E V E N T R E C A P
Discovery:
Foundations of Human-centered Design
1. Warmup
Moriah started the workshop with a warmup called "Rumors." Each person wrote their name and a random animal on a sticky note. They then walked around, introducing themselves to someone new and exchanging sticky notes. Each person then went to a new person and introduced the person on their sticky note.
Takeaway:
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The exercise was helpful for bringing people outside of themselves, as they needed to introduce a different person after every interaction.
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2. Human-centered Design and Research Questions
Jason provided a brief overview of a few versions of the human-centered design process, ending with the Double Diamond framework, showing where Discovery sits in the process. He then introduced the design challenge for the workshop:
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Help busy professionals achieve their New Year’s resolutions.
Evan introduced the concept of "Research questions" and shared their defining characteristics. Workshop participants then started generating research questions and got into small groups to share them and identify 2-3 to focus on.
Takeaway:
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Research questions are the broad questions that define the learning goals.
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3. Interview Questions and Interview Practice
Jason talked about "interview questions," explaining how they are different, but related to research questions. He then shared best practices for interviewing research participants. In pairs, workshop participants generated interview questions from their research questions and practiced interviewing one another.
Takeaways:
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Interview questions are the specific questions asked to interviewees that help answer the research questions.
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4. Sensemaking and Needs Statements
Evan spoke a bit about the sensemaking process and introduced "Needs Statements" as a way to succinctly capture learnings from the research.
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Once each workshop participant synthesized their research learnings into needs statements, they then translated them into How Might We statements, which provided a stronger starting point for brainstorming solutions.
Takeaways:
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Needs statements are a concise description of the specific need or problem to design for.
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It's easy to make How Might We statements too broad or too narrow. Crafting good ones requires practice!
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5. HCD Lab Community Time
In the final 15 minutes, the workshop shifted to strengthening the HCD Lab's momentum as a community. Participants were invited to share ideas for possible HCD Lab events and to sign up to support any events they were interested in.
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Ice Cream Social
Half of the workshop participants stuck around to get to know one another at Toscanini's Ice Cream, which was a block away.
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Practicing these skills is important. Thanks for the opportunity!
There's an interesting overlap between HCD and the things I do in my role.
I really enjoyed interviewing and might consider that as a job going forward!