If there’s one thing all brand owners can and should learn from the past 18 months, it’s the importance of designing products, services and all their relating features, interactions, touchpoints – every associated experience – for humans, not function.

Covid-19 has driven a shift in consumer values which has placed brand humanity and trust centre stage when it comes to what consumers now want and expect from the brands they choose to deal with. They want transparency and to be able to trust, but above all what they want is meaningful human interaction.

Human-centred design is not new. Rather, it is an approach to problem-solving now commonly used in design and management frameworks that seeks to develop solutions to problems by applying a human perspective every step along the way.

Which has become a bit of a problem. For being human-centric is more than ‘just’ an approach. It’s common sense. And as such, in the rush to harness the ease of use and seamless experiences now enabled by latest technology, its importance is often overlooked.