Tag Archive for: human-aware

Hunome, at UBI Lab Network’s event on: “Let’s talk about basic income.”

Hunome had a stellar presence at UBI Lab Network’s event on “Let’s talk about basic income.”

Hunome, with its Chief Hunomers: Dominique Jaurola (CEO) and Mika Raulas (CCO), attended yesterday’s UBI Lab Network’s event in Helsinki, to present how to build knowledge and make sense around the session’s theme “Let’s talk about basic income”.

Hunome, UBI Lab Finland, Systems Change Finland, and Citizen Network brought together people from many walks of life, including ministers, politicians, researchers, network leads and members, activists, and citizens to discuss about Universal Basic Income (UBI) and how it might help secure wellbeing and transform society.

We heard (and documented them on Hunome) great perspectives from the speakers and the participants in the event, including Maria Ohisalo – Minister of the Environment and Climate Change and former Minister of the Interior, Maria Guzenina – member of the Finnish parliament and forme Minister of Health and Social Services, Sirpa Pietikäinen – MEP, Finnish Member of the European Parliament, Laura Tulikorpi – teacher, coach and council members of a wellbeing services county, Simo Raittila – coordinator of Visio think tank, researcher and journalist, Ville Pellinen – Managing Director of the center for mental well-being and cultural events called Lapinlahden Lähde, and Dominique Jaurola – futurists and CEO of Hunome.

To keep the sensemaking and discussion alive and evolving, we invite you to join the UBI SparkMap on Hunome – register here 👉 https://hunome.com . On the ‘UBI in Finland’ map you can see the multiple, multidimensional and multidisciplinary perspectives on UBI, bring your thoughts and knowledge there, learn from others, and build shared understanding together with the atomic community. You find the many perspectives and ways forward in one place there.

Hunome is a social network to make sense of the world. It enables you to connect the dots, solo and with others, between the different perspectives of not just UBI in society but also many other themes. On the Hunome platform you can. build multidimensional understanding and actionable decisions. Join a community with a purpose. Become a part of the solution by making the world a more perceptive place.

We will be hosting subsequent workshops on the UBI theme, the next one coming up on April 24th 2023, so stay tuned and follow us on this social network, to see what is happening on Hunome, UBI Lab Finland, Systems Change Finland, and Citizen Network.

5 things you should know about Hunome

in Hunome/by Dominique Jaurola

We love feeding curiosity, whether it’s our own, or whether it’s yours. For those of you curious about Hunome (and if you’re not, you should be) here are 5 things that we believe in which make a difference to your experience.

1. Building understanding is free

Yes, that’s right. What you love about Hunome right now is, and always will be, free for our members. We believe that all of humanity should have the opportunity to contribute to our collective understanding of what it means to be human.

2. No ads, please

At the same time, we don’t believe that the social media advertising model works to help forward collective understanding (you can read more about that here) which is why we’re ad-free. Your data is your data. We only use it to deliver benefits back to you, not to sell on for advertising purposes outside of Hunome. That way you rest assured that whatever you create and find on Hunome translates directly to value for yourself and other members.

3. See ya, single-sign on!

We’re building a quality community of humanity explorers, the people who are eager to make sense of the richness in the world. We promise humanity explorers a platform where they can build a comprehensive understanding of their areas of focus, and make a difference to our overall perception of how the world really works.

As an initial step towards delivering the quality value promise to the community at Hunome, our registration process has a ‘Why Hunome?’ question to help build an environment where the insightfulness of our humanity explorers can shine!

Are you a humanity explorer? Take our quiz to find out.

4. You reap what you sow

Hunome allows you to build your understanding in a way that is as unique as you are. Whether expert opinion, or just a feeling, you can be creative or incredibly structured to discover the value of your thinking, your way.

A Spark is your starting point on Hunome. It can be a thought, an idea, an experience on a particular topic – anything that springs to mind. From there, you can connect and build understanding, add context, explore trains and systems of thoughts, and dive into insights. The journey is what you make of it, and like with most things in life, the more you put in, the more you get out.

