BA Bites - When Human-Centred Design Isn’t What It Seems: From Users to Customers and True Innovation

We all say we’re doing human-centred design — but what happens when the “human” turns out to be our internal process, not our actual customer?
In this episode, Benjamen Walsh dives into how real innovation starts with the customer’s job to be done — not our internal agenda.
Learn how to spot fake HCD, how to reframe discovery around customer value, and why true innovation lies in understanding why people do what they do, not just how we think they should.

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I want to talk to you about something that's become almost a
cliche and transformation and UXwork.
Human centred design or some people say design thinking.
Everyone says they're doing it. Every project claims to be human

(00:22):
centred or customer centred, buttoo often what they mean is
internal human centred. We end up designing for users,
internal staff, system operatorsor product owners and calling it
empathy. Meanwhile, the actual customer,
the person in the world we're meant to be creating value for,

(00:44):
is left out of the process entirely.
Or just, you know, give them a lip service.
And when that happens, what we're really doing is an
innovation. It's optimization.
We're polishing what already exists, not reimagining it.
So today let's unpack what's really going on and going wrong

(01:05):
with human city design and how to bring it back to its roots,
centred on the customer's job tobe done.
The Better Business Analysis Institute presents the Better
Business Analysis podcast with Kingsman Walsh.

(01:25):
Welcome back everyone to the Better Business Analysis
podcast. Now I want to talk about human
centred design, design thinking.I know they, they're a little
bit different, but what I want to talk about is not the nuance
differences is simply the fact that people say they're doing
human centred design or customercentric design, but they're not

(01:48):
really doing it. And I'm going to talk about some
of those points today and some segments.
And we're going to break down 5 segments and we're going to talk
about some of the challenges here.
Segment one is around The Mirageof human centred design.
At its best, HCD human centred design means designing from a

(02:09):
deeper understanding of people, how they think, feel, behave and
make decisions. But in practice, it's often used
as a shortcut to simply jumping.When I say jumping or hopping to
development, people say we did some interviews, we made
personas, we ran a workshop. Before you know it, the UX

(02:32):
designer is wide framing and theBA is running user stories
without ever understanding why the person needs a solution in
the 1st place. An example might be a government
team say they're redesigning a licensing point to make it more
human centered. They get consultants and they're
human centered consultants and maybe an app development company

(02:54):
that provide those staff. So they talk to frontline staff,
but not the business owners applying for those licenses.
So what gets improved? Internal forms, approval flows.
What does not get improved? A customer's job, getting
license faster, easier and more confidently.

(03:14):
They don't care what those stepsare that we have to go through
in the back end or even in the front line.
That's not innovation. That's just better
administration and maybe better frontline services different.
We moved to segment 2 and I think this is important, the
difference. And, and look, we all make
mistakes by saying the wrong words.

(03:35):
You know, client versus customer, you know, if you're in
profit making or or not-for-profit and, and, and
user. And I sometimes say user stories
when I mean customer stories. But let's be clear on what the
difference between a user and a customer is from a from a real
point of view, a user interacts with your system, A customer

(04:01):
decides whether to engage with you at all.
Remember that a user interacts with your system, a customer
decides whether to engage with you at all.
So important in internal projects, your user might be
employees, but your customer is the citizen, the member or the

(04:23):
buyer your organization ultimately serves.
And a potential customer, like anormal Verizon user or someone
who's browsing your website, they're a potential customer.
They're even more important in some respect in terms of some of
the marketing steps in term of getting them too engaged to sign
up like new, new business. The danger comes when we

(04:44):
optimize the user experience at the expense of customer
experience. As BAS, our job is to ask whose
problem are we really solving? We talk about problem statements
sometimes it's internally focused.
And whose job to be done are we designing?

