A Design HUB is a work session dedicated to the design (or redesign) of anything. It can be the design of any kind of product, process, program, event or experience. It engages three elements: habits, use and beauty. Together these nurture the organic growth of design that works. The power of the process is how it engages every thinking style and talent around the table.
Habits
What are people already doing?
Whatever we're designing or redesigning for, people are already doing. Before PostIt Notes, people were already attaching paper to paper using paper clips and staples. Postits brought about a completely different feature for the same function, replacing sturdy solid materials with inferior glue.
New design gives people a different way to do what they're already doing. Here, we identify what for users is working and not working, what's most and least convenient, what adds value and what doesn't. Understanding current habits gives us a unique and deeper perspective on what else might be possible.
Use
What features and functions would be optimally useful?
We create usefulness by making something more accessible, useable with fewer steps or effort, producing a higher quality experience, requiring minimal or no maintenance, easy to personalize or share.
We generate as many feature and function possibilities, no matter how much we might judge them as "realistic" or "unrealistic." We consider interesting ways to introduce any kinds of technology and sociology into the options that emerge.
Beauty
What would make this more beautiful?
Beauty is aesthetics, simplicity and familiarity. Anything judged as attractive feels more useful and representing higher quality. Beauty entices us to assume that more attention went into the design and production of something.
Just considering the beauty of something we design adds another perspective on the importance of the user experience, which infuses more creativity and pragmatism to the overall value of the design.
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