Knowledge Hub

Learning is at the heart of what we do. Applying HCD approaches in the public health sector is an evolving practice. We therefore work to bring together existing knowledge and to uncover new learnings, with the collective mission of advancing locally-led HCD for public health. One of the ways we do this is by uncovering, driving and sharing knowledge around HCD+Public Health programming in Africa and Asia.

Resource Library

Resource Library

Visit the Resource Library to submit, save, and download your favorite resources on HCD+Public Health.

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The X-Change

The X-Change

Connect with community members on the interactive X-Change platform to share learnings, experiences, events, opportunities, and to ask questions about HCD+Public Health.

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Learning Products

Learning Products

Explore co-created learning resources to equip yourself with knowledge, tools and best practices from the field, to more effectively adopt HCD for public health.

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Events

Events

Join the HCDExchange at our next gathering to browse our curated list of upcoming and past HCD+Public Health events.

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Glossary

***We do acknowledge that other collaborators and partners in this field may use varying terms.

Adolescents

Any person between ages 10 to 19

Adolescent insights

Information that ASRH practitioners and designers can use to obtain a more nuanced understanding of the target population – more specifically adolescent needs, mindsets, aspirations, desires, and preferences. Experts highlight that insights generated through HCD are thought to produce ‘new’ knowledge that will add value to the wider body of knowledge around adolescent sexual reproductive health.

Co-design

Co-designing is a process of creating solutions along with the users you are trying to affect. Activities can be used to define a complete solution or just to gather input and feedback on small features of products or services. (Related terms: co-creation; participatory design).

Design

Design is the process of developing informed, sensitive, inclusive, purposeful and innovative solutions that embody functional and aesthetic demands based on the needs of the intended users and their ecosystem. Design is applied in the development of goods, services, processes, messages, and environments. The term ‘design’ can be used interchangeably with ‘Human-centered’ design.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is an approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people; the possibilities of technology; and the requirements for business success. Design thinking, skills, and practices should be thought of as being appropriate to all disciplines including design.

Design Sprint

Is a time constrained process that goes through the stages of identifying a challenge, designing, prototyping, and testing the prototypes with the user group in mind.

Human-centered Design (HCD)

Human-centered design is the process of integrating human perspectives in all steps of the problem-solving process. The aim is to better understand an issue from the human perspective and focus on how it looks and feels to users within their environment and context.

HCD Principles

HCD is based on four fundamental principles: identify the ‘real/underlying’ problem; being people-centered; employ activity based discovery; and iterate, test, and refine proposed solutions rapidly.

HCD Process

HCD operationalizes its principles in a process that includes four main phases: inspiration, ideation, prototyping (or testing) and implementation.

HCD Mindsets

In the HCD process, four main mindsets are encouraged, as it is often said that having these mindsets are key to following the HCD process. The four mindsets are:

  • Empathy
  • Learn from failure
  • Embrace ambiguity and
  • Creative confidence

HCD+ASRH

This is a HCDExchange-specific term and a short form for describing the use of HCD approaches in adolescent and sexual reproductive health programming.

HCD+AYSRH

This is also a HCDExchange-specific term and a short form for describing the use of HCD approaches in adolescent and youth sexual reproductive health programming.

Insights

Ideas or anecdotes expressed as succinct statements that serve to interpret patterns in research findings. Insights offer a new perspective, even if they are not new discoveries. They are inspiring and relevant to the design challenge. (Related terms: sensemaking; synthesis).

Meaningful Youth Engagement

Meaningful youth engagement is an inclusive, intentional, mutually-respectful partnership between adolescents, youth, and adults whereby power is shared, respective contributions are valued, and young people’s ideas, perspectives, skills, and strengths are integrated into the design and delivery of programs, strategies, policies, funding mechanisms, and organizations that affect their lives and their communities, countries, and world. (Global MAYE Consensus Statement).

Personas

A representative identity that reflects one of the user groups. It is a representation of a user segment with shared needs and characteristics.

Prototype

A model or artifact built to test a concept with users to learn from them and use insights to improve development of the prototype. Prototype development process helps designers reflect on key aspects that determine how well a solution will work in real life conditions rather than theoretical conditions.

Young People

Any person aged 10-24.

Youth

Any person between ages 15 -24.

Youth Integration

This is the practice of involving young people (aged 10 – 24) in the design and the implementation of HCD+ASRH.

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