Why designing great experiences is no longer enough — Design Responsibility Evolution
This article is a collection of thoughts related to the evolution of Design Responsibility. The article is meant to target both Designers and Companies, to reflect on the big shift of Design Responsibility that we have been experiencing in these years. This content was part of a lecture I had in Tokyo in January 2020.
What do Airbnb and Alexa have in common?
Both are considered successful examples of the modern economy. Airbnb is a successful example of the sharing economy, thats target travellers and homeowners.
Alexa is one of the pioneers of voice interaction, that allows us to interact with almost everything without even lifting a finger, just using our voice.
Anything else in common?
Yes, I’d say…
For Airbnb one of the controversial side effects is that “homes bought for the sole purpose of generating income have restricted local inventory and inflated real estate markets in major cities such as New York and San Francisco.” (Huffpost)
For Alexa, one of the controversial side effects is about education: the risk — mainly for children — to encourage the adoption of an “imperative command-oriented” form of communication, even among humans.
So, both of them are successful products, designed with the focus on the user needs, but apparently they have missed to consider the impact on society of their solution, over time.
The controversial aspects related to these two examples, reveal that
Design Responsibility goes beyond the design of amazing experiences that focus only on the present: designing with just the users in mind is not enough to guarantee a positive impact on society.
So, it’s time to change “lenses”.
I’m sure that both companies are working hard to fix those issues and creating long lasting products and services having more sensitiveness for some implications on human life.
Nevertheless, there is a need to prevent this issue and create solutions capable to dialogue fluently, over time, with human values.
Design Responsibility evolution: time to change “lenses”
The responsibility of Design has been changing dramatically over the last decades, as we can see from the evolution of the design discipline as well as the evolution of the challenges we are facing as society.
In the past, the Design focus was very much on the market to fulfil market expectations. Subsequently with Stanford and IDEO, the focus has shifted to the users to fulfil user expectations.
Nowadays, Design responsibility is wider as we should consider the impact on society of everything we design.
Design is a way to shape ways of being as we have seen in the examples of Airbnb and Alexa, everything we do has an impact on our society.
Even though the “lenses” we use to design a solution are mainly focussed on the user, there is an important perspective, always related to the users, that is frequently missed: the consequence of our solution over time. Since ever, this is the responsibility of each designer, regardless if you design a space, product, service or city, and it’s now the time to revamp this huge responsibility we can’t get rid off, regardless if you are a designer, CEO or stakeholder working in the public sector.
We interact everyday with GOOD or BAD Design and it hugely affects our quality of life and our ability to participate equally.
Design is the origin of the majority of nowadays problems but it could also be the remedy.
As human being we are facing incredibly challenging situations, connected to the environment, to the economic system and other factors, and the Design has a huge responsibility in having conducted this situation to such a critical point: some of the biggest mistakes we have made are direct consequences of bad design decisions we have taken so far.
For instance, if you think about of how we have been solving the transportation problem, since the beginning of the last Century you can easily recognize that any solution proposed to move people from “A” to “B” is not sustainable. Every time the solution designed was not future proof and was not considering the impact on society and the environment. Even one of the most popular solutions we are exploring today, such as e-vehicles, is just supposed to address the pollution issue for “today”, but is probably creating bigger problems for tomorrow if you look at the entire e-vehicle life-cycle and the scalability of the solution itself.
As we have seen in the initial examples, all technologies and solutions to some degree reflect, and reciprocally, affect human values.
So,
the design responsibility should change from human-centric to humanity-centric
and as consequence, we should change our perspective, to make sure that the effect of what we design can be experienced positively over time, not only by the final user in the present, but the entire society in the present and the future.
It means that the concept of “Experience” as such should be evolved, as it is not longer related to an isolated moment between end users and products or services.
From human to humanity and the new meaning of experience
When we think about the experience of a certain product/service/space, etc., we tend to consider what happens when we interact with the solution, in different moments. As consequence, we tend to define the experience as result of the relationship between the final users and the solution, during several moments of their journey.
