Welcome to Vol. 21 of ‘Behaviour Change Matters’.  In this edition, we talk about the SBC team’s work in the area of Human Centred Design (HCD) and Behavioural Insights that provide tools to focus on people and create solutions that can have immediate impact, even in complex situations. We will understand how HCD encourages us to start small, test our ideas and scale when the solution is feasible for the communities. We also analyse the role of civil society organisations in achieving our targets of Routine Immunization around the country. And a heartwarming human interest story from Jaipur tells us about more than a thousand members of excluded communities in Rajasthan who were engaged into COVID-19 awareness drives with generous support from USAID. ‘Meet the team’ features the ‘Badshah of Biryani’, Sadique Ahmed who adds a different flavour to SBC’s work with his years of experience in communications.
 
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UNICEF India SBC’s special initiative focuses on needs assessment through an iterative, evidence-based procedure of observation, ideation, prototyping and testing, going deeper into the solution space



Social and Behaviour Change (SBC) is a transformative strategy essential to the adoption of positive and protective practices for children related to immunization, nutrition, education, sanitation and protection from violence. SBC approaches work to make communities inclusive and equitable. To amplify gains from past community engagement endeavors, UNICEF India SBC has further invested in designing stronger and better interventions that take a user-centric approach in the new Country Programme (2023-2027). This is also aimed to be achieved by embedding a Human Centred Design (HCD) and Behavioural Sciences approach across programme priorities. The report talks about the initiatives and acceleration in learning process towards putting ourselves in the users’ shoes to arrive at solutions tailored to their needs. 
 

HCD, the need of the hour

Human-Centred Design (HCD) is a creative approach that puts the audience at the center of the problem definition and solution design process. It seeks to understand an audience’s lived experience through direct conversation, interviews, focus groups, and other avenues. The insights gathered are then used to co-create potential ideas, build and test prototypes, and take action. HCD sits at the intersection of empathy, research, and creativity. The HCD approach will provide a structured process for working alongside stakeholders from governments, civil society organizations and academic institutions towards identifying and designing solutions that directly involve the users they aim to serve, are desirable to communities and sustainable over time. It will also acquaint implementers with the community’s experiences of service delivery, revealing opportunities where previous solutions have failed. In addition, leveraging behavioural science will highlight how decisions and actions are influenced by factors outside our awareness – social norms, habits, environments, and heuristics.  

This mechanism to solving complex problems will work within resource and technological constraints and ensure the intervention design process is rooted in the real world. As a methodology, it will serve to enhance the impact of multi-sectoral efforts towards improved humanitarian and development outcomes for all, particularly the most marginalized. 

Designing solutions through HCD and BI

HCD is uniquely situated to arrive at solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable. The more time a team spends with the audiences with whom they are designing, the more likely they are to design a solution that is useful. Thus, to build a holistic understanding of embedding a Behavioural Insight (BI) driven HCD approach to humanitarian programming, UNICEF India SBC team office organised a multi-stakeholder “Human Centred Design Workshop” in Delhi NCR.  A total of 40 participants, including relevant stakeholders from national and state governments, civil society organisations, academic institutions and SBC staff joined the workshop with the objective of driving positive change and help people, communities and organisations thrive. 


Discovering new ideas at the HCD workshops

Human-Centred Design (HCD) is a process, one that requires a deep understanding of people. It starts with observations and then a rigorous attempt to use those observations to determine the true underlying issues and needs, a process that might be called “Problem Defining” (as opposed to problem solving). Then, these needs and issues are addressed through an iterative, evidence-based procedure of observation, ideation, prototyping, and testing, with each cycle of the iteration going deeper and deeper into the solution space. UNICEF India’s four day workshops are aimed at building capacity with innovative approaches while focusing on Routine Immunization in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.

Each workshop provides tools grounded in Human-Centred Design (HCD) and Behavioural Insights (BI) to understand why people do what they do. The tools examine root causes and tailored interventions that move beyond knowledge barriers alone — considering all stages/influences needed to create and sustain change. The HCD approach provides a structured process for working directly with communities to find new solutions, enable local ownership, and solve from systems perspectives. HCD helps implementers see challenges through the eyes of the community and identify opportunities where previous solutions have failed. The result is scaling curiosity and action while building capacities to solve problems and sustain solutions. From behavioural science we look at how decisions and actions are influenced by factors outside our awareness (habits, environments, social norms, heuristics). We cover insights, nudges and choice architectures — tools that give new lenses to find new solutions.


The HCD approach provides a structured process for working alongside stakeholders from governments, civil society organizations and academic institutions towards identifying and designing solutions that directly involve the users. ©UNICEF/India/2023

Learning with a new perspective

The four-day long workshop starts with the people focusing on persona models, journey mapping and Rapid Inquiry research methods. This helps understand people’s habits encompass the barriers and ways to collect solution oriented data. On Day 2, we move to the opportunities through research and synthesis. Day 3 formalizes insights and actionable prompts along with idea generation and prototyping where participants learn methodology to test and evaluate approaches to prove their efficacy. Day 4, the partial day helps look at the way forward by selecting interventions to continue exploring and discuss next steps.

During the training, participants simulate interviews with community members and map barriers to reaching different priority populations. What follows is a synthesis of the barriers that were discussed and the starting ideas that are generated. These examples demonstrate the tools of human-centred design: synthesis based on the needs of the community and ideas that address local challenges. Work produced within the training can be tested, iterated and implemented, or used as examples during cascade trainings.

Binish Nafees, Research and Advocacy Specialist, Centre for Social Equity and Inclusion (CSEI) believes that the HCD workshop is relevant in giving importance to why people do what they do, looking at the different factors that affect their behaviour before coming up with new interventions for the communities. “At Centre for Social Equity & Inclusion, we work extensively with communities and building their capacities in evidence generation. The session on rapid inquiry was particularly helpful in providing insights on research methods to collect solution-oriented data, particularly addressing emotion, motivation and influences in the community,” she said.
 
Benefits of HCD and BI based learning

Based on what is known about reaching zero dose communities and the conditions necessary for sustainability and success, HCD is deployed as a process that emphasizes on:

Zero Dose Populations: Uncovers the unknown, unsaid, or otherwise invisible barriers in zero dose and under-vaccinated communities.

Gender and Equity Barriers: Inclusive of multiple local perspectives to understand challenges to uptake and demand facing marginalized communities.

Integrated Thinking: Considers supply, demand and health systems strengthening, including MNACH and COVAX initiatives.

Tailored Solutions: Community-specific solutions are created by co-creating and co-designing local solutions with communities.

Human-Centred design (HCD) with Behavioural Insights (BI) has long played a central role in UNICEF’s work. The first of UNICEF’s innovation principles is ‘design with the user’ – making sure that a project takes a user-centric approach. HDC takes this a step further by using a set of tools to tailor solutions for integrating social and behaviour change within communities using repeatable, human-centred methods for creative problem solving and innovation.