Human-Centered Design templates

How Might We Template

It's crucial to ask the right questions to find the best solutions. Skilled critical thinkers can uncover the underlying complexities of a problem instead of just accepting it at face value. One way to encourage this type of thinking is by using statement starters, such as the How Might We Template. These tools can help you explore more open-ended problems and have more productive discussions, ultimately leading to the most effective solutions.

Spider Chart Template

Spider Charts (or star plots) prioritize thoughts and ideas by importance. They help visualize complex information with significant items in the center and less important items progressively farther from it. Radar spider charts help understand relationships between information for better decision-making.

Cheat Sheet Template

To ensure quick and efficient understanding and usage of a product, many products come with a reference guide or cheat sheet. Similarly, when introducing an unfamiliar concept to new audiences, a cheat sheet can effectively communicate the key principles and main features. The idea is to treat the concept as a new product and create a concise and clear reference guide that explains its intended purpose and basic specifications in a simple and straightforward manner.

Video Storyboarding Template

Videos can be a game-changer when presenting a new idea. To create an engaging video, structure your narrative effectively using a Video Storyboarding Template. This ensures your message is clear and easy to understand and can help you gain support and feedback.

User Journey Mapping Template

Each person's life is a unique journey filled with daily decisions and challenges. The User Journey Mapping Template is a useful tool to visually represent these individual experiences. It simplifies understanding and documenting the current state of a situation by breaking down its different parts.

Heuristic Evaluation Template

The Heuristic Evaluation Template is a valuable tool in UX design. It relies on heuristics to identify usability issues and opportunities for improvement. Similarly, design heuristics serve as guidelines to evaluate the quality of a design solution. Following ten principles of good design can enhance the effectiveness of a product or service. Use these guidelines to evaluate your work and enhance the user experience of your design solutions.

Storyboarding Template

The Storyboarding Template is an excellent way to visualize how people will experience your concept in action. It primarily consists of images, which enable teams to communicate ideas with greater clarity and emotional impact than words alone. You don't need exceptional artistic skill to create storyboards; you simply need to depict a meaningful sequence of events.

Mind Map Template

Based on Joseph Novak's innovation, Concept Mapping, this template helps to organize ideas and demonstrate a comprehensive understanding of a subject. It visually arranges all the details about a topic, which fosters shared understanding. This technique is particularly useful when explaining different facets or related topics.

Proto Persona Template

Business decisions frequently rely on the personal preferences and assumptions of internal employees. However, making decisions that prioritize the needs of the individuals being served is helpful. When personas are developed effectively, they provide guidance to you and your team, ensuring that the interests of these crucial stakeholders are considered when making significant decisions.

Diary Template

The Diary Template is an effective research tool to gain insights into individuals' internal processes as they document their encounters with a specific product, service, or matter. Unlike real-time interactions, journaling is usually conducted asynchronously over an extended period of time, enabling deliberate reflection that other methods may not facilitate. This asynchronous nature encourages individuals to express more elaborate accounts of their emotions and viewpoints, resulting in profound and stimulating responses.

Stakeholder Analysis Template

When designing new solutions, thinking about what people need is important. Before deciding or defining the problem, ask questions like: Who is involved? What do they care about? How much power do they have? Understanding how your work affects everyone involved is crucial. Stakeholder analysis helps you plan and might change how you see the problem.

Dot Voting Template

The Dot Voting Template is an excellent tool to gather input from all participants, enabling each person to express their preferences and opinions before reaching final decisions. Voting acts as an incentive, driving quick discussions and pushing your team forward in project development.

Root Cause Evaluation Template

When you first encounter a complex situation, it's not common to immediately delve into its underlying causes and effects. Often, we grasp the overall picture but fail to separate the problem from its surrounding circumstances. Root Cause Evaluation provides a method to better understand the interconnected factors that have contributed to the current situation.

System Flowchart Template

The System Flowchart Template is a visual representation of the structure and organization of a concept, system, or solution. It helps teams understand how different components interact to form a functional system by focusing on the overall arrangement of elements rather than specific details. Symbolic drawings are used to illustrate the basic parts and their relationships in the diagram.

2x2 Prio Matrix Template

Understanding the balance between importance and difficulty is crucial for effective decision-making and progress. To aid in prioritization, a simple 2x2 matrix can map these factors on the x-axis and y-axis, respectively. This framework allows you to assess the trade-offs and tensions involved. The lower left quadrant represents quick wins, while the upper left quadrant consists of luxury items that may be costly with limited returns. The upper right quadrant contains strategic items that require significant investments for substantial results. Finally, the lower right quadrant houses the most valuable items, offering high impact at a lower cost.

Co-Creation Template

The Co-Creation Template enables the visual expression of ideas using essential elements. Analysis of these creations identifies explicit and implicit needs. For instance, a human resources team may use symbols to envision their ideal work environment. The output reflects people's desires and expectations.

Buy a Feature Template

The Buy a Feature Template reveals the actual significance people attach to certain aspects, creating tension by presenting options that exceed available resources. The resulting decisions provide valuable insights into which features, concepts or initiatives should be prioritized in the future.

Moderated Usability Testing Template

Encouraging individuals to express their implicit ideas helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of a design, and Moderated Usability Testing Template provides valuable perspectives. Typically, conducting only six to nine of these tests uncovers 80% of design issues, making it a cost-effective method to enhance potential solutions.

Cluster Analysis Template

When you're working with others, you might encounter situations where there's too much information to handle, or you're unsure about the direction to take. In such cases, using the Cluster Analysis Template can be helpful. It allows you to group similar items together and make sense of them, whether feedback or creative ideas. This method is straightforward and provides clarity amidst confusion.