5. Open new doors to exploration

We don’t want to tell you how to think. You do that incredibly well on your own. Because of this, you won’t find ‘best fit’ results or ‘related’ content, because what you want is all, well, relative. What we do give you is the opportunity to make your own discoveries, by giving you many different starting points to explore. No rabbit holes of the same here. Finding your own path to understanding is so much more rewarding, anyway.

So there you are, five things that we do a bit differently here at Hunome for good reason. We remove these pesky obstacles so that you can focus on building understanding to unlock the value in your thinking.

We hope you love it as much as we do. Sign up for Hunome today.

4 steps to understanding change and its impact

in Humanness/by Dominique Jaurola

Change can be unpredictable, but how you understand change and its impact doesn’t have to be.

Whether we proactively want to make changes to improve our personal lives, or change is being thrusted upon upon us in a professional context, change can have a huge impact on our well-being. Positive change can improve motivation, drive creativity and generally improve our sense of self, whereas negative change can have the opposite effect – increasing stress and anxiety.

On some level, all change requires a leap into the unknown, especially when you are not the instigator. But even if you are being proactive, a step away from the status quo can throw up a number of uncertainties and still be nerve-wracking. So how can you better understand change and its impact for better results and a smoother transition?

Making positive change, or mitigating the negative impact of change, requires an understanding of the full picture, or the system that the change is part of, and the various component parts that make up the whole.

Here are 4 steps to understand change and its impact.

1. Understand your current position

In order to truly understand change, the first step is to understand your starting point. I’ve previously covered understanding the problem in relation to better decision-making, and the same principle applies here.

Map out everything you know about where you are now: the status quo, the catalysts for change, the stakeholders involved, etc. For example, you may feel that a career change is on the horizon, but you’re unsure about what direction you want to go in. Do you want a new career because you want more financial stability, or perhaps a better work life balance to spend time with your children? By identifying all the parts that make up your current position, you build a working model to base further analysis on.

2. Identify the end goal

What is it that you want to achieve by making changes? And if the change hasn’t been instigated by you, what could be the best possible outcome? For example, this could be to better understand your customer behaviors. Identifying the end goal not only gives you something to work towards, it also gives you a better understanding of the current problem. What is it about your current system that prevents you from tracking customer behavior, for example?

At this point, you should also identify the variables that could have an impact on getting from your current position to the end goal. If you implement a new tech solution, will you have to retrain your employees? Does it integrate with your existing tech stack? With an idea of the variables, you can start building an understanding of the ‘moving parts’ of the change.

3. Design your path

How do you get from your current position to the end goal? Plan out the steps and the resources needed to get from your current position to the end goal. Do you need external help, for example? Now is the time to figure out where that may come from.

Consider how the variables identified impact the steps as you progress – chances are that once you start adjusting one variable, it’ll have a knock-on effect elsewhere. Make sure you’re aware of the possible consequences, especially on those whom the change affects.

One tip to making sure you’re on the right path is consulting with your stakeholders at this stage. Speaking to the people involved, allowing them to understand change and getting their feedback on your suggested path forward may allow you to consider it’s impact from another perspective.

For more information about how human-centered design helps build business resilience, check out Mika Raulas’ blog.

4. Implement the steps

You have your base line and where you want to go. You have all the steps in between. It’s now time to implement. As you progress with implementation, monitor the other components that you’ve already identified to see how they develop in line with the changes that you make.

You may find that it’s plain sailing, but as we all know, change is unpredictable and so keeping an eye out for unintended consequences means that you can react with speed and precision to mitigate any negative effects. Luckily, having mapped out the system that the change is part of, you can understand change in a way that enables you to assess its impact and adjust your approach for the best possible outcomes.

Here are just some perspectives about change. Come add your own to help build a multidimensional understanding of change, and other themes.

People at work listening to each other speak in a meeting

Why you should be leading with humanity

in Leadership/by Mika Raulas

In a data-driven economy, we have many indicators of performance that help us navigate our way through the business landscape. However, the numbers only tell one story, and leading with humanity can help you build a more robust path forward.

