Reflection #1
09.26.2025
: Human-centered Design
As an industrial designer, creating human-centered designs has always been my goal. Before I start designing, I try to put myself in the users’ shoes. So I thought I already understood what it meant to be learner-centered.
But while reading through learning theories, I realized I wasn’t doing enough. Even though I know how essential it is to understand who I’m designing for, it’s surprisingly easy to deviate from that original intention. I often see users’ struggles through my own lens—how I perceive the world. That means the solutions I come up with are also projected through what I think will work. The design might be good, but I could probably do more if I truly understood the users beyond assumptions.
In many of my past projects, that didn’t make much of a difference because I was designing for people who were, more or less, like me. But now, we’ve started working on projects for parents whom I know far less about. And this shift made everything hit different.
The first step of our capstone project made me realize the real importance of empathy, compassion, and conversation. Before interviewing any parents, I built personas based on what I assumed I knew through observation. But during the interviews, I started to genuinely connect with them. Through their words and expressions, I saw how deeply they care about parenting. Even though they don’t always know how to do it, their efforts come from love—and they’re trying hard.
This experience helped me understand their struggles more clearly, but it also built something stronger: a deeper sense of empathy and a genuine internal drive to help them.
From a theoretical perspective, this shift reflects a move toward constructivist and constructionist approaches, where learning and designing happen through authentic interaction and the construction of meaning in context. Interviewing parents helped me construct a more accurate understanding of their world, rather than projecting mine onto theirs.
It also connects to the idea of audience analysis, the core principle in both design and pedagogy. By empathizing with the real voices of my users, not imagined ones, I could better adapt my cognitive resources toward solving their actual needs. This matters when we think about Cognitive Load Theory: if I don’t understand my users, my design might unintentionally increase their extraneous load. But when I tailor it with empathy and real understanding, I can reduce unnecessary mental strain and support them more effectively.
So yeah, I’m learning that learner-centered—or human-centered—design isn’t just about intentions. It’s about staying close to the people you’re designing for, especially when they’re not like you. And that starts with listening.