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1) HCD is asking people what they want

The HCD process uncovers deep insights around processes, opportunities, and pain points by directly collaborating with customers. This practice extends well beyond asking people what they want and allows us to build empathy to anticipate needs. In the words of a great innovator and businessman “If you had asked my customer what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse” (Henry Ford).

2) The fewer choices, the better

The paradox of choice is an observation that having many options to choose from, rather than making people happy and ensuring they get what they want, can cause them stress and problematize decision-making. Too many decisions can cause a high cognitive load which can make products / systems more difficult to use. It is better to have more steps with fewer choices at each step than the reverse.

3) HCD is a single discipline

HCD has a long history rooted in business, technology, psychology, and even library science. It is a diverse field and practitioners are often tasked with a range of duties like: business goals analysis, competitive analysis, user research, persona development, information architecture, content strategy, empathy mapping, user journeys, interaction design, interface design, visual design, prototyping, heuristic analysis, user testing and so on.

4) HCD is just about UI/UX

HCD is made up of many different approaches and techniques aimed at building the right things based on people’s needs.

5) Learning only happens at the start and end of a project

A common trap that many digital service projects fall into is that learning from users only happens at the start or end of a project. This can either take the form of an initial “discovery” phase that defines requirements for the team to execute against or as user acceptance testing that happens just before a product is released to the public.

While any kind of engagement with users is better than none, user feedback should be incorporated throughout the product development process. At Ad Hoc we call this “continuous discovery,” and it’s key to how we work and facilitate decision-making with customers. This is because a single discovery phase only provides a snapshot of our understanding of people’s needs, some of which may change over time.

6) HCD increases the risk of failure

Since there are various stages in design thinking, they create a space for trial and error. You can test your idea in all these stages and understand whether any changes are required. Doing so allows you to ensure that your product or service has been tested before investing a ton of time and money. It also allows us to filter out any errors in the initial stages and lower the risk of failure when the final product or service is launched. So if anything, design thinking reduces your overall risk of failure.