The principles of human-centered design apply even if you don't follow the process of human-centered design.
Because... what are the principles?
Well the first one is... uh, be "human-centered."
Focus upon the people that, whatever you're doing, it is intended for.
Whether you're doing a service, or a product, or organizational structure, or a new way
of stocking a warehouse, or putting things on shelves.
Whatever you're doing, always think of the people.
And all the people.
Not just the people, say, who are going to retrieve the items you put in, but the people
who have to put the items up there in the first place.
And if you're in the healthcare system, you have to think about: patients, and their families,
and the physicians, and the nurses, and also the medical personnel, and the technicians,
and for that matter, even the people who do the scheduling, who clean the place.
You have to think of it as a system and look at all of the components.
That's the second important thing.
Find the right problem.
Almost always when someone gives me a problem to solve, I refuse to solve it.
Because it's not the right problem, it's the symptom of the problem.
And I want to solve the fundamental basic problem.
Because if I can solve the basic problem, guess what?
The symptoms disappear.
But that's not always so easy, and can take a lot of time.
Even though I argue strongly you should always try to solve the fundamental root problem,
sometimes it's okay just to solve the symptoms.
Finally, you have to think of everything as a system.
Everything as interconnected.
So if you solve this tiny little piece, well that's kind of nice, but sometimes optimizing
each of the small pieces gives an inferior result.
Optimization of the local does not mean global optimization.
So, we should always be thinking of the big picture: what is the final result we care about?
And user experience isn't always the most important component.
Take a camera.
What's the camera about?
All those controls?
No.
The camera is just a tool to get the real user experience, which is the experience of enjoying...
the movie, the video, the picture.
It's the end result that matters.
So we should be focused upon making it easier for people to get to the end result.
We don't have to focus on the details of the tools.
Those have to be understandable and usable.
Remember, the important thing is the real goal of the people who use our products.