Design for systems, not users

The unintended consequences of user-centered design

If there’s one thing the current moment has done, it is to peel back the façade of radical individualism and reveal the ways in which we are deeply dependent on other people and systems. The often invisible networks of infrastructure and labor that hold up our society have lately been thrown into brilliant relief:

• The healthcare system that determines how and whether you are treated for illness.
• The workers who bring you your groceries and deliver your packages.
• The global logistics infrastructure that determines whether you can buy that toilet paper, or those Clorox wipes.
• The political systems that determine how your community responds to threat, and whether that response keeps you safe.

In the past decades of relative prosperity, it has been easy to ignore or obfuscate this web of interconnectivity, and as a result we have built much of that seeming prosperity on the backs of fragile or exploitative systems. Those fissures, those inequalities, are now coming to light in an urgent way.

So what does this have to do with design?

As a designer, I try to look at both the explicit and implicit choices being made in designing an…