Leading with data vs leading with humanity

As a leader it can be easy to fall into the habit of focusing on the numbers – productivity, efficiency and the bottom line. After all, data is a black and white indicator of what’s working for your business, and what isn’t – especially when times are hard.

The numbers are readily available too – everything from revenue to life time value to employee sentiment is available at a click of a button. The problem is that while these numbers help leaders make decisions about their business, they miss one crucial element – the human factor, and how a clear insight on what is important to people can help you make your company stand out.

Yes, great leadership is about solid business acumen and making the right decisions for your company. But leaders should also be actively trying to understand the humans involved, customers, employees, communities, to add dimension to the numbers and the impact of their data-driven decisions.

Human-aware leadership for better decisions

By understanding the people involved, leaders can get a better understanding of how your company fits into their lives. For example, sales data may show you that wardrobe sales are up, however understanding the human shows that buying good quality furniture from sustainable wood is at the top of your customers’ mind. One indicator may lead you to ramp up production from cheaper, less sustainable sources, and then leave you wondering why your sales have suddenly dropped off, whereas the other could open up a market that you hadn’t previously considered.

Dominique Jaurola shares 3 tips to making better, human-centered decisions, both personally and professionally.

Human-aware leadership for better understanding

Leading with humanity also requires a degree of empathy. Understanding the problems of the people who you impact can help you to find solutions that are meaningful.

One story that really hits the nail on the head is that of Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments, who made headlines by giving everyone in his company a minimum wage of $70,000. After hearing first hand from employees who were struggling financially (and were somewhat disgruntled), then crunching the numbers, he realised that he could make a difference in their lives.

The really amazing thing here is that not only did this increase employee satisfaction amongst more junior employees who got a pay increase, but more senior people were happy to take pay cuts to work for Gravity because it was putting its people first.

Leading with humanity and better motivation

Here’s the thing: leading with humanity leads to better motivation. We can see this in the case of Gravity Payments and their customers. Communities are motivated to engage more with brands that show their humanity, customers are motivated to do business with companies that show their human side, and will in some cases, be happy to pay a premium to do so.

Humanness is a powerful motivator for those who your company touches, but as a leader, how can you go about fostering understanding? My advice to you is this: fuel your curiosity.

Go out of your way to understand different perspectives on every aspect of your business.
Consider every perspective, no matter how insignificant it may seem – some of the brightest gems come from the most unexpected places.
Don’t rely on the numbers alone – find ways to discover that much needed depth.

Good leaders are the ones who can steer their ship in the right direction. Great leaders are the ones who take the time to learn from everyone who is coming along for the journey.

For more information on how Hunome can help you lead with humanity, please get in touch, otherwise sign up for Hunome to join.

Here are just some perspectives about leading with humanity. Come add your own to help build a multidimensional understanding of human-centered leadership, and other themes.

How human-centered design can help companies survive the COVID-19 pandemic

in Humanness/by Mika Raulas

So here we are. Twelve months on from the global spread of Covid-19 and the end is still a distant, blurry dot on the horizon. The impact that the pandemic has had on society is undeniable, so how can human-centered design help companies get through the uncertainty that lies ahead?

Misconceptions around human-centered (human-aware) design

You may think that a bit of research to understand your stakeholder groups might be enough to give you a path forward through rocky plains. After all, if you run an employee focus group, they’ll tell you how you can motivate them to work from home, right?

Wrong. Dominique Jaurola makes a great case for why understanding humanness can help you make better decisions, but I want to look at how you can use human-centered design to build business resilience during and after the pandemic.

It’s astounding how the word ‘design’ conjures up lofty thoughts of a graphic or product designer doing amazing things. In the context of lean, agile and human-centered business, everything is designed with purpose that revolves around humans.

So let’s look at the four human-centered design principles:

Understand the core problem
Focus on the humans
Everything is a system
Iterate, prototype and test – fast

1. Understand the core problem

It’s easy to spot a problem, but when companies start considering where it stems from and what other areas of the business are impacted, they start to solve the fundamental, underlying issues, not just the symptoms. Researcher, professor and author Don Norman talks about fundamental problems and symptoms of problems, and you can read his take on the four human-centered design principles.

