Summary
When global travel shut down, Viamo had a dilemma: how would they meet their users? For almost a decade, Viamo has worked with communities around the globe building products for people with limited access to technology. They operate in over 40 countries and their staff comprises workers based in 19 different time zones. Learn how the Viamo team has become better designers, more equitable practitioners, and better positioned as a company by adopting a “Human Centered Design Approach”, skilling up their in-country teams, and working with a network of local design researchers.
Key Insights
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Human-centered design in international development requires locally situated designers to avoid extractive, flying fly design approaches.
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Pandemic-related travel restrictions accelerated Viamo's shift to decentralized teams building closer community relationships.
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Building research participant compensation frameworks helps ensure equitable and respectful engagement worldwide.
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Extractive research—treating users as data sources, lacking transparency, or hiding behind IP—damages trust and design quality.
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Local adaptation of research methods is essential; one-size-fits-all approaches often fail due to cultural and contextual differences.
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Sustained relationship-building with communities, not just transactional outreach during product deadlines, improves long-term outcomes.
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Creating research repositories and Wikis fosters continuity and resilience across teams, reducing knowledge loss.
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Human-centered design requires humility and openness, aiming to disprove assumptions over merely validating existing ideas.
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Collaborative design work across organizational silos builds resilience against turnover and promotes shared ownership.
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Lessons from international human-centered design can improve enterprise product design by prioritizing real user needs before ideation.
Notable Quotes
"Go home and find a way to do it where you’re from; don’t come here to Thailand."
"At its most literal level, flying fly design involves flying into a country, meeting users, extracting information, then flying home."
"Users should be partners in your work, not just sources of data."
"We call those briefcase NGOs — people who show up, collect opinions, promise things they can’t fulfill, then disappear."
"You have to be able to share openly to get users’ trust — set yourself up with NDAs and all your stuff sorted."
"Our design team trained about a hundred people in human-centered design principles with a passport system."
"You’re being paid to do this research, so you also need to compensate your research subjects fairly."
"Nothing is ever finished or final; everything is a living document and a work in progress."
"The difference between user experience focused and human centered is starting with user needs before designing."
"Building follow-up into your work plans is crucial — looking for opportunities to engage users at key decision moments."
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