Human-Centered Design

A suite of services that puts parents and early childhood professionals at the center of solution design.

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Recognizing that early childhood organizations, parents, caregivers and teachers alike need the practical skills to work together to innovate and improve service offerings, we offer a suite of services for organizations who want to use human-centered design in the unique context of the early childhood field and to meet the evolving needs of children, families and practitioners.

The Early Learning Lab’s model, Human-Centered Design (HCD), involves parents and early childhood staff working and learning side-by-side and incorporates behavioral science, systems thinking, and regenerative innovation into traditional design thinking approaches. This comprehensive model addresses key pain points relevant to the context of early learning and care.

Our work bringing human-centered design tools & approaches to the early childhood field builds off a pilot program we launched in 2017, the Parent Innovation Institute. Today, we are working with partners in Philadelphia and across Head Start organizations to build upon their work to uplift parent and caregiver voice across early childhood systems.

We believe the first step in designing equitable solutions and services for families, caregivers and teachers starts with seeing them as co-designers and co-learners in the end-to-end design process.

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Human-Centered Design

Services

Design Together

Human-Centered Design + Design Together

Design Together includes our online course, Family Centered Design, and coaching services from the Lab’s design team for organizations and family members that want to learn how to use and apply HCD to deepen their partnership.

Multiple organizations can sign up together to form a learning cohort and gain a structure for making continued advancements in HCD in their community more broadly.

Organizations can take the course together to deepen their HCD capacity and get a shared framework for making impact in their communities.

Transform Together

Transform Together is a facilitated process that brings a diverse range of early childhood stakeholders together to use HCD to define a shared strategy and action plan for meaningful and lasting systemic change in a community.

Human-Centered Design + Transform Together

HCD Consulting

Participants at Early Learning Lab Human-Centered Design + training with PBS Socal

Our consulting service is a customized offering for organizations who want guidance or hands-on support to bring HCD to their work.

Case Studies:

Human-Centered Design

Case Studies & Reports

Learn more about how we create impact.