Studying Human Centered Design
Today our week of challenging research culminated in presentations to our social enterprises. Despite having a limited window in which to get to know our social enterprise, identify their needs, conduct field research and compile our findings into a comprehensive deliverable, our class’s work was truly impressive. At first I was unsure of how a group of undergraduates could develop a meaningful deliverable for seasoned social entrepreneurs in under a week, but I soon discovered there was a method to the madness.
The first day of meeting our entrepreneur felt like a whirlwind of questions. My group was lucky to work with Peter Shrimpton of Heart Capital, a man who gave us excellent, clear direction as to what he needed to learn from us about food security. After one day to develop informed research questions and strategies we spent an entire day in the Philippi Township, a largely impoverished area. Despite our group reflection on managing working outside our comfort zones, my group was apprehensive about how the day would go. As a group of five young foreigners walking through the township interviewing a random sample of people about their food purchasing habits, we expected to get some strange looks.
It turns out our field research went far better than expected and was one of the most interesting, educational days of the trip. In the beginning, our interviews were awkward as we approached women in the middle of their days work to ask them a series of strange questions about their food purchasing habits. Luckily for us, most of the people we approached were willing to set aside time, some excitedly and others more reluctantly, to humor us.
We were initially hesitant to interrupt people in their busy day and felt nervous to ask some personal questions, but we soon learned that people were much more open and willing to talk with us than we had expected. They understood that their answers might potentially inform a future pilot program, and many took advantage of the chance to voice opinions that may not otherwise be heard. As the day went on we settled into the flow of asking questions and our awkward interviews developed into mutually beneficial conversations.
Armed with quality research and the human centered design tools we learned in class, our team consolidated our findings and developed several options for Heart Capital moving forward. By presentation time we were proud of our findings and, to our surprise, we were so eager to answer our entrepreneurs questions that we did not feel like we had enough time even when we went beyond the scheduled allotment. It was a rare feeling brought on by doing real life, meaningful work that could one day become reality rather than remain theoretical as so many of our undergraduate projects do. The experience was a series of feeling a bit in over our heads to feeling confident in the quality of our work. It was gratifying to end on such a note of confidence.
- Kelly Ward











