HumaniTech VIP

Human-centered design, sometimes referred to as empathic design, is the process of creating a solution to a problem by really involving the community that the problem impacts. The process of co-creating with communities is, surprisingly, not often used in humanitarian problem solving. This is an issue because without speaking directly with the impacted community and continuously gathering their feedback on your intervention, you will often end up missing the target. An important first step in utilizing human-centered design is recognizing that your background and experiences may be very different from the community that you are trying to help, and therefore your idea for an intervention might not be practical for them. This is why co-creating with communities and incorporating human-centered design into problem solving is so valuable for creating an intervention that will have the greatest positive effect.