Pairing Strategic Priorities with Human-Centered Design
If you’re a purpose-driven leader in the social impact sector, your role is likely focused on advancing your organization’s strategic priorities. As advisors to a wide array of nonprofit and other purpose-driven organizations, we’ve seen a lot of strategic plans—and have developed a keen sense of the Human-Centered Design tactics best suited for the most common types of priorities.
Many organizations endeavor to improve program delivery, impact systems change, grow revenue and elevate their employee experience, but they don’t necessarily know how to carry out their plan. Human-Centered Design is the key. In this article, we breakdown each type of strategic priority and share some Human-Centered Design tactics that compliment the typical goals and objectives. If you notice a particular technique showing up in multiple categories, that’s a good sign. Because Human-Centered Design is not a siloed practice, there’s real potential for individual tactics to influence more than one of your organization’s strategic priorities.
Program Priorities
If your organization identifies the need to improve, expand, and design a new program, there is no better place to start than with centering a particular stakeholder group and giving them greater agency in the process (think program participants, partners or communities). For program focused priorities, it is vital to start by understanding stakeholder needs, pain points and desires and to design solutions that meet them where they’re at. Services, tools and resources should be tailored to your stakeholders and, depending on your relationship to a particular group, collaboration and co-creation could be essential to the successful adoption of your future product or service. In these instances, we lean into Human-Centered Design tactics that put stakeholder voices and experiences front and center.
Recommended Pairings
Learn: Ethnography, Market Research, User Experience
Strategize: Voice of Customer, Audience Lifecycles, Brand Positioning
Activate: Experiential Events, Communication Touchpoints and Campaigns
Systems Change Priorities
Strategic priorities involving systems change, DEIJ, coalition building or advocacy will be more successful with a deep understanding of the current system's issues and empathy for those most affected. Narrative change and community engagement are foundational tools for shifting mindsets. Key messages need to work for audiences that hold differing backgrounds and points of view. The Human-Centered Design tactics that work best in these situations are those that help shift power dynamics, build relationships, and establish common ground.
Recommended Pairings
Learn: Ethnography
Strategize: Voice of Customer, Brand Positioning
Activate: Stakeholder Toolkits, Experiential Events, Communication Touchpoints and Campaigns
Revenue Priorities
Human-Centered Design offers organizations a powerful framework for evolving their revenue models in ways that are responsive to the needs of their stakeholders, sustainable, and impactful. By placing people at the center of the design process, nonprofits can create revenue strategies that drive positive social change while ensuring financial stability and resilience. In addition to gaining a deep understanding of the funder, customer, and beneficiary motivations and preferences, Human-Centered Design can drive revenue stream innovation while ensuring that revenue models, fundraising strategies and donor engagement is authentic and relevant to your organization’s mission.
Recommended Pairings
Learn: Ethnography, Market Research
Strategize: Voice of Customer, Audience Lifecycles, Brand Positioning
Activate: Experiential Events, Communication Touchpoints and Campaigns
Employee Experience Priorities
What happens inside your organization is just as important as what happens outside your organization. From employee recruitment and retention, to increasing productivity, establishing and maintaining internal practices that enable your organization to thrive are the foundation on which every successful organization is built. Human-Centered Design is here to support and deepen invaluable efforts surrounding organizational values, North Star goals and company culture.
Recommended Pairings
Learn: Ethnography
Strategize: Voice of Customer, Audience Lifecycles, Brand Positioning
Activate: Stakeholder Toolkits, Experiential Events, Communication Touchpoints and Campaigns
Find the right fit for your priorities.
As you look at your organization’s list of strategic priorities, what do you see? At Olio we believe that every goal and objective holds the potential for meaningful engagement and impact. Because Human-Centered Design prioritizes the needs of stakeholders and communities, our approach is a natural fit for purpose-driven organizations like yours. If you have a priority in mind that requires a mix of creativity and connection, let’s talk about ways to introduce Human-Centered Design to your organization.