Methodology - Proportion Global

Our methodology

At Proportion Global, Human-Centered Design (HCD) is at the heart of everything we do. It gives us a structured way to understand people’s realities, uncover insights, and co-create solutions that respond directly to community needs. By embedding local voices through our network of native experts, HCD ensures that ideas are not only innovative but also relevant, practical, and owned by the people who will use them.

But the challenges we face today are complex. Poverty, inequality, climate change, and underemployment are interconnected systems problems. To address them, we practice what we call Design 2.0—an expanded view of design that goes beyond the classic HCD cycle.

It combines and integrates various methodologies and tools:

Human-centered design (HCD)
Social Behavioral Change (SBC)
Systemic Design
Circular design
Futures Thinking and Foresight
Inclusive Business Modeling
Closed and Open Innovation Management

Human-Centered Design (HCD)

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At its core, Design 2.0 retains the principles of human-centered design, emphasizing empathy and a deep understanding of users’ needs, contexts, and experiences. The iterative process of prototyping and testing remains vital, ensuring that solutions are both practical and user-friendly.

Scope

Identify problem areas

The first stage is to scope the problem areas you are trying to solve. This involves consulting colleagues and experts that you can easily and informally consult to find out more about the area of concern. This includes the identification of the stakeholders in the system, and banking on the background knowledge you already have on these stakeholders.

Formulate problem hypothesis

The background knowledge we have about the system, its stakeholders and the context in which the problems often occur will help us to formulate the various problem hypotheses. A well defined problem hypothesis should include contextual assumptions, description of user persona, user needs and problems and the underlying motivations to solve those user problems. This helps us to identify and prioritise the user segments and/or stakeholder segments to engage with in the Empathise phase.

Empathise

Empathise with users

Once we have defined the initial problem hypothesis and identified the key stakeholder segments to focus on for solution development, we are now ready to move into the Empathy phase, which is the foundation of human-centered design. The problems you’re trying to solve are rarely your own, they’re those of particular users. Build empathy for your users by learning their values You’ll engage with and observe your target audience. The aim of this step is to paint a clear picture of who your customers/users are, what challenges they face, and which needs and expectations of theirs must be met. In order to build empathy, you’ll conduct surveys, empathy interviews and contextual observations. And the most challenging part in this phase is to adopt a beginners’ mindset by putting aside your assumptions and prejudices.
Here are three examples of activities you can do:

Observe: view users and their behavior in the context of their lives.
Engage: interact with and interview users through both scheduled and short ‘intercept’ encounters.
Immerse: wear your users’ shoes. Experience what they experience for a mile or two.

Define opportunities

The define mode is when you unpack your findings from the empathise phase and translate them into user/stakeholder insights. These user insights are analysed to identify various patterns (behavioural, contextual, etc.) and to plot opportunity hotspots from which solution directions can be derived.
Based on your understanding about the users/user segments and their contexts, you can now refine the initial problem hypothesis by reframing it into an actionable statement known as ‘Design Challenge’.

The design challenge statement is a unique design vision that is framed from the perspective of a specific user/user segment. It clearly defines the specific problem of the target user/user segment that you will be addressing in the project. It will guide the entire project team from here on out, by providing a specific goal to focus on and by firmly placing the user/user segment at the center of the design process. Hence, a good design challenge statement will always be human-centric, broad enough to encourage creativity and yet specific enough to provide guidance and direction.

Ideate

Idea generation

The goal of idea generation is to explore a wide solution space. With a clear design challenge developed, you’ll now aim to come up with as many ideas and potential solutions as possible. The ideation phase gets you thinking outside the box and exploring new angles. By focusing on the quantity and diversity of ideas versus the quality, you’re more likely to free your mind and stumble upon innovative solutions. During ideation sessions you’ll use a range of different ideation techniques such as brainstorming, reverse thinking the worst possible idea.

Prioritise promising ideas

With a wide range and variety of ideas at hand, you’ll now aim to select the most promising ideas to be conceptualised / prototyped and tested. Prioritising ideas and concepts can be done against many criteria, but should involve the perspective of the customers/users derived from the research insights. Prioritising by factoring levels of desirability, feasibility, viability and impact an idea can have, is a good place to start with.

Prototype

Build your prototype

Having narrowed your ideas down to a select few, you’ll now turn these concepts into prototypes. Prototyping gets ideas out of your head and into the world that you can test with real users. This is crucial in maintaining a human-centred approach.

