The 89th Installment "Having a Hand in Things While You Use Them"
by Isshin Sasaki,
Assistant Professor, Master Program of Innovation for Design and Engineering
“How should I promote human-centered design (HCD) and user-experience (UX) design within my company?” An increasing number of people have been asking me this question. It seems that many of them are from long-standing manufacturers and sellers of electrical products and industrial machinery—in others words, well-established manufacturing and assembly companies.
Some people might wonder, “Who worries about that nowadays?” HCD and UX design are the default company stance at online information service providers and certain high-tech manufacturers. So if you work at such a place, the question of how to promote HCD and UX design might seem rather quaint.
I have heard that some traditional manufacturers have newly established their own HCD department, and members of the department who are not specialized in HCD or UX design learn on the job. It is often the mission of these newly established departments to make HCD and UX design a company-wide activity.
Why is implementing company-wide HCD or UX design such a challenge at these traditional manufacturers?
I worked on HCD at a general electronics manufacturer for many years, making many mistakes along the way. This column is a message to those who are struggling with widespread adoption of HCD and UX design, and is based on what I have learned from my own mistakes. Some readers may feel uncomfortable with the presentation of personal opinions, but I hope to deepen my discussions with such people.
1. Don’t start with the whole—Build from small successes
It’s easy to go overboard when you are entrusted with spreading HCD and UX design throughout the company—you say, “Let’s hold a company-wide meeting, set up a committee, create a manual and distribute it!” and develop an annual plan. But wait a minute! Can people gain a sufficient understanding of HCD and put it into practice themselves when they don’t even understand the effects and costs of HCD? Humans are creatures of habit and do not change easily.
Especially when someone has had past success doing things a certain way, it’s difficult for them to do something differently even when they know it won’t work now. And if someone feels that a new way is beyond them, they will start to look for excuses to not accept it rather than trying to take a risk. “If you further increase costs to enhance the customer experience, will the company’s sales and profits increase?”—this question is the largest reason why HCD is not implemented.
Don’t deal with a lot of inexperienced departments at first. Take the time to carefully consider which business units will benefit from HCD, which people in a department are the best matched to assisting HCD efforts, and whether your team has sufficient knowledge and skills to implement HCD in that department—you’ll need to narrow down your targets to those likely to succeed. Then, once you finally start leveraging the people in that department, don’t ease off until you succeed. You will need to focus all resources into the effort to see it successfully through to the other side, even if you have to turn a blind eye to the large amounts of time and effort put in by your own team. When you achieve even the smallest of results, your team should step back from taking credit and enthusiastically praise the department for achieving results. A common mistake at this point is for the team to take credit for HCD, and it will negate results if you do. The credit for an achievement should always go to the foot soldiers—the people in the department who are promoting HCD. When a department has achieved a small success, plant seeds in the next promising “field” (department) with words of encouragement such as, “Department X tried Y, and they were able to achieve increased sales and profits. What if your department gave it a try?” These repeated efforts are especially important.
At my company, I made the mistake of making my working partner for HCD the whole company. Although some interested departments participated in the process, I can’t say that it was a business success.
2. Techniques and tools are not what drives success—Obtain practical knowledge that leads to creative conviction!
There is a tendency for those new to HCD to want to use as many techniques and tools as possible, and want to learn the skills that allow maximum leverage of them. I refer to this tendency as “method fetish.” Some people naturally move away from this as they build their skillsets, but others never really do.
Does the skillful use of many techniques and tools lead to HCD success? The use of techniques and tools is the result of many hard-fought battles, not the goal. Nowadays, there are countless techniques and tools available, from ideas and support for strategy planning to analytic evaluation, and all kinds of workshops to learn them. There is no end in sight if you begin chasing techniques and tools. No matter how many practices runs you do, I don’t think you will develop sufficient skills to deploy them in actual development.
If you think you might be a method fetishist, ask yourself why there are so many techniques and methods in the first place.
