Human-centered design is a long-standing best practice for designers – put simply, putting the human you are designing for at the center of your design seems like the obvious way to go. The challenge with this approach is it can lead to designs that ignore deeply-rooted, systemic issues that impact people’s lives. The question we are therefore tasked with answering is how can we design products that are both human centered and rooted in systemic change. 

Last week we hosted a webinar, Human-Centered Design: How to Prioritize Equity and Inclusion in the Design of Financial Products, that featured Commonweath’s inclusive design principles and a lively panel discussion that addressed this question. In this webinar, Melissa Gopnik, Senior Vice President at Commonwealth, facilitated a discussion with Pam Mayer, Senior Vice President, TM Product Innovation Lead, PNC; Haydeé Moreno, COO, JUST Community; and Rendel Solomon, Founder, Solomon Financial Institute on innovations in human-centered product design for equity and inclusion. 

Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:

1. Intentionally design for system change not just individual behavior change. Shifting from a perspective of focusing on individual behavior change to a perspective of changing the financial services industry to better meet the needs, wants, and aspirations of people living on low and moderate incomes needs to be intentional. As Pam Mayer put it, “As product designers, we’re thinking on these two levels: How can I make my products more accessible to individuals? And how do the products I’m designing help further equity of the world?” True human-centered design has to include the context of that human’s experience, both historically and today. Rendel Solomon compared individual behaviors versus systemic design to a road under construction, saying “It feels to me that we keep creating detours that eventually put people back on that same terrible road.” To design for system change, we need a new “road” – with new products, distribution channels, and policies.
2. Design products that meet the needs, wants, and aspirations of people living on low and moderate incomes. As Haydeé Moreno mentioned, “Cultivating empathy means that you’re really trying to understand the person’s context and lived experience and that’s a difficult thing to do and requires continuous exposure.” Rendel Solomon also touched on the importance of considering and incorporating the cost to communities and individuals in order “to come to better decision making around how [new products or services] are both profitable, but beneficial to the individual,  community, and the company .”
3. Give people agency and control over their financial lives. Due to systemic inequities, people can feel like they, and their communities, have no real control over their financial  options. A product that gives people a sense of agency, and capability can empower them to continue to take control over their financial lives. Haydeé Moreno highlighted the importance of creating products that provide financial education on the terms of the user, noting, “The biggest opportunity is replacing our thinking around financial education with product and user experience.”

If you are interested in reading up on this research take a look at our report: A New Framework for Positive Financial Futures: Money, Mindsets & Social Networks. For examples of how to apply these principles, visit our Actionable Insights for Inclusive Product Design page.

Commonwealth’s work on Positive Financial Futures is made possible thanks to generous support from MetLife Foundation.