(05:05):
Because innovation happens when we design around the customer's
job, not our organization's version of it.
So let's talk about the customer's job to be done.
I heard that this week in context, but it was actually
talking about steps. So Segment 3 is the customer's

(05:25):
job to be done. This came from Clayton
Christensen's job to be done framework, right?
That's the Bible, and it reframed innovation beautifully.
People don't buy a product or service.
They hire it to get a job done in their lives, right?
If we're talking about the customer, for example, a

(05:49):
commuter doesn't buy a coffee. They hire it to wake up and
signal the start of the day. This is so important.
Yes, they buy a coffee. That's the maybe the steps that
they go through from our point of view.
And maybe those steps are embedded.
So think about the steps for buying a coffee, right?

(06:11):
And I you know, the user journeysteps, which is you go up to the
counter, you order your coffee, you pay for your coffee, the
coffee gets made, they provide it back to you.
You may say thank you and you drink your coffee, right?
See that there they are the usersteps.
And this is where you need to get out of this mindset.

(06:31):
And this is where human centereddesigners go through.
They go, let's optimize those steps.
That's not true innovation. OK, True innovation doesn't
worry about that. They worry about the fact they
need to wake up and signal the start of the customers day.
They're hiring the coffee to do that.
They're not buying the coffee. And that's the difference

(06:52):
because they'd say coffee was still the answer or the
solution, but it's tied to a solution, which again, isn't
really going wide. And diverging in terms of coffee
may not be the best solution here.
You could have other products that you could serve in the
space because the customer's jobto be done, as we said, it's
just to wake up. It could be another caffeine.
And what you're finding in America is that coffee cells are

(07:14):
dropping. Now, if you don't know, then
actually the reason why people buy coffee is to wake up.
And the signal, the start of their day is part of a routine,
the ritual. You could be offering Coke,
other caffeinated sources and not just coffee.
And so Starbucks are dropping, losing market shares because but
the, the intake of coffee or caffeine, sorry, is going up,

(07:37):
right? Because the job to be done is
different to what you're providing.
So you get stuck on the solutionand the steps to get in the
solution. Then you've kind of lost the
customer's job to be done. You've focused on that use case
and that's different. Again, when we talk about buying
a coffee, you've gone through all those steps, so you go,
let's optimize them. This is how everyone buys a

(07:58):
coffee. Say you've decided it's coffee
and that's the realms of your possibilities or your bounds and
you go through and you go, I've got to pay for it.
You know, they'll wait for it, they're going to make it, blah,
blah, blah. That may not be the most
efficient or innovative way to even approach that process.
So we optimizing those steps is not true innovation.

(08:19):
If you, for example, said, well,actually you just walk up to the
coffee store and they already have your order because it knew
10 minutes before you ordered the coffee that this is your
usual time. You could just walk up and pick
up the coffee. That's true innovation.
Because maybe you've got an app on your phone and it knows you
know when you order coffee and it's ready by the time you're

(08:40):
there or it asks you to confirm,are you still getting coffee
today at 10 AM? Is this still your order?
Yes. Click a button and your coffee's
ready, right? The payment, the waiting in
line, all those steps are irrelevant.
They're not customer jobs to be done right.
Do you get that Now another example might be a small
business doesn't buy accounting software, they hire it to reduce

(09:01):
stress and get back to running their business.
So again, if you think about it from a customer lens, this is
proper human centre design, thenit might be a solution, might be
outsource the whole of their accounting department and
counting the whole accounting, whereas you limit it to buying
accounting software, you've limited it to the fact that they

(09:23):
have to now manage that software.
It's completely different from innovation to selecting a
solution. When we focus on the customer's
job, we see possibilities we would miss otherwise.
But here's the catch. Many teams only understand the
internal job to be done or the common existing pattern that

(09:44):
customers use. How can we process it faster?
They ask. How do we create this data?
How do we make this report easier to submit?
Their organization jobs, Their responses, right?
They're important, but they're not why customers show up.

