It is about time to become a Humanist Designer

(Illustration made by Francesca Valentini, aka yours truly)

Designers are no longer creating one-off products. They are creating unique and impactful journeys that elevate human experiences. Designers also have the innovative tools to unlock social dilemmas using their unique user-centered orientation and creative capabilities.

Many of us feel the need to expand the current user-centered Design to a new dimension. This article talks about why designing for humanity needs to become a true pillar that positions future design professionals.

Design for humanity

Design for humanity means helping to alleviate and prevent human suffering and global challenges through Design. It is the unique ability to move from your mind’s imagination to your intention in life in the physical world.

To design for humanity means to:

• apply human dimension lens to optimize, define and prioritize your design output in line with ethical objectives
• research and enhance skills to help mobilize your design choices’ empathy, knowledge, skills, and motivations towards a more honest approach.

Humanist Design and Lean UX

People have different ways of thinking, talking, interpreting, and comprehending things. They also have other ways to approach and use services and products.

While our design process should focus on what’s really important to serve the other — to help and assist those in need, it needs to consider understanding the differences in the way people think, talk, communicate, and deal with things.

Applying one of the core principles of Lean UX could help us understand what Humanist Design is really about: outcome over output. It is (or should be) more focused on the way people think, see, do, Design, and communicate than concentrating on how things and things’ pieces are designed. Can we be sure that a particular component will help users to achieve their goal when most of the time, we don’t understand what their purpose is in the first place?

Positivity in Design: expectations vs. reality

We need to re-educate and train the people we choose to work with or put our trust in to deliver. Why? In the job market, the best designers and professionals are just the ones providing the best solutions, not the ones that challenge (and do not join) the status quo. The perception: either it is them, or it is us, but whatever it is, it is the wrong trend.

What I mean is that it seems pretty tricky, as a professional working in the domain, to marry ethics while solving business challenges. Often, companies are still not aware of the impact they (could) have, or they are too immature to understand that being ethical is no longer a choice. It is a must. I have the sensation we (designers and companies alike) are using only a tiny percentage of the powerful tool Design Thinking. We’re applying it to minor everyday micro problems without touching the actual challenges we should face.

Starting to apply Ethical Design Principles

Ethical designers use their expertise and design thinking to design products and services to reflect social needs. If the desire is to create products and services that bring value to the community, then we should be starting from the following premises:

• We must honor and support human dignity
• We must design for people
• We must design with health and happiness in mind
• We must create products and services that enhance the welfare of the user and society.

Conclusion

Design for humanity means creating products and services that meet the needs of all of our customers. This includes designing for people who have disabilities, elderly people, children, or any other specific group that might need a product or service. This includes planning for a maybe less lucky, or just less young, future You.

Extra

Humanist Design examples and products:

• The Role of Eye Tracking Technology in Assessing Older Driver Safety: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32517336/
• MIT researchers develop inflatable mind-controlled prosthetic hand: https://www.dezeen.com/2021/08/25/mit-researchers-engineer-prosthetic-inflatable-hand-technology/

Get Involved:

• DESIGNxHUMANITY collective: https://www.designxhumanity.com/
• Design for Humanity podcast: https://soundcloud.com/designing-for-humanity (note: the podcast is not active anymore but the episodes are still relevant and interesting to listen to)
• Designers for Humanity Manifesto: https://designersforhumanity.com/2016/06/13/a-manifesto-for-designers-for-humanity/
• Web Accessibility Principles: https://webaim.org/resources/quickref/