Rose Thorn Bud Template

The Rose Thorn Bud Template offers a color-coded approach to examining data and structuring problems. The team is instructed to approach each situation thoroughly, methodically, and analytically. They are motivated to identify a positive experience (pink), a negative experience (purple), and a promising goal or insight (green). Identifying Roses, Thorns, and Buds helps in gaining a better understanding of one's challenges.

Idea Drafting Template

The Idea Drafting Template encourages you to tap into your innate creativity by drawing pictures to quickly generate ideas. The sketching process stimulates a cycle of creativity that supports the development of concepts. By externalizing your thoughts through sketches and seeing them visualized, you can generate variations and continue the creative process.

Press Release Template

A clear vision of the result is vital for success. To gain support, use the Press Release Template to create an engaging news story that captures your audience's attention and imagination. Excitement and enthusiasm for your idea will lead to the support and resources you need to make it a reality.

Discovery Interviews Template

The Discovery Interviews Template is a powerful tool that allows you to delve into a topic from different angles and gain a deeper understanding of different perspectives. By conducting interviews using this template, you can uncover valuable insights and uncover new information that can help you make informed decisions. Whether you are a researcher, product manager, or simply curious about a specific topic, the Discovery Interviews Template is an essential resource for anyone looking to explore a subject in depth.

Design Review Template

Constructive feedback is a valuable skill. The Design Review Template provides a structured approach for effective conversations. Critiques promote collaboration and drive improvement, inspiring all participants. It's an accessible way to involve people beyond your core team.

Bird's Eye View Observation Template

The Bird's Eye View Template helps you to observe people without interrupting them. This approach is useful when you cannot communicate with people directly or want to avoid disrupting their activities. By minimizing your impact, you can maximize your discoveries. The objective is to observe and listen without intervening. Direct observation, as well as video and screen recordings with prior consent, can be valuable.

Mix-and-Match Template

While unrestricted brainstorming may initially seem ideal, it has been discovered that creativity flourishes when there are limitations. The Mix-and-Match Template is an excellent tool for quickly generating diverse insights. Its structured framework facilitates the generation of new ideas at the intersection of different topics.

Pass the Paper

Collaborative brainstorming is an excellent method to facilitate a group of individuals in generating a diverse range of innovative concepts related to a specific problem. By encouraging participants to build upon each other's ideas, the process allows for rapid evolution and unexpected transformations. This collaborative approach, known as Round Robin, emphasizes collective authorship, with each person contributing their unique perspective. The ultimate outcome is a collection of ideas that surpasses the imagination of any individual.

Zoom Levels Template

The Zoom Level Template is a tool to examine a problem from various perspectives. For more innovative solutions, consider the issue broadly. Ascending the ladder enables you to broaden your perspective (ask, 'How might we?'). When confronted with an overly broad scope that hinders progress, descending the ladder helps narrow your focus (ask 'What if we narrowed?').

Collaborative Prototyping Template

Rapid prototyping quickly tests concepts and solutions with low-fidelity functional models, reducing investments by identifying issues early. The Collaborative Prototyping Template generates ideas and tests them with a framework for sharing prototypes and getting feedback.

Visual Prototyping Template

Visual and emotional aspects play a vital role in determining a product or service's usability and user experience. To evaluate these aspects of your proposed solution, consider using the Visual Prototyping Template. By creating a model that closely resembles the real product or service, and gathering feedback from key stakeholders, you can assess whether the form of your creation is advantageous or detrimental.

Fresh Perspective Template

The Fresh Perspective Template is a unique method that encourages you to gain a more comprehensive understanding of someone else's experiences by immersing yourself in their world. By stepping into their shoes, you gain first-hand insight into their joys and challenges. This approach not only enhances your empathy for others but also improves your decision-making skills as it allows you to see situations from a different point of view.

Darts Template

It is a common mistake to assume that all ideas, tasks, or features are equally important. However, in order to achieve the best results and focus on the most critical elements, it is necessary to determine what takes priority. This approach allows you to prioritize and concentrate on what requires immediate attention while postponing the remaining aspects for later. The Darts Template is designed to limit the amount of content that can be placed in the center, forcing your team to consider priorities before taking any action.

Parallel Universes Template

Creative ideas often come from exploring ordinary things from unique perspectives. The key to success is borrowing and adapting. The Parallel Universes Template encourages you to examine how a successful organization from a different field would tackle a specific problem.

Elevator Pitch Template

Elevator Pitch Boards are concise and effective tools to showcase your idea and generate interest from stakeholders. It's an opportunity to receive valuable feedback and ensure that your proposal aligns with your target audience's needs.

In-Context Interviews Template

The In-Context Interview Template helps you observe individuals in their natural habitat and is an effective method to gain a deeper understanding of their behavior and experiences. To achieve this, it is important to observe both their words and actions. Conducting an interview in their natural environment allows for real-time exploration of their experiences. While remote and online interviews are possible, synchronous engagement is preferred as it yields better results. The objective of this approach is to fully immerse oneself in the world of those who possess extensive knowledge about the subject being studied, thereby preventing the formation of inaccurate assumptions. Overall, using the in-context approach provides several benefits for gaining a more accurate understanding of individuals and their experiences.

SUS Evaluation

To assess the emotional experience of users, use the SUS Evaluation Template. This involves conducting a survey with a set of questions where respondents rate their level of agreement on a scale ranging from 'Strongly Disagree' to 'Strongly Agree.' These questions evaluate various aspects of the user experience, such as ease of use, aesthetics, and overall satisfaction. This approach is valuable for comparing design iterations and evaluating the effectiveness of products and services.