The Benefits (and Ambiguities) of Design Thinking

When I spent time working at The Pittsburgh Foundation, I encountered the phrase "Human Centered Design" a lot. We had just unveiled brand new offices that had been designed in partnership with Maya Design, the premier firm specializing in Human Centered Design operating in the city. Colleagues referenced human-centered design regularly and cited its corresponding terminology while making decisions. Prima facie, human-centered design seemed great to me, but I still had a serious problem nailing down just what it meant and how it was actually changing the ways in which program officers were allocating funds, donor services representatives helped to work with donors to achieve the highest impact possible with their funds, and, most importantly, how design thinking was resulting in on-the-ground impact in a way that was aligned with the mission of the foundation.

Reading through the article, "Design Thinking for Social Innovation," I found myself at the same, familiar place. Designing a company or potential solution to a social or organization problem from the ground up, freely incorporating ideas related to the end-user's experience, and a cross-disciplinary approach are all great methods of attack. However, I ended the article with the same sense of slight disappointment, wanting more concrete explanations as to how this approach should be applied in specific areas. To be sure, firms like Maya have revolutionized how organizational strategy and planning are approached, and there is no doubt that the non-profit organizations who have employed human-centered design consultants and strategies have been able to uniquely position themselves to fulfill their mission.

That said, I still remain fuzzy on the explicit components of how human-centered design operates and why the approach works as well as I've seen it work in the real world.