9. HCD Process by IDEO

     

       Everyday, we exposure ourselves to some types of designed products and brands. We wake up at the bed, brush our teeth, wear clothes, drive a car, eat lunch and dinner and go back to bed. In this simple process of daily life, we don’t even recognize how many different designed products and brands we have used. If some of products that we use daily evolve their designs and technologies good enough to make our lives more efficiently and helpful than now, we will be able to improve the quality of our lives with or without notice. Also, if some of companies and small business stores try to develop good brand images, customer relationship services and process of developing ideas, it will hugely affect on their profits and potential customers. This is the basic identity of the innovative global design firm and business consultant service company, IDEO.

                
                 

         In 2012, IDEO introduced a new concept of design process called, HCD process. According to the IDEO, HCD stands for Human Centered Design and also stands for Hear Create Deliver. Basically, HCD is a toolkit that helps international staffs and volunteers in NGOs and social enterprises that work with impoverished communities in Africa, Asia, and Latin America to understand a community’s needs, find innovative solutions to meet those needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability. 

In order to help NGOs, IDEO created the HCD process toolkit by applying their innovative established design process. With using HCD toolkit, NGOs and developing countries could find innovative solutions and opportunities without spending huge amount of money on business and service consulting and many different NGOs and developing countries have actually used the HCD successfully. 

         
                      

        The HCD process can be simply defined with three step processes such as Hear, Create and Deliver. Hear is the inspiration phase that collets stories and inspiration from people by conducting field research. And then, the inspiration goes to the next phase Create, also called Ideation phase. The main focus of the ideation is that translates what you heard from people into frameworks, opportunities, solutions and prototypes in a workshop format with co-workers. The last part of the HCD process is Deliver or Implementation. During this phase, we will be able to realize our solutions through rapid revenue and cost modeling, capability assessment and implementation planning. The Deliver phase will help us to launch new solutions into the world. 

                   

         At the beginning of my research about HCD process by IDEO, I could not understand why IDEO developed the HCD process toolkit with using their core-design development technologies and has distributed the toolkit to NGOs and developing countries relatively low costs. After my research and consideration, I assumed that the HCD process toolkit could be IDEO’s other form of the investment and building a good brand image and strong archetype. IDEO could develop good relationships with developing countries that have enormous potential for development in a near future through the HCD process toolkit, relatively low costs of investment. Also, people could use the HCD process toolkit easily in every situation of project development, finding solutions and creating new designs. This will be the IDEO’s strong opportunity of building good brand images and archetypes. In the near future, people who are using the HCD process in NGOs or developing countries now will generate rapid growth in the business field and these human resources will bring huge opportunities and projects back to IDEO.