Understanding Human-Centric Design

Wendy Wong | Head & Co-founder, 55 Minutes Pte Ltd

Wendy is the head and co-founder of 55 Minutes Pte Ltd.
She is a human-centered designer and mentor.

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Overview

When a business plans to design products to solve customer problems, one factor that often gets missing on the table discussion during the brief is the problems of real customers. User experience (UX) in designing has gained a lot of traction lately to be able to cater to the customers so that business eventually benefit from that. Tune in now to know about human-centric designing of products.

[00:33] – About Wendy Wong

Wendy is the head and co-founder of 55 Minutes Pte Ltd.
She is a human-centered designer and mentor.
She is a member of the Uncommon Community, and a mentor on the ADPList.

[02:45]: Tell me about what you’re doing at 55 Minutes Private Limited. What is behind this unique name?

As a designer, a large part of my work was always based on answering clients briefs. The client would come to me, and they would expect me to deliver exactly what they tell me to do. A large part of the work was based on just making sure that things are pretty, and the brief is being met, and that was it.
There was nothing wrong with that, but for a long time I felt that something was missing in this whole process, and that was when I then chanced upon the concept of human-centered design.
The more I understood it, I felt something finally clicked. What was missing was the users themselves because at the discussion table we would have product owners, designers, developers, marketing and sales people’s preference.
Everyone is there at the table except the users themselves, so my co-founder and I decided to bring the users back into the center of the discussion, and we want them represented at the discussion table. We don’t want to spend time just creating another product that no one wants or no one finds useful.
This entire essence of human-centered design revolves around us as designers asking the right question.
The name came about because Albert Einstein was quoted saying that if he was given an hour to solve a problem, it would take him the first 55 minutes asking the right questions, and then he’ll take the five minutes to solve the problem. That is such a good representation of the work that I want to do; asking the right questions, and that’s why we’re called 55 minutes.

[09:32]: How do you balance the needs and constraints of the user and the business when designing your products?

I find what has been helpful for us is having very open-minded and humble conversations with the business owner because it is inevitable that when a business owner engages us and comes to us and says, look, I have this challenge and I require you to help us with it, it’s inevitable that they already have some goals in mind and some outcomes that they can envision.
We cannot expect and demand that they immediately understand the processes that we have and embrace all the outcomes that we put up to them. We need to understand that as designers we have to practice a bit of patience and also speak in the language that business owners.
It’s very natural to use all the jargon that we use, but it can make the business owner feel unsafe. When they do not understand something, they don’t feel safe, and they’re not assured that their interests are being looked after.
When we speak in the language that they understand, they are also more open and willing to listen to what we have to say.
We also need to extend our empathy to not just the users but through the business owners, we also need to listen to them in return to say okay tell us now what are your goals and what are your pain points and what your priorities are.

RESOURCES:

You can connect with Wendy Wong – LinkedIn

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