What is Hero or Human Centered Design?

Hello, fellow Catalysts! Thank you for joining me. Let me know your insights in the comments below.

In Hero Centered Design (HCD) the members, or clients of our organization are the heroes, and they are at the center of the model. As we align our organization with the Hero's Journey model we can start to explore areas that our organization is weak. Instead of creating a big campaign with a year's worth of visioning meetings, we actually want to be able to adapt to what is going on in this moment, because who knows what will be going on next year.

You will need to observe, interview, and learn from your members to see where they might be falling through the cracks in your Hero's Journey model. As you learn you will start to develop some insights, questions, and ideas. Go ahead and put those in your buckets for later.

The Roadmap model is a great model to be able to map the perceptions, meanings, emotions, and needs of your members (see appendix in my paper). By looking at the needs that are not being met, we can start to have insights about our heroes and ideas to get those needs met by our organization.

Let's look at an example. Say you are a community college. The students are the heroes of your organization and the people that you are inviting into your story. You find that the story you are telling is about giving the students the credentials they need to be able to go to a four-year college or to get a job. This doesn't seem like a bad story, but when you start to observe the students you start to find that they are looking at their college experience as a barrier to the goal of getting a career or transferring! Classes become disconnected from their journey and they can't wait to finish so that they can get their degree or move on.

But we also see that students have other needs. Needs for connection, to each other, the school, and their learning. Is it relevant to their lives? They are also looking for purpose? What do they want to be doing for the rest of their lives? They are really looking for a deeper story, a more meaningful story.

What are some of the insights that you can glen from observations about your members? What are their needs? What areas of the Hero's Journey model are lacking in the story of your organization?