What happens outside of this relationship and what happens to the other people, is not considered in the current concept of experience.
Is the human-centric lens stil valid to observe problems?
Is this still a sustainable design approach?
Is the “user” perspective enough to judge the “Quality of the Experience” of a certain solution?
Should we measure the success of a product only by using business KPI and CX metrics?
There are plenty of questions…
So, to shift from human-centred design to humanity-centred design we need to consider two more dimensions: time and participation.
Time, because if a company is planning a new service, or a Government is building a new area in the city, or a Designer a new product, being conscious of “time” is crucial.
Instead of being focussed on the current timeframe and just on the current user experience, we should be focussed on the entire life-cycle of our solution, from the beginning to the end, and the impact of this solution on the environment and society, so we should also be focussed on the consequence of the current experience.
The concept of experience should be reframed: from considering the best relationship between users and the solutions now, to also incorporating the evaluation of the impact of the solution on society, today and tomorrow.
This means that designing a great experience is no longer just the relationship between users and solutions in the present, but this relationship should be projected also for the future, considering the impact of your solution over time.
The experience is no longer frozen in time, because my great experience today could become a bad experience for someone else tomorrow. So, it is safe to say that we should reframe the concept of “experience” considering the effects of experience over time.
Good design should be measured by the capability to enable us to survive on this planet.
Participation, as with design decisions, every day you can include or exclude people.
The business landscape is evolving quickly and new markets are about to have access to new services. This means, having the possibility to dialogue fluently with the diversity of a wider audience that can be reached if and only if you are capable to enable everyone to participate.
So, Inclusion is the key element to reduce frictions such as physical-cognitive, cultural and economical, and is the only way to enable the majority of people to interact with your solutions.
If you are a Company, this is a great opportunity to enlarge your customer base, reduce costs and legal actions. If you are a Designer and your ambition is to have a huge impact on people’s life, Inclusion is not optional. If you are a Government institution, to let people participate equally on your initiatives is a must.
So, having the capability to dialogue fluently with the diversity of our humanity is a way to enable a major number of people to interact with your solution.
By adding time and participation as additional lenses to our perspective, we are in the position to find solutions that are good for both, current users and for the humanity, not only for today but also for the future.
As a consequence,
the meaning of experience transcends the relationship between the user and the solution and becomes more related to the impact of the solution on humanity, over time and its capability to enable people to interact with the designed solution.
ROI of a humanity-centric design
The advantages to adopt a value-sensitive design approach, focussed on humanity and not only on the single user, has several advantages also from business perspective:
- creating long lasting solutions;
- decreasing reworks and saving money;
- reducing legal actions;
- positioning the brand in a more ethic space (even if your business is not necessary related to this area);
- creating value driven companies and as consequence having an improvement of the company culture and a better retention strategy for employees.
Conclusions
The user-centric design approach does not guarantee a good design, because a vital dimension like the impact of your solution on society over time, is missing.
Design should answer questions rather than creating more questions and it only works when it really seeks to achieve something for humanity.
We need to move quickly from Human to Humanity-Centric Design — or value-sensitive-design, reshaping the concept of experience by bringing other two dimensions around the table, Time and Participation:
- Time — considering the impact of your solution over time, not only today (i.e. transportation issue mentioned above);
- Participation — enabling the majority of people to interact with your solution by utilising inclusion to dialogue fluently with the diversity of humanity.
New metrics are needed to evaluate the success of a solution, as CX and business KPI are not enough to guarantee good and successful design. The concept of experience itself should be reshaped, considering not only the experience of the user, but also the impact on the society over time.
All great! And now? So what? How to make it happen? We have to move quickly from nice and shared claims to actionable tools to put everything we just said into practice. I’ve been developing tools and experimenting them on business cases, and I’d like to share with you what I’ve done so far to get your feedback. This is what I’m going to share in the next article, so stay tuned!