Back in March 2020, when countries began to lockdown, many companies were presented with the problem: can our employees work from home? A quick fix may have been to adopt some kind of video conferencing software, or to ensure that all employees had a work laptop.

While these solutions would have certainly fixed the immediate issue, a human-centered design approach may have addressed the problem like this: do our processes allow for business continuity? A more thorough investigation down this path, would’ve revealed that a new laptop wasn’t the quick solve that was needed. Support and guidance on how to manage one’s timetables, working positions and conditions, etc could have been addressed right away, not just when problems arose later down the line. And how about the customer experience?

2. Focus on the humans

The pandemic has demanded that businesses show their human sides to employees, customers, but other stakeholders also. But in order to show their own humanness, and to truly embrace human-centered design, companies must understand the needs of all the humans who are involved, while taking account of the history, culture, beliefs, and environment of the community.

Companies need to show that they genuinely understand and care about the people that are behind them. This is an idea that we heard time and time again, from companies at WebSummit last year.

While considering your stakeholders needs is crucial, so is bringing them along on the journey. Whether developing a product, finding a solution to a problem, or rolling out a new process, involving the people who are going to be impacted is a sure fire way to get their buy-in. Particularly at a time where companies are having to pivot quickly, following this human-centered design principle enables them to believe in what you are trying to achieve.

3. Everything is a system

Far too often, technology is introduced to solve a particular issue, without considering the implications on other interconnected factors within a system. Rather than focusing on isolated components, companies should consider the entire activity that is impacted.

For example, eagerness to install a chatbot programme to support customer service, may reduce the time a customer has to wait before they receive a response, but it may also increase the number of misdirected customer queries, leading to increased dissatisfaction. It doesn’t matter how good the customer service managers are, being sent off in the wrong direction will almost certainly result in a poor experience.

By considering the whole system, you can design holistically while considering what really matters to the people involved.

4. Iterate, prototype and test – fast

Implementation of changes requires patience to try, rethink and repeat until you find the right combination for what you want to achieve.

We often hear that agility is the key for business growth and innovation, and being flexible is important now, more than ever. The companies that are able to try something new, then go back to the drawing board and repeat, are the ones that have proven their ability to adapt to the instability that Covid-19 has presented.

Two notable examples are Zoom, which has managed to scale up and roll out new features at a phenomenal rate, and AirBnB, which has managed to pivot it’s entire approach to the vacation market, from holidays abroad to home stays.

And of course, those who consult with their stakeholders throughout the process, will find that people are forgiving when something doesn’t work if they can play a part in making it better.

See the problem, and see it well

Philosopher Karl Popper said ‘all life is problem solving’. He was very much on point with the attitude with which we can move forward in tough times. Right now, it may feel like companies are trying to build on shifting sands but taking a human-centered design approach helps to shift the perspective from what is right for the company to what is right for the humans who surround it.

Or as a Hunome member recently put it: ‘See the problem, see it well, from the direction of what matters in the world.’

To see how Hunome can help you apply human-centered (human-aware) design to your business, sign up for Hunome.

Woman considers notes left by other people

Why does humanness in decision-making matter?

in Humanness/by Dominique Jaurola

The concept of putting humans at the core of our decision-making process is nothing new. From Kellogg development of cereal with feedback from the patients in the late 19th Century, to the introduction of focus groups in the 1940s, we’ve always sought the views of the collective in order to make the right choice going forward. Even now, we scour the internet for other people’s experiences or knowledge so that we can figure out what is right for us.

Decision-making 1.0 – market research

Humanness in decision making isn’t as simple as just asking a person however. It’s about understanding the quality of being human – what really makes us tick.

The trouble with many of the qualitative research methods mentioned above is how they relate to actually making the right choices going forward. Many of these methods work in a very short and isolated manner. They often produce the wrong kind of input to longer-term thinking or to areas where things are changing rapidly, and almost never take into account the next new thing that will shift the game. In this world, different styles of inputs are necessary to make unbiased, future-oriented decisions.

