What is Human-Centered Design anyway?
By: Linde Huang
Tags: Design, UX Design, Product Design, Designer, Human Centered Design

Differences in origins of the disciplines

Digital Product Design: Human-computer interaction and human factors

Human-Centered Design: Participatory action research and community development

Understanding how the disciplines developed sheds some light on how and why they differ.

Digital Product Design has its roots in technology and anthropology, drawing from academic fields like human-computer interaction and human factors that focus on how to improve humans’ interaction with technology. (Source)

Human-Centered Design descends loosely from community-focused design frameworks like participatory design and action research that focus on empowering people and communities to create the solutions they need. (Source)

Differences in vantage points

Digital Product Design: A focus on products (and how they can serve people)

Human-Centered Design: A focus on people (and how products/services/etc. can serve them)

Because of the different origin stories of the disciplines, they each approach problem spaces from different vantage points.

Digital Product designers begin their work knowing they want to make features for a digital product. Learning about people is the best way to determine how to shape their product to delight their customers and ultimately make sure the product succeeds.

Human-centered designers focus first and foremost on people, without knowing exactly what form the solution will take. If the final solution involves a digital product (as it often does in this day and age), it is because software was determined to be the best tool to use in order to solve the human need, given the context and resources.

The difference is subtle but reveals itself more clearly in each discipline’s chosen methods.

Differences in design methods

Digital Product Design: User interviews, interaction design, content design, user interface design, etc.

Human-Centered Design: Ethnography, participatory design, co-creation, facilitation, etc.

Digital Product Designers draw from methods that are used to perfect digital products, informed by what their users want and need. They develop skills in the broad areas of user research, UX design, UI design, and marketing to create successful digital experiences.

Human-Centered Designers use methods that seek to understand people and create with them rather than for them. They develop skills in co-creation and facilitation, bringing people together from completely different backgrounds to align on a vision and build solutions together.

Even when the two disciplines work on the same project, they tackle the problems with different sets of tools which leads to different scopes and forms of their solutions.

Differences in deliverables

Digital Product Designers: Digital products in the form of apps, websites, etc.

Human-Centered Designers: Holistic systems of products, services, etc.

The most visible difference between the disciplines is in the final deliverables that they each create. They make tradeoffs in depth vs. breadth.

Digital Product Designers focus on depth. They are trained in empathizing with people and translating their needs into production-ready solutions, though their solutions are confined to the form of digital products.

Human-centered designers have breadth, accounting for the multi-dimensional experience of navigating real life. They think about digital products as well as spaces, services, systems, and anything else that might play a role in tackling the problem. However, they may not have domain-specific expertise on how to expertly craft each of those individual components.

For projects involving digital products, Human-Centered Design teams often bring on Digital Product Designers to grow their prototypes into production-ready experiences.

Differences in where they work

Digital Product Designers: Within product teams

Human-Centered Designers: Within innovation groups in non-traditional design spaces

A final difference I’ll mention is less about the work itself, and more about where the disciplines tend to sit within an organization.

Digital Product Designers are usually found within product teams, alongside groups focused on business and technology. In this setup, the designer acts as the voice of the user, advocating for the user’s needs above conflicting business demands or technical requirements.

Human-Centered Design teams are often found in innovation groups, working as change agents within institutions that do not typically hire designers like government agencies or hospitals. They work on projects with diverse teams made up of stakeholders, experts, and representatives from the community they’re serving, bringing all of them in alignment to create something together.

Picking the right tool for the job

At the end of the day, choosing which type of designer to bring onto a project comes down to what the problem is and the expertise that’s needed to tackle it.

Call on a Digital Product Designer if you need to make digital experiences intuitive and delightful. Or, call on a Human-Centered Designer if you want to bring people together to create system-wide solutions for big and messy problems.

Or, better yet, call on us both! We are complements, and we go better together.