What is human-centred design?
The phrase ‘human-centred design’ often gets used in tandem with a lot of other very similar buzzwords. I could write a whole other piece on the differences (or not) between terms like design thinking, UX design, systems thinking and so on but it’s easier to link to a couple of good explanatory resources instead.
Simply put, human-centred design is a set of principles which involve taking an empathetic approach to service design. It means putting yourself in the shoes of whoever will be using the service to make sure it’s as good, clear and straightforward as possible. It also means looking at the bigger picture: not just designing a service in isolation, but looking at the way in which it’s linked to the surrounding systems and processes.
It seems obvious. Clearly services should be designed for the people actually using them. But the reality isn’t so straightforward, particularly not when we get into the public sector. Often enough, accessing certain council services can be anything but straightforward. But how did we get here? And why is it so seemingly uncommon to come across public services that just…work?
Here are a few reasons:
- History/inertia: systems or services worked in the past and the residual processes now dominate a service that might be poor or failing
- Bureaucracy: layers of management, alongside departmental silos and rigid, narrow job roles stifle innovation and create extra/unnecessary work
- Money: simply put, there isn’t any, and radical change is expensive
[For an insightful, in-depth and interesting breakdown on why complex change is so darned difficult, there’s no better resource than GCHQ’s legendary Boiling Frogs report.]
Most government organisations aren’t exactly rolling in dough. So public bodies do what they can, which often means sticking with something because it’s just about good enough.
Of course, good, joined-up services are possible. The UK Government Digital Service (GDS) is a much-lauded example of how successful a radically disruptive programme of work can be, and its example has been used in government websites the world over.
Human-centred design, systems thinking, service design – all of these principles and methodologies require us to throw out the rulebook, reframe our approach to problem/solution, and start completely from scratch. Unfortunately, as you might expect, for it to work this requires a significant initial investment into consultancy, training and technology (at the very least), scaled up across an entire organisation with thousands or even tens of thousands of staff. As we know, most government organisations aren’t exactly rolling in dough. So public bodies do what they can, which often means sticking with something because it’s just about good enough.
Fixing systems is a mammoth operation and it takes time. That absolutely doesn’t mean there isn’t good and valuable work that can be done to improve things in the meantime.
What does all this have to do with engagement?
Public engagement – the means by which ordinary people interact with democracy – is absolutely a service, and the principles of putting users first apply here just as they do with other public services (not least because part of making human-centred policy decisions involves, you know…listening to humans).
That means engaging in a way that’s mindful of audience and has a ‘path of least resistance’ principle behind it. Not burying consultations in a website whose search function doesn’t work and then only accepting responses via email; not promoting an engagement exercise by sticking a laminated piece of A4 to a lamp post.
Asking yourself who will respond to an engagement exercise – and why – can have a huge impact on how you build it, and therefore how they navigate through your activity. Are they stakeholders who can afford to take the time to fill in a lengthy and complex consultation because it’s part of their job? Or are they ordinary parents who are responding to an activity that affects their children, whilst also juggling work and childcare, and who really, really don’t have the time to read a 65-page PDF? Do they have learning difficulties or don’t speak the native language fluently? The idea is that all of these people should be able to easily access democratic decision-making.
Asking yourself who will respond to an engagement exercise – and why – can have a huge impact on how you build it, and therefore how they navigate through your activity.
Putting users – humans – at the heart of our products is something Delib takes, and always has taken, very seriously. We recognised that the service of interacting with democratic decision-making was, for the most part, poorly designed and dominated by outdated manual processes that simply weren’t compatible with the existence of a) people with lives and b) the internet. Putting citizens first guides the design process of everything we do, from accessibility to privacy to training and support.
But it’s not just about providing value and access to citizens, although well-designed engagement absolutely does do this. By engaging in an empathetic and considered way, public bodies get far more out of the whole process than by just publishing a document and asking for comments. Things like ensuring questions are clear and concisely worded, that information is provided at the point of response rather than requiring prior knowledge, that feedback on a decision is easy to find and provided promptly all contribute.
By making the user journey as painless as possible, you:
- increase response rates
- raise the likelihood of responses being well-informed, and therefore more valuable, and
- don’t leave respondents feeling jaded or like they’ve just wasted their time, meaning they’re more likely to engage again
You can read an example of how Police Scotland got a 500% increase in response rates after applying human-centred design principles to their community engagement processes.
While well-designed consultation and engagement processes won’t magically fix an entire organisation, it can and does have a knock-on effect: good quality engagement breeds good quality data, which breeds good quality decision-making and more informed, human-centred policies.
Check out our Good Survey Design webinar to learn how to apply human-centred design principles to your Citizen Space activity – via Delib Learn
To find out more about our next-generation engagement tools, including Citizen Space, you can book a demo and we’ll walk you through it