When it comes to the human-centred design process, the case of Oral B stands out as an example of how a simple problem-solving approach can transform human experiences. In 1996, many parents complained about their kids refusing to brush their teeth. Oral B, a leading brand of oral hygiene, saw this as an opportunity. They watched children brush for hours and pointed out the pain points in existing toothbrushes. ‘Unfirm grip’ of children turned out to be the reason behind it. Oral B, with their user experience-centred design philosophy, created a children’s toothbrush that had a fat & squishy handle, permitting children to grip it firmly. While the sales skyrocketed, a successful product design was created using a human-centred design process. This outbound success is just one of the examples of how human-centred design can transform businesses and user experiences, thus incentivising societal changes. As you can by now that the term design philosophy is used to address a designer’s driving force behind completing the entire design process. The philosophy itself includes details on the aesthetics and methods of a particular individual throughout the designing process that leads to a successful production process.
What is human-centred design?
Human-centred design is a philosophy that prioritises users’ needs, desires, and preferences and empathises with the user experience while developing a product or service for the masses. But the concept is not only applicable to developing new products; human-centred design helps to redesign better products and services by tackling existing problems. The human-centred design aims to understand users and their context of using a particular product or service. The design concept closely observes users’ patterns, habits, and pain points to ensure maximum results in designing and developing a successful product that is easy to use and meets the purpose. The process of creating a human-centred product or service requires not only observing the natural behaviours and needs of users but also prototyping and rapid testing through users to gain the ultimate results.
What is Corporation Communication?
Corporation Communication, on the other hand, is a distinct yet linked concept that closely follows human-centred design. Corporation communication is the process of conveying a proper message about a company’s products or services, values and missions to its stakeholders, investors, suppliers, employees, customers and the media. Corporation communication requires transparency, commitment and clear intention to focus on a particular message of a company. Corporation communication comprises a series and wide range of activities from public relations, human resource and internal communications and customer-centric marketing communications, etc. A deep understanding of shareholders and stakeholders is needed to have a successful corporate communication culture of a company.
Intertwining the concepts – why & how
There are four stages of conducting human-centred design processes. From clarification of the problem to ideating, developing and lastly implementing the whole process results in a product. And in four of those stages, corporation communication plays a significant role. If a problem arises that requires a human-centred design to tackle its adversities, the initial task becomes to clarify the problem and understand its stakeholders. Organisations and corporations always look out for the best interests of their stakeholders, and achieving a human-centred approach is a milestone for them. In any problem that arises within an organisation, either at the employee level or customer level, focusing on the human experience does not go in vain. One example of a human-centred design approach in employee engagement was a campaign called ‘Belong Anywhere’ by Airbnb. The campaign aimed for a sense of belonging to its employees and highlighted the company’s commitment towards diversity and inclusion. That way, Airbnb aimed to encourage their employees, thus delivering productivity gains. Another example of creating value and meeting successful communication with investors through human-centred design comes from Johnson & Johnson (J&J). In recent years, J&J took the initiative to understand its investors better. That led to the conclusion that investors nowadays just don’t invest in a financially profitable company, but they look for a socially responsible and impactful company as well. Keeping that in mind, J&J created an investor relations website informatively highlighting the company’s commitment and stance towards making a positive impact on society. Dove portrayed its brand value to the audience and stakeholders with its famously known campaign, ‘Real Beauty Sketches’. The campaign, a widely known one, focused on body positivity and the negative impact society holds for women in the name of beauty standards. During this campaign, Dove partnered with forensic artists to draw two sketches of each woman participating. Of the two, one sketch was based on the woman’s description of herself, and another was based on a stranger’s description. When compared, it turned out that the women were much more beautiful than they believed. The campaign gave a clear message of self-esteem and hinted at the brand’s positive gesture. With the human-centric designed campaign, Dove left a mark in the audiences’ hearts and became a successful model of corporation communication resulting in exceptional business outcomes.
Author- Subeh Tarek
