“That won’t work. We’ll never solve that problem.” While I may have never said this aloud, this dominated my internal dialogue several years ago. I was critical, I was skeptical, and I wasn’t very hopeful.

I couldn’t let this feeling stick. I committed myself to this work for my mom, a social worker, who I remember coming home on many occasions telling me that she felt like she wasn’t having the impact on people to which she aspired. I committed myself to this work to make the sector better at problem solving, better at lifting communities up, and better at empowering people like my mom to have deeper impact through their work.

In search of more optimism, I packed up my life on the East Coast, and headed west to join IDEO.org, a non-profit design and innovation firm. I knew enough about design to make the leap—it is creative, generative, empathetic, and optimistic—but I was eager to really understand and get inspired by it.

Flash forward two plus years. I am the optimistic, we-can-solve-any-problem-you-throw-our-way guy that originally entered this field. Constraints? No, opportunities. Limited funding? A chance to be lean and scrappy. A 30-year-old problem that no one has made a dent in? An imperative to think differently and try something new.

The thing that flipped the switch for me was this new (to me) approach to problem solving that I found myself steeped in: human-centered design.

Broadly speaking, human-centered design is a process that leads one from framing a problem or opportunity—like how might we ensure communities have access to clean drinking water—through research, generating solutions, and testing and iterating those solutions. Here a few reasons why human-centered design keeps me inspired:

1. It’s rooted in people: At the core of human-centered design is a fundamental belief that solutions need to be deeply immersed in and inspired by people’s needs, interests, aspirations, and context. Putting people at the center of my work reminds me why I’m here every single day. It also keeps me asking myself and those around to do more.
2. It embraces generative thinking: Unlike other approaches, which might rely more heavily on asking and answering critical questions or highly focused questions, the human-centered design approach promotes bold, far-reaching thinking. Open-ended questions, like how might we increase adoption of clean cookstoves, gives one permission to think expansively and without any organizational, operational, or technological constraints.This type of generative thinking often sparks impractical ideas—the sort a more structured brainstorm would never permit—that are then refined so that they become relevant and even reasonable. For me, generative thinking is a freeing and uplifting exercise—I stop thinking about what’s not possible and begin imagining what is.
3. It encourages seeking out analogous inspirations: Looking in the same places leads to the same answers. A key part of human-centered design is to look in new places to draw inspiration for new solutions. To accomplish this, we break down a challenge into general terms (what are inspiring models to create loyalty to a product or service), and then look across other industries, organizations, and challenges that might serve to inform the challenge at hand. In my opinion, analogous inspiration makes innovation seem less daunting. Instead of starting from scratch (which can feel mighty daunting when you’re incredibly under-resourced), it helps me understand other examples of innovation in action to develop a more tangible vision for how they might be brought to a particular development challenge.
4. It’s iterative: Human-centered design is about putting a solution, of any level of fidelity, into the hands of people, getting feedback from them, identifying opportunities to improve the solution, and then rapidly repeating the cycle. This can happen during prototyping, piloting, or even full-scale programs. This rapid iteration leads to a feedback loop that forms a cycle of continuous improvement. For me, this approach to problem solving reframes failure as learning, and it tells us we can always improve, think smarter, and have more impact.

Today, I’m inspired by the opportunity to spread this approach throughout the social sector. I think it can unlock the dormant potential of individuals in need of more inspiration, organizations looking for new solutions, and institutions looking to disrupt the systems that perpetuate the status quo.