Depending on what you are testing, prototypes can take various forms – from paper models to interactive digital prototypes. When creating your prototype have a clear goal in mind, know exactly what you want your prototype to represent and therefore test. In early stages, keep prototypes inexpensive and low resolution to learn quickly and explore possibilities.

Prototypes are most successful when people (the design team, users, and others) can experience and interact with them. They’re a great way to start a conversation. What you learn from interactions with prototypes drives deeper empathy and shapes successful solutions.

User testing and evaluation

Testing is your chance to gather feedback, refine solutions, and continue to learn about your users. The test mode is an iterative mode in which you place low-resolution prototypes in the appropriate context of your user’s life. Prototype as if you know you’re right, but test as if you know you’re wrong.

The test phase lets you see if your prototype works well and where it needs improving. Based on user feedback, you can make changes and improvements before you spend time and money developing and implementing your solution. You’ll run user testing sessions where you observe users interacting with your prototype and gather feedback. With everything you learn in the testing phase, you make changes to your design or come up with a completely new idea.

Social Behavioral Change

Social behavioral change enhances Human-Centered Design (HCD) by adding insights on human behavior, social dynamics, and cultural factors. This helps designers understand how not only individuals but also groups are likely to interact with and respond to different solutions. By applying behavioral science principles, such as nudging, social norms, and cognitive biases, Design 2.0 can create interventions that effectively influence positive behavior change and improve adoption rates. However, Design 2.0 goes beyond focusing solely on the end-users by incorporating broader system perspectives and future-oriented thinking.

Circular Design

Design 2.0 incorporates circular economy principles to promote sustainability by designing out waste and pollution, keeping products and materials in use, and regenerating natural systems. This approach ensures that solutions contribute to a closed-loop system where resources are reused, repurposed, and recycled, minimizing environmental impact. By embedding circular economy principles, Design 2.0 fosters long-term sustainability and resource efficiency in all solutions.

Futures Thinking and Foresight

Futures thinking and foresight methodologies enable designers and organizations to anticipate and prepare for future trends, uncertainties, and disruptions. This forward-looking approach helps teams test assumptions, explore various future scenarios, and develop strategies that are resilient to change. In Design 2.0, futures thinking is used to identify long-term goals and create flexible roadmaps that can adapt to evolving conditions. By incorporating foresight into the design process, Design 2.0 ensures that solutions are not only relevant for today but also sustainable and effective in the future.

Inclusive Business Modeling

Business modeling is integral to Design 2.0, ensuring that solutions are not only innovative but also economically viable and sustainable. This methodology involves developing comprehensive business models that outline how a solution will create, deliver, and capture value. It includes identifying key resources, activities, partnerships, cost structures, and revenue streams. By incorporating business modeling, Design 2.0 ensures that innovative solutions can be effectively implemented and scaled, with clear strategies for financial sustainability and impact

Closed and Open Innovation Management

Innovation management within organisations: Innovation management in Design 2.0 focuses on fostering a culture of continuous improvement and creativity within organizations. It involves systematically exploring new ideas, managing innovation processes, and leveraging collective intelligence to solve complex problems. This methodology equips project teams with tools to identify opportunities, generate innovative solutions, and manage the implementation of these solutions effectively. By embedding innovation management into the design process, Design 2.0 ensures that organizations remain agile and responsive to changing circumstances and emerging challenges.

Open Innovation management across organisations
Where Closed Innovation Management is focussing on fostering an internal innovation culture, we see that an open and intentional mindset to collaborate with others crucial in order to succeed in creating impact at scale. Design 2.0 emphasizes collaboration and co-creation with a diverse range of stakeholders, as identified in the systemic design methodology, including communities/users, social entrepreneurs (change makers), enablers (NGOs), technology companies, thematic experts (academics and knowledge institutions), and policymakers. This multistakeholder co-innovation approach guides organisations how to engage stakeholders throughout the design process, from ideation to implementation. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of ownership and collective responsibility, and helps identify potential conflicts and synergies early on, facilitating more effective and coordinated actions.

Engaging various stakeholders to solve complex challenges systemically:

Our Design 2.0 approach recognises that lasting impact requires more than just great ideas. It requires connecting the right stakeholders around communities. As the wheel shows, designers, changemakers, scientists, technology experts, ecosystem enablers, and governments all play a role in creating targeted innovations, applied research, enabling environments, and citizen-centred policies. On their own, these actors can only go so far. But on an open innovation platform, they can be easily connected, collaborate in real time, and co-create solutions that are systemic, scalable, and rooted in community needs. This is why we developed the Innovators Team, in collaboration with GAIN, Accenture, KIT, Growth Africa, Corps Africa