What is Human-Centered Design?
Human-centered design is a process that helps government understand the needs of our community and respond to them. It's an approach to creating a program, policy, service, or product informed and tailored to the needs of the people who will use or be impacted by it.
What is Human-centered Design? from IDEO.org.
What is a prototype?
A prototype is a critical part of human-centered design - it's the part where you design something to test or experiment. It can be a sketch, storyboard, model, or mock-up of an idea that people can interact with and provide feedback on. This interaction allows you to get early feedback on your ideas, test assumptions from your research, and learn more about what your users want and need. These experiments are low cost and help reduce the risk of larger, more expensive failures.
More reading:
- Explainer: what is human-centered design (Bloomberg Cities)
- Explainer: what is prototyping? (Bloomberg Cities)
- Human-Centered Design for Government (Governing Magazine)
- Human-Centered Design and Public Sector Innovation (Observatory of Public Sector Innovation)
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Finding the human in human-centered design (Harvard student team collaboration with the City of Boston)