Harnessing Design’s Human Center
Our team is often asked what DAHU Agency is all about—what sets us apart.
Even though it can be a challenge to come up with a short answer, our emphasis on Human Centered Design is key to what’s drawing clients from multiple sectors to us, as well as what’s driving the creation of expectation-exceeding solutions.
Human Centered Design is an exciting discipline. For an agency such as ours, that’s led by radical empathy, it’s a perfect fit and fundamentally integrated into the ways that we think, work and engage with clients.
As the name suggests, Human Centered Design occurs within a framework for creating solutions that incorporate the perspectives, desires, context, and behaviors for the people whom our clients want to reach. It factors into every aspect of development, messaging and delivery, and calls for:
- A deep and continuous questioning of all assumptions,
- A willingness to look beyond the “best practices” that others have established,
- An eagerness to find inspiration from anywhere and everywhere,
- The involvement and ideas of multiple stakeholders, along with a process for ongoing testing, iterating and integration of feedback, and
- Constant emphasis on the concerns, goals and relevant behaviors of targeted cohort groups.
In contrast to traditional product-centered design, where the attractiveness, color, size, weight, features and functionality of the product itself serves as the primary focus, Human Centered Design creates solutions that understand clients from a higher perspective. We try to meet more than the basic needs of an attractive-looking design to help fulfill greater purpose and meaning to be expressed within the designs we create.
Human Centered Design fuels simplicity, collaborative energies, and a far greater likelihood that launched products will be adopted and embraced. As such, it benefits everyone.
DAHU Agency is adept at the distinct methodologies of Human Centered Design. Among the approaches that we’ve found particularly useful is that of Abstraction Laddering in which we guide interdisciplinary teams through the process of stating a challenge or a goal in many different ways, and continuing to answer “how” and “why” for purposes of advancing toward greater clarity and specificity. As we engage with clients in the process of deepening our understanding of their customers, we draw upon the expertise of our highly skilled and creative team members, and leverage expertise at the leading edge of the digital landscape.
Originally published on dahu-agency.com – June 21, 2018