Human bias enables us to understand the world around us and protects us from the unknown. Bias is necessary in a lot of ways and we all exercise many types of bias in our day-to-day lives. The problem lies when you have too many perspectives that have stemmed from the same biases. What you end up with is a type of echo-chamber where actual innovative decisions are replaced with something that is much more one-sided.

The next challenge we face is gathering and processing information. Granted, the internet has made collecting data much easier, however information is scattered and can lack context. This makes the task of gathering the data that is of actual relevance, then analyzing and extracting understanding a herculean effort.

But why is this?

Decision-making 2.0 – tech in decision-making

One reason is our reliance on similar, relevant and related, technology-found ideas of what something looks like. Another is that human ingenuity creates new directions for a whole field.

This means that searching for ‘related’ is not as easy as it sounds. For example, what some may call strategy, is known as business design in the agile and creative world. Those two worlds may never find each other, until the technologies make the connection.

There’s no doubt that AI makes those connections easier. We’re increasingly using AI to help us make choices in our personal life (think Netflix recommendations – even so, not always the best suggestions). AI is even being used to streamline processes in the workplace for better business decision-making.

However, while AI’s integration into work processes can result in more effective decision making, there’s no way that an algorithm can build upon information that doesn’t yet exist, reassess rules to take into account the exception, or understand the impact of an unexpected anomaly. That’s where our human ingenuity comes in.

Decision-making 3.0 – humanness in decision-making

Humans create discontinuities. When we consider what might be, we do not rely on past data alone. When we consider what is in our essence as individuals or systems, our humanness, we utilise our human ingenuity. Sylvain Duranton makes a compelling argument for this in his TedTalk back in September 2019.

The reality is that even in this modern age, understanding our shared humanness remains fundamental for better decision making, even with all the wonderful messiness that we bring into the process. At Hunome, we want to help the world make better choices. To see how we do this, sign up for Hunome and add your perspectives to the thought networks for multidimensional shared understanding.

Human-centricity is going to hit society in a huge way – WebSummit

in Hunome/by Mika Raulas

We attended a WebSummit like no other in early December, 2020. More than 100,000 attendees from all over the world joined the largest tech event in the world, all online. Despite the occasional patchy connection, the breadth and variety of talks gave plenty of food for thought (and action), and I was encouraged to see one theme in particular emerging across the board.

This idea of human-centricity in the business landscape.

Some of the biggest companies are speaking about human-centricity

“We at Ikea have a big agenda on ethics, sustainability and human-centricity. We need to make the whole societal system human-centric and put humanity the centre. This requires leaders to be curious and step up.” Barbara Martin Coppola, Chief Digital Officer, IKEA

“When Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014, he quickly reset our mission to ‘ empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.’ Every person. People-centric brands start with culture, and as we became people-centric, we moved from a know-it-all culture to learn-it-all culture” Mascha Driessen, Regional VP, Microsoft

“We need to reclaim humanity, what it is to be human. Concepts like sustainability are not enough as a goal for humanity, we need to actively do something to make things better, do good, not just fix what’s broken.” Ruth Andrade, Chief Sustainability Officer, Lush

These are just a few picks of the names that were talking about human-centricity and its impact not only on organizations, but individuals and society as a whole. This idea that we need to move beyond sustainability, to something that puts humanity at the heart of the business is exciting. It moves businesses from just knowing their customers, employees, and other stakeholders to really understanding them as human beings. It enables businesses to understand the real problem that human encounters and offer solutions that have a bigger humanity impact than just one that appeals to a customer in the sales funnel.

Why now for-human centricity?

As Sir Ridley Scott said at a talk about how digital technologies can help reach the UN’s sustainability goals: “Humankind and Earth require intervention. We’re in a crisis state and we need to pull this together to fix the problem. Science fiction is fiction, but we operate in reality. Digital with Purpose is a movement and in race to deliver against the Paris Agreement. Putting humankind at its core.”

