Designing the Heart of Your Product, Service or Experience

Have you ever felt that you’re not getting the core—the heart—of your product, service or experience, right?

A human without their core biological components is like a human without bones, a nervous system, or a heart.

Sounds a bit awkward, and very messy.

But the same concept applies to designing complex systems.

Like an actual heart, with its four chambers that work together to keep us alive, we believe there are four parts to understanding and designing what people really need from products and services:

• What problem are we solving?

• Who are we solving it for?

• How (and When) are we solving it?

• Why does it matter?

With an approach derived from the best of social science research, business analysis, systems thinking and design, we’re like the original anatomists; peering inside the surface structures of life, work and play, to learn about the patterns of behaviour that keep complex systems alive and thriving.

Put another way, get the core, the heart, of a product or service right, and everything works better.

But it’s more than just designing the heart of a product service or experience.

You also have to design with heart; translating insights into effective experience architecture (experience anatomy) that forms the core of better products and services. We have to connect with and understand the people at the centre of the experience.

In the spirit of the original Human Factors disciplines that were the parent to our modern take on Human Centred Design, our approach helps make complex products, services and experiences:

• More effective and less error-prone

• More desirable, by making experiences less stressful, more comfortable and of higher quality.

• Easier to build, use and maintain because they are arranged more systematically, both for front and back of house.

• Focused on more valuable opportunities and linked to more effective business models.

Any other approach is just cheating the value that we can make together.

So remember to design the heart, and design with heart.