Meet The Team:
Our team is made up of four NAIT students in the Bachelor of Technology – Applied Research program: Ginger, Tofu, Ching-Yuan, and Martin. We each bring different strengths and experiences, but we share one mission – to design meaningful solutions that support real people in real communities. Together, we worked through the full Human-Centered Design process to develop the North Star Kitchen prototype, combining research, creativity, lived experiences, and collaboration to create a project we are proud of.
Why Human–Centered Design Matters.
Human-centered design focuses on solving challenges by understanding real people first. Instead of guessing what they need, we learn directly from their experiences, emotions, and feedback. This makes solutions more meaningful because they are shaped with — not for — the people who will actually use them.
How Human-Centered Design Shapes North Star Kitchen
Listening to the Community
We learn directly from people to understand their needs, motivations, and real challenges.
Identifying Barriers
Teams build skills in empathy, communication, and awareness.
Co-Designing Solutions
We visualize highs and lows users experience within a system to identify opportunities for improvement.
Prototyping With Purpose
Different voices come together to co-design meaningful solutions.
Measuring What Matters
Ideas are tested and refined with users, not assumptions.
Continuous Learning
Solutions respect dignity, fairness, accessibility, and long-term wellbeing.
Tools for Human-Centered Design
Our tools help us understand real people’s lived experiences so we can create solutions that support dignity, comfort, and community.
Community Feedback Toolkit
- Gather stories and feedback from community members in a respectful and comfortable way
- Identify emotional highs and lows during their experience accessing food and services
- Track how needs change over time so our solutions stay relevant and supportive
Community Learning Hub
- Weekly reflections from community members about their food access experience
- Research and shared reading that helps us better understand dignity and care
- Interviews with local volunteers, cooks, and guests to inspire better service
“Listening to our community changed everything. Instead of deciding what people needed, we invited them to shape the kitchen with us. That’s how dignity, comfort, and belonging became the center of North Star Kitchen.”
Lead Service Designer, North Star Kitchen
Learn More About Human-Centered Design
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Watch
What is Human Centered Design?
How putting dignity and lived experience at the center of service design leads to better community support — a concept that inspired the redesign of North Star Kitchen.
Read
Design Thinking: Getting Started with Empathy — Interaction Design Foundation
A short introduction to how empathy fits into human-centered design and why it’s the first step in the design thinking process.
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