Or as Dominique Jaurola, CEO at Hunome puts it:

WebSummit has shown us that human-centricity is important to the likes of IKEA, Microsoft, Lush and many more. We know it’s important to you. This is why we are building Hunome, a collective platform that is set to revolutionize the world’s understanding of humanity.

Launching in 2021, we will connect perspectives and evolve insights to create a better understanding of the world arounds us.

Sign up for Hunome to join the growing number of individuals and businesses who are getting excited about the potential that human-centricity can have to shaping how the world works and should work so that it is human-aware.

Humans pass each other while crossing the road

Protected: Understanding humanness – a brief history of Hunome

in For Investors/by Dominique Jaurola

Understanding humanness – a brief history of Hunome

in Hunome, Stories/by Dominique Jaurola

I grew up in dual cultures in a monolithic society. The experience of having to always explain my name, my background, my heritage, made me realize at a young age that people thought differently, had different expectations, ideals, values. Our humanness is fascinating.

It was when I was working at Nokia in the 1990s that this idea of human awareness started taking shape. As a product lead, I sat in meetings, hearing market research results that clashed with the reality of what people got excited about, pondering on the better way.

One situation in particular stands out. A research agency was presenting its results from a global study and had found ‘that US women wouldn’t want a mobile phone that wasn’t black’. These were the 90s and while many women didn’t want to be seen differently to their male counterparts, changeable covers for phones were just around the corner. We knew through validation, that the research was wrong.

Researching what people want in three years, at a time when the experience of owning a mobile phone as a status symbol was becoming obsolete, was proving to be pointless. The answers we were getting didn’t account for the upcoming shift in perceptions, and resulting behaviours.

The everyday human

Nokia set up Future Watch, an internal organization canvassing change and its impact on Nokia, and I was given the Human area to focus on as I was already working on it. My team and I travelled to 30+ countries around the world to understand how cultures, societal norms, economic situations, impacted the way in which people used mobile phones.

For example, in Chinese cities, the majority of our customers rode bikes, so how could we make mobile phones work there? In Colombia, a country where you didn’t stop at a red light or wear jewelry on the street, we landed upon a stealth concept – a way to communicate without the actual device being visible.

In the modern era of human-centered design, this may seem fundamental, but at the time we were only just starting to scratch the surface of how the unique aspects of humans can help develop a product.

When we talk about the human element in a work context, we more often than not are referring to an employee or a consumer. Yes, there are more modern methods of taking a human-centred approach, (IDEO’s fantastic design toolkit is making strides in this area), but on the whole, businesses still look at humans as buyers. The problem with this is that it leaves out the human in everyday life. What their life is like, outside of purchasing the product, what shifts are taking place for them, what brings them to your market.

While I was traveling, the way I saw the world began to shift and the idea for Hunome as a platform was born.

A world, apart

After Nokia, I co-founded an innovation community marketplace, in the early 2000, in the nascent age of social media. I observed (and participated) in this growing trend with great interest. But as the years passed, it became obvious that social media, and the internet as a whole, was becoming more and more polarized. The world began viewing things in black or in white, and not the many, many shades of grey in between. We are now realizing how problematic this is considering the complexity and nuance of understanding humans and human problems.

The other thing I began to notice was that information was harder to come by. It is all there on the internet but it’s scattered and siloed. Bringing that data together is time consuming (manual searching), or expensive (market research), or clumsy (AI aggregation), and the result is often simplistic, and doesn’t show the whole picture. It’s almost like we haven’t moved on from that market research presentation I sat in 25 years ago.

Understanding humanness

We’ve created a world where the need to understand our humanness is more relevant now than ever before. How can we develop as a society without measuring the impact we have on the people within it? Or canvas opinions, when we don’t accept the diversity of thought? How can we come up with an answer, when we don’t understand the question? Or aren’t even asking the right ones?

Hunome has been a long time in the making. But creating a place where multiple ideas and experiences can be brought together to build understanding, was never going to be a straightforward path. In order to give the world a better understanding of our humanness, we need to allow the collective building of knowledge and the evolution of perspectives.

We need our humanness at the heart.