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Who to involve in co-designing technology
Conduct a stakeholder analysis. For maximum inclusiveness and accountability to affected people, look beyond the “usual” entities and individuals in a community and strive to include women, people with disabilities, adolescents, and others whose voices are less often heard.
Stakeholder mapping
Stakeholders informing the design and main participants in the process
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Stakeholders informing the design and main participants in the process
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Who to involve in co-designing technology
Successfully designing and deploying digital technology in humanitarian settings requires not only a diverse team that includes community members, but also partnerships and specialists with the necessary technical skills. While some roles may need to be filled externally, NGO and HCD process leaders would be smart to assign a local counterpart to each regional or global specialist in order to build skills and knowledge that “lives on” locally after the external expert goes home.
The following roles can be filled as locally as possible so that people with these specialties also have some contextual knowledge. These specialists would support local teams with their expertise and experience, helping to translate local needs and requirements into solutions while ensuring feasibility, interoperability among computer systems and software and compliance with organisational requirements. These roles should be added only if needed and engaged on a temporary basis.
humanitarian practitioners
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User experience and digital interaction designer
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus
Technical expert
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
Local partners
Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.
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Who to involve
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Who to involve
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The design process
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What is this guide for?
This guide aims to bring those two worlds together in a practical and effective process – and adds a third aspect: using human-centred design (HCD) techniques to partner with people caught in a crisis and co-create technology-based solutions to problems. Recognising people as the best experts on their own lives and using that knowledge to develop apps, bots and other digital tools should ensure that these are:
- more accessible to a range of people
- more relevant to their needs
- safer
- more trusted


Who is this guide for?
For readers from an HCD or technology background, this guide offers tips on how to adapt those principles to a humanitarian response.
This is the heading
1. The basics
(K) This section establishes a common basis for making informed decisions, reducing risks, and ensuring that technology does no harm.
Bring together the fundamental principles for designing, developing, and using digital technologies in humanitarian contexts in a responsible, ethical, and people-centered manner. Here you will find key guidance on responsible technology development, essential considerations for working with affected communities, ethical principles, and guidelines for ensuring clear and respectful informed consent.
2. Who to involve
(K) This section provides guidance on mapping key actors, understanding team roles and alliances, and deepening knowledge of affected communities.
Focuses on identifying the people and actors who should be involved in the co-design of humanitarian technologies. Its goal is to ensure that design decisions are based on real relationships, meaningful collaboration, and a contextual understanding of those who interact with the technology.
3. The design process
This section is not a complete or a conventional guide to Human-Centred Design; instead it summarises the phases and techniques of HCD and relates them to the context of humanitarian emergencies.
(CG + K) Humanitarians can refer to this for insights on Human-Centred Design and promotes active collaboration with communities and stakeholders, also presents the principles and mindset necessary to understand real and contextual needs, and shows examples that illustrate how these practices are applied in specific situations.
Digital technology has the potential to enhance humanitarian responses by improving service delivery and empowering people in crisis-affected communities. Yet the effectiveness of any technology depends on how well it aligns with the realities, needs, and concerns of the people it is meant to serve. Too often, digital tools are designed without considering the diverse needs and constraints of crisis-affected people, exacerbating the risk of exclusion. Exclusionary technology deepens vulnerabilities, and poorly designed solutions may create unintended harm, such as data security risks, surveillance concerns, or a lack of trust among users.
(K) The Basics section brings together the foundational considerations that should guide the responsible design, development, and use of digital technology in humanitarian action. Rather than offering prescriptive solutions, this section provides a shared starting point for reflection, helping teams examine how decisions about technology affect people, communities, and power dynamics throughout its lifecycle.
By engaging with these themes, users are invited to build a common understanding of responsibility, ethics, and consent, creating a solid basis for more informed, inclusive, and context-sensitive decision-making before moving into more specific approaches or tools.
core consideration antes de los core – This guide offers practical insights on these five fundamental aspects of human-centred design, which cut across all phases of technology development and use.



