OKUN OLIECH: Government needs to adopt human-centred design

Human-centred design is a creative approach to problem-solving, one that starts with people and ends with innovative solutions tailored to meet their needs.

When you understand the people you are trying to reach, and then design from their perspective, not only will you arrive at unexpected answers, but you will come up with ideas that they will embrace

Human-centred design is both how you think and what you do. It's a process that consists of three phases: Inspiration, ideation and implementation.

The inspiration phase is about learning on the fly, opening yourself up to creative possibilities and trusting that as long as you remain grounded in the desires of the people you are designing for, your ideas will evolve into the right solution.

In the ideation phase, you will come up with lots of ideas. Some too crazy to work some too crazy not to try and you'll find that it's tossing out the bad, and improving the good.

Making things helps you learn, grow and test your ideas. Building a simple prototype gets your idea tangible and gives you something to put right back into the hands of the folks you're designing for.

Without their input, you won't know if your solution is on target, or how to evolve your idea. Keep iterating testing and integrating feedback until you have got everything just right.

During the implementation phase, you are building partnerships to shore up your business model, and get your idea out into the world because that was the goal.

Anyone can practice human-centred design and everyone benefits because it gets us all to creations that are adopted and embraced.

Michael Okun Oliech