They may be referencing IDEO's Human-Centered Design [1]. I think the danger is that if you don't intentionally use human-centered design processes, you could

They may be referencing IDEO's Human-Centered Design [1]. I think the danger is that if you don't intentionally use human-centered design processes, you could end up "just getting it done", or "reducing cost", or nothing at all in the center. Surely you've heard some horror story of engineers spending millions of dollars designing software, but they neglect to include the end users in the design process. What happens in this story? It finally makes it to the users and they deem it unusable. There was a fun little incident in Canada recently where this was probably part of the issue [2]. [1] http://www.designkit.org/human-centered-design http://www.designkit.org/human-centered-design [2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/psac-protest-phoenix-pay-system-st-johns-1.3726011 http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/psac-pro...