Human-Centered Design and Employee Experience with Justin Dauer

Today companies are applying the principles of good human-centered design not just to products but to processes and experiences. It’s not uncommon to hear that employee experiences are designed with a human-centered design approach.

This podcast clocks in at around 29 minutes. You can also listen to it on Apple Podcasts, stream on Google Podcasts or Spotify or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. So head out for a walk and let Justin and I keep you company.

Human-centered design—a term used by the firm IDEO, a pioneer in the field—has been used to rethink everything from how you design your professional life to how your organization feeds you and your teammates. (does it ring any bell? It’s me!)

The key principle is that instead of building systems that suit the needs of their businesses, they’re basing their designs around empathy for the customer––employee, in this case. The practice of empathic listening and observation help understand how your employee interacts with your products, your brand, and with the other employees, and to build an experience for them around their pain points, needs and wants––be they implicit or explicit.

Human-Centered Design and the Advantage of Designers and Developers

Today’s guest on the podcast is Justin Dauer. Justin is a Chicago-based designer, author of Cultivating a Creative Culture, a long-time friend of WE Factory (you might remember him from the Workplace Wisdom interview series), speaker, and the Vice President of Human-Centered Design and Development at bswift.

As a perpetual student of human-centered design, observation, and creative process, Justin builds teams and cultivates cultures around the perspectives and skillsets we already use daily in our work: empathy, objectivity, and creativity.

In the first edition of his book Cultivating a Creative Culture, Justin points out:

"Designers and frontend developers have a unique advantage—being human-centered. That helps solve the cultural problems in business that are sucking the life out of us."

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To find out exactly what Justin means, tune into this episode. He explains what he means by this, talks about the connection between pausing, caring for each other and being creative, reflects on the role of metrics, gives a sneak peek into the forthcoming follow-up book Cultivating a Creative Culture (2nd edition). 

"By being inclusive in our design approach and learning and discovering from human interactions, human-centered design fuels sales, innovation, and loyalty."

Justin Dauer

"Human-centered connection culturally supports this process as well by being equally inclusive in how we staff, how we hire, how we open our minds, and remove our personal biases."

Justin Dauer Key Take-aways

Short on time? Here are three quick takeaways:

Tie intangible things such as certain aspects of culture to tangible metrics, what fuels the business. That way, you focus on what propels the business forward rather than what feels right.

Human-centered design supports the employee experience by helping to be equally inclusive in the process of hiring, working as a team, and removing personal biases.

How to apply human-centered design in your culture: 1. Support starts at the top, 2. Put people first.

Show Notes A shortlist of articles and resources mentioned in this episode plus further resources:

How to Cultivate a Creative Culture According to Justin Dauer (WE Factory)

How to Adopt a New State of Mind that Transforms How we Work. Interview with Jan Orvet and Tommie Cau (WE Factory)

For further book recommendations, visit WE Factory's Essentials*

*Include affiliate links

Learn more about Justin's work:

Visit Justin's personal website and his book Cultivating a Creative Culture or follow him on Instagram and Twitter

Did you enjoy this episode on human-centered design and employee experience?

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