(10:05):
And so segment 4 when innovationshould be customer LED, because
there's not always a use case oran opportunity to do what I've
just said around the the innovation side.
And sometimes you get true humancentered designers, people that
are fantastic, who may in human centre design the hell out of

(10:25):
it. You know, they, they overdo it
when the realm isn't innovation.So we just got to be careful
that you are given permission todo this within the realm you're
doing. But also don't assume that there
isn't an opportunity for innovation because I would say
your true human centred designs.And when you, when you engage
with a human centred designer, you're asking for innovation.

(10:46):
So in true innovation projects, UX, service design or
transformation, a customer job should lead the solution and the
methodology. That means we don't start with
what can our system do or how can we replace our system.
We start with what's the customer trying to achieve and
how might we enable that in new ways.

(11:08):
That's where creativity comes upbecause how we solve it is
actually up for debate in innovation projects.
But why we're solving it shouldn't be.
And it is very, just a note here, very hard to change
customer behaviour. And when I say change customer
behaviour as to create a new market.

(11:30):
So it does have to be rooted in some logic that they want their
job to be done. But you'll be amazed that
customers will change patterns or sequences which is slightly
different to behaviour. They still want their coffee and
you can do it in a faster way. But if you start with the
current process, all you're going to do is optimization.

(11:50):
So you have a bank and it launches a new mobile feature to
simplify payments. The real customer job here.
What is it not to make payments to make make payments might be
where you jump to the customer'sjob has actually helped me feel
in control of my money. So instead of another click

(12:12):
transfer button, the innovation answer might be predictive
budgeting, alerts for spinning behaviors or visual goal
tracking. That's true human and customer
design Segment 5. So how do BAS and other, you

(12:33):
know, people in this space bringit back to reality?
Because there is a reality. You go you, this is called
divergent, OK, And then you converge.
This is true Divergent here is where we as BS can actually have
a real impact. So maybe if you're doing this
innovation area, you're not doing say a traditional project,

(12:57):
don't write as a user or as a persona.
Want to maybe write as a customer trying to achieve it's
a good start up for team. When you write your
requirements, they're they're almost a a different layer up,
different dimension upwards. OK, so you still will will have
your personas as a whatever I want to achieve whatever goal,
but that will be more functional.
But these are way up. OK, and they're almost a set of

(13:19):
requirements at the top. They're still air packing user
stories, but they're much beforethey hit the organization.
So you can say as a customer, I'm trying to, and it could be
the type of customer as a maybe a tech savvy banking customer,
I'm trying to achieve. So it's trying to achieve, OK,

(13:40):
that's different because then you're allowing the goal right
at the top. You can use themes for that if
you want to as well. Make sure you distinguish
between internal and external empathy.
It's fine to understand your staff time, please, but they're
not the end goal. They're a means to deliver
better customer value. Sometimes you need to but but

(14:03):
you start with the customer map,the what I call the double job.
So there's the internal and the external job to be done.
So ask what's the internal job that this solves and what's the
customer's job this enables. And I'd probably start with the
customer. And when they both align, that
is actually where true, I guess,viable innovation lives.

(14:27):
It's between what the customer'sjob is, right?
What does that enable them to do?
And then how do we solve that? And and that is true innovation
that actually works. It's not just, you know, that
crazy ideas that are never goingto come to reality.
And that's how you do it. And measure what matters.
If your success criteria are system speed and staff

(14:49):
efficiency, you're in process improvement.
OK, number of even number of clips.
But if it's customer satisfaction, MPs, uptight or
behavioral change, you've made small behavioral changes.
You're an innovation. The next time someone says we're
being human centered, ask which human the user customer, they'll

(15:11):
probably say customer. And even better, whose job are
we helping them do? What is that job?
And they might say make a payment and you say, Are you
sure? Isn't it manage their money more
effectively? Because true innovation doesn't
start with tools or processes ortech or frameworks.

(15:33):
It starts with understanding what the customer, the real
customer is trying to achieve and giving them a better way of
doing it. The how is actually up for
debate and innovation. The why shouldn't be.
I hope you had a good week. That is another tip for how you
can be a better BA and just a better human centered IT

(15:54):
professional. I'll see you next week.