Human Centered Design Fall 2021
12.09.21
Going into this course, I didn’t know what to expect. I thought human centered design was just another fancy term for user experience. And, it is. But, human centered design changes the experience of being a human. It aims to focus on the people being directly affected, and it seeks to solve the everyday struggles these people might be going through. It seems like a strategy class. It teaches you to look at situations and go, “okay but what if this wasn’t this way. What if this bizarre idea could completely change these people’s lives?” That intrigued me. It is so fun to think speculatively. It feels so freeing. Usually, we think practically, and within financial and economic bounds, but HCD has taught me to work backwards. It has taught me to have those big ideas first. When those ideas exist, then try to work them in a way that still makes everyone’s lives happier and easier.
Human Centered design has showed me an entire world of design that I did not know even existed. It taught me that you don’t have to be a sociologist or a biologist, or a business manager to be a strategist. It taught us to use our creative designer minds for things other than rendering shapes on a screen. It taught us to use that same mind and that same creativity for something much more complexed. It is heavily research based and will never be as informed as others that get entire degrees on these topics, but it is a start. We seek out these ideas, we propose these changes, and if we are lucky, we get to meet professionals that know how to implement them. I feel fortunate to have been a part of this class, I will never be the same after it. I am glad to have had my eyes open to an amazing field in design.