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People-Centered Design
Table of Contents
Design for real human needs first - customers, teammates, stakeholders - or the change will not stick.
Key Concept
- A process that ignores the people inside it gets worked around by Friday.
- People-centered design keeps actual needs in front - what slows a nurse down, what confuses a new hire, what a customer is trying to finish - before I optimize the chart or the slide.
- Listen Before Fixing and Psychological Safety are prerequisites: you cannot design for people you did not hear.
Level 1 - Recognize
People-centered design means fitting the process to real human needs before optimizing the chart or slide.
Level 2 - Explain
Like a path worn through grass where the sidewalk missed where people walk - ignore humans and workarounds appear by Friday.
Level 3 - Use
Pilot with the people who must live in the rule - if they invent a bypass in week one, the design failed.
Level 4 - Connect
Official process and lived process diverge into Normalization of Deviance - you cannot design for people you did not hear.
Level 5 - Create
Build a people-centered pilot: Listen Before Fixing, make speaking up safe with Psychological Safety, then use Staged Rollout to learn before scaling.
Examples
- The clinic rolled out a new chart template nobody could finish during a shift - glad watching one nurse chart for twenty minutes cut three fields the flowchart defended.
- Our checkout ‘improvement' added steps customers hated - people-centered design was shadowing three checkouts and removing the extra tap, not defending the flowchart.
Note Relationships
| Relationship | Wikilink | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| alternative | God Centered Design | People-first serves humans; God-first orders who you are ultimately building for |
| contradicts | Outcomes Over Pitch Decks | when slick decks beat watching one real user struggle |
| extends | Listen Before Fixing | Hear the need before you ship the fix |
| extends | Psychological Safety | People tell you what breaks when honesty is safe |
| extends | Servant Leadership | Leaders unblock humans, not only metrics |
| extends | Shadow the Work | Watch real use - flowcharts lie politely |
| implements | Transformation Principles | People-first lever - why change survives contact with real work |
| implements | Workplace Principles | People-first change in plain office language |
