Human-Centered or Self-Centered? It's Time That Design Took a Broader Perspective
By George Eid, AREA 17
A journalist recently asked me what I thought the digital world might look like in 2050, capping it off with a shrewd caveat: ‘assuming we’re around that long!’ She hit the nail on the head. Imagining what our digital world will be in 2050 is less important than ensuring that we’ll be around to enjoy it.
Growing up in the 1980s, I’m no stranger to end-of-the-world narratives. Yet, unlike before, we’re consciously heading toward catastrophe. The antidote is clear: curb our consumption, shift our lifestyles, and demand more from our leaders. But changing course seems almost impossible.
There was a time in my gen-X adulthood when optimism reigned. The Berlin Wall fell, The Cold War ended, and social and environmental movements gained momentum. As the Internet emerged, the world’s challenges seemed solvable as technology promised a liberating dawn to the 21st century.
I was all in. I found possibilities on the Internet that were previously beyond my grasp. We could collaborate and innovate like never before to design systems to enable and amplify human potential. Nothing seemed out of reach, and the Internet would supercharge progress.
In these early days, I thought we were changing the world for good: saving trees, promoting equality, challenging power, et al. I couldn’t have imagined that Internet data would become one of the most significant pollutants in the world, Internet access would increase inequalities, and we’d help create corporations with more power than many individual nations.
I still believe in the Internet’s power to bring goodness to the world, but today, I recognize the unprecedented threats it poses to society, including risks to our security, privacy, freedom, access, and well-being. Are these threats inherent to the Internet, or do the humans at its helm create them?
If digital technology can revolutionize entire industries overnight, can’t we use that same force for broader societal issues? What if the people who brought a bookstore into our homes also devoted themselves to ensuring a positive impact on society? Can’t we design our way to the future we all want?
This is what human-centered design and its methods, such as ‘design thinking,’ aim to achieve. Pioneered by consultancies like IDEO and amplified by internet-scale organizations like Google, design thinking seeks to imagine a better future by solving problems through user insight, empathy, and collaboration.
Lately, I’ve been questioning whether these existing design methods are equipped to address the climate crisis, let alone the cultural, ethical, and social challenges we must overcome as we imagine a better world. I wonder if our design methods are shortsighted and have contributed to, or at least perpetuated, the situation humanity finds itself in.
Looking at the world we’ve designed for ourselves, we’ve surrounded ourselves with more perfect experiences that reduce friction, inspire delight, and actualize potential while climate change and social injustices accelerate. Maybe we should consider whether our practices are ‘human-centered’ or ‘self-centered’ design.
Human-centered design may have delivered on its promise of creating better user experiences, but it has yet to account for the negative impact of these experiences. I’ve come to believe that our obsession with users has blinded us to the greater system in which humans are only one component. While ostensibly virtuous, human-centered design focuses on immediate desires rather than long-term impact.
Some are plotting a different path.
The International Energy Agency has created a roadmap to Net Zero by 2050, and by most accounts, the future will be won or lost in the next decade. Working alongside them, we seek to answer the question: What can design do to help win this decade-long battle?
The path to a better future requires us to expand our perspective, offering our community new ways of thinking, seeing, and collaborating.
Our client, Neri Oxman, asserts that the world we’ve designed has created a rift between humanity and nature and that it’s our responsibility to heal it. Oxman proposes a shift towards Nature-Centered Design, where we co-create with the planet to shepherd in a new age of biological alchemy.
Meanwhile, Canon Design proposes Living-Centered Design to address the increasingly complex interdependencies across all life. Similar in name only, UX Designer Damien Lutz developed Life-Centred Design, a framework to design “products that re-nourish the planet and foster fair and diverse ways of being.”
Don Norman, the author of ‘Design of Everyday Things,’ introduces another approach in his new book, ‘Design for a Better World’. He posits a shift from human-centered to Humanity-Centered Design, looking beyond the user to include all living things.
Thinking beyond human-centered towards humanity-centered or nature-centered (or planet-centered or existence-centered; the term is less important than the principle).
Whatever the name, the hypothesis is the same: thinking beyond human-centricity opens our minds to think about the entire ecosystem within which we’re operating. It’s a mindset shift that propels organizations into behavioral change by recognizing the positive and negative impact of the value they create for shareholders.
By thinking at a societal level, diversity, equity, and inclusion become essential considerations rather than an afterthought. By thinking at a planetary level, sustainability is central. By thinking about humanity as a whole, the well-being of the community, rather than the individual, becomes a core consideration.
Of course, none of this is entirely new. In the book ‘Design for the Real World’ published back in 1971, Victor Papanek wrote, “No design stands mute. All design has social, ecological, and environmental consequences that need to be evaluated and discussed in a common forum.”
Technological advancements are good as long as we’re equally making social advancements. Or rather, we should be terrorized by the idea of living in a technologically advanced and socially regressive world. This reality may be preferable for a few geese, but by all means, not for the gander.
2050 will be what we design it to be. Thus, we need to ensure our design methods consider the long-term impact of our work on society and nature—not just users—so we can shape a more sustainable, equitable, and secure future that takes us safely to 2050 and beyond.
George Eid, AREA 17