usage is to connect with volunteers and with clients that are looking for this service.
Group Reflections and Takeaways
User’s first — Without a focus on the users, we’re just creating something that has some functions and nice aesthetics but is not necessarily useful for the intended audience. Always refer back to who the users are throughout the journey of building the solution. The users will be at the center of every step we take.
Assumptions kill— Understand where users are coming from instead of making assumptions about their needs and how they are living their life.
Dream big — Being open to the wildest ideas and being able to narrow down the options as we go. We adopted an iterative approach where we thought it would be best to do it case by case and iterate and add more as we learn.
Be able to be wrong or even fail — Failing is not an issue but an opening to better ideas. If you happen to know what you are doing is wrong, you are a step closer to your goal.
Future Steps
I will be collaborating with the Graphic Designer on our team to finish the website prototype (create more pages of the websites) in Figma and attend the Human-Centered Design 201: Prototype course.
Personal Learnings
Teamwork spirit — I have encountered teammates that will lose motivation to finish the project halfway. Helping each other and being accountable throughout this course made us accomplish this certificate with ease and enjoyment.
Different Perspectives— It is always good to have views and opinions unlike yours, it helps you to expand your horizons and leads you to generate more impactful ideas.
Thank you for reading! & As always, I wish you all the best of luck on this journey! I’ll see you in my next articles! Cheers 🍻
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