Technology is always developing, and new products and services constantly appear. People use such technologies, products and services to attempt to do what they couldn’t do before, or to attempt something that they’ve wanted to do. In such a rapidly changing environment, for example, when people involved in providing products and services wish to determine use and demand, conducting just a written survey leaves many unanswered questions, so they begin actively using various interview techniques and observing behavior in order to determine users’ true feelings and latent consciousness. Nowadays, people are connected to others and to things in complex ways through the internet, can get the information they need while remaining at home and achieve their goals in various ways that were not possible before. As HCD practitioners struggled and worried about how to satisfy the people who used their products and services, they continually developed and refined their ideas. Techniques and tools are necessary for efficient and effective HCD and UX design, but you’ve gone down the wrong road if your main goal has become knowing more techniques and using more tools.
In terms of manufacturing and HCD, it is important that the people involved in products and services are able to provide products and services that meet the ease and efficiency of use desired by the end-user. To achieve this, first of all it is necessary to have knowledge about the nature of people—their characteristics, how they tend to think and act with respect to other people and to things—and create a group of people or an organization with extensive and deep expertise in products and services. If you can do that and repeat the PDCA cycle while building up practical experience, it will not matter what techniques and tools you use; you should be able to achieve HCD that will satisfy the needs of various customers.
There was also a time when I had a method fetish, but I think I was able to escape from it early on because it was a period when history being made—techniques and tools were being created and revised one after the next. But I also had the bitter experience, along with my fellow technique fetishists, of not being able to accomplish anything. I therefore recommend that you learn the minimum basic methods and tools, practice them in actual development, and reap the benefits of building practical knowledge. Study if you lack knowledge of the nature of people and society [psychology, sociology, etc.] and hone your expertise in products and services. If the techniques and tools are not enough, think about why, then make improvements to your techniques and tools or introduce new ones. Really, the only thing is to practice, practice and practice some more. But the most important thing is to create the conviction in people and organizations that they will absolutely succeed on their own through practical experience.
3. Hang in there![BC1] —The resourcefulness of people with a resilient mind is the key to success!
Say there is a business that could benefit from implementing HCD, but a department is not interested in it at all. In such a case, find a key person in the department who can understand and support HCD and work together with them. The characteristics of such a key person is a) an approach to work that is similar to HCD and b) trust in this person from both top management and colleagues. I have worked on HCD with many departments, and I was always helped by the key people there. Strangely enough, when the department is of a certain size, such a key person can always be found.
An example of a mistake I made when I was young was in regards to a key person who promised to carry out an evaluation experience on a prototype design. This person did not contact me even when the scheduled date of delivery had passed. Preparations for the experiments were wasted, so I complained to that person’s boss. You can guess the result. I could no longer do the experiment. Why couldn’t I move forward with a strong mind—to stand side-by-side with the key person in this difficult situation, or withdraw, or choose to move forward on the matter another time? I really regret what I did. From this bitter experience, I learned that it is important to hang in there and to have a resilient mind.
When I was involved in the promotion of HCD and UX design in a very large department, I met a very resourceful key person, “X,” whom many people trusted: “If X says so, there’s no mistake. Let’s do it together!” This key person would introduce me to others, “Since X introduced you, no problem!” they would say, and they would trust us from the beginning and take on tough jobs right away. So that X could easily take action, we would work thoroughly even when faced with unreasonable requests, and endure when we were told to wait on actions we wanted to take. We had a relationship of exquisite balance with X, where sometimes one party endured according to the other needs, while at other times one party followed through on their own thinking, but at its core it was a relationship based on respect and deep trust. As a result, we made great strides forward with our work.
From this experience, I learned that having an unrelenting, resilient mind and becoming a resourceful person who can build a relationship of deep trust with customers and colleagues are both essential to furthering HCD and UX design.
I’ve reached my word limit, so I’ll bring this column to a close. Since I tend to talk for a long time, I’ll save what I’ve left out for another time. Thank you for reading to the end.