Experience models in a post-human-centered design practice.
As the current state of design practice evolves to consider post-human-centered approaches, I think a lot about how various experience models could evolve along with this shift. In this article, I intend to briefly explore how various experience models in a designer’s tool kit are poised to serve a post-human-centered design practice. The claims and arguments around post-human-centered design thinking suggest a focus centering humans only leads to solving human needs. Rather, to reach innovation, a broader perspective is required.
Jack Schulze, co-founder of Ottica and Berg, a design consultancy out of the UK said, “Some people (they are wrong) say design is about solving problems. Obviously, designers do solve problems, but then so do dentists. Design is about cultural invention.”
That being said, among the various types of experience models, personas may be the least likely to transcend human-centered design work. They are useful in finding the first sign of life in a design project, suggesting names, motivations, approaches to life, etc. Beyond the common critique of the easy staleness of personas, they are generally difficult to transpose to a larger audience. In a recent project, to reimagine design frameworks to include antiracist and anti-sexist thinking, I proposed an idea of thinking about personas also through the lens of access characteristics. In other words, reimagine a research participant with and without the access they have to objects, places, etc that seem staple within the context of a project. Then after the interview process, build personas based on insights for those with and without access.
This suggestion though is more potent in the context of mental models, which present the human perspective in more fluid states. Mental models generally do a good job of contextualizing use. So though they are contextualized from a user’s perspective there is a sharpened perspective of other elements within the context. So then in thinking through a lens like access characteristics; objects, places, etc could also be contextualized to appreciate a picture beyond the human in the story.
Shifting gears to briefly discuss value models. A value proposition canvas or statement is a great clarifying tool and usually helps to shape the specific direction a project goes. Again considering its future, could we increase the value proposition statement to identify other levers of value like how a product, service, or an experience would benefit a user but also enhance for example environmental sustainability for the places, objects, etc in the context explored.
Ecosystem maps are by design poised to give a picture of multiple elements within a context. For these maps, we will be challenged to ask the question “for whom?”. For whom are we designing to serve? Journey maps also present the same question, whose journey are we modeling/ prioritizing? On a broader scale, both ecosystem maps and journey maps have a rigor about that, as they force a clear point of view. Ecosystem maps seem to be less presumptuous when they stay descriptive and not prescriptive. The power of viewing an ecosystem is to understand the relationships within it, where the strongest relationships are etc. To get to a prescriptive level, there needs to be a hyper-focus only on that area of the map to justify how rethinking experiences there would create relevant change, but recognizing that there will be some tradeoffs in the larger system. That part, about recognizing tradeoffs, sometimes gets lost. In a post-human-centered design practice, acknowledging we might not know larger system changes would be pertinent to how we approach problems. In an article titled The Future is not a Solution, Laura Forlano, associate professor at the Illinois Tech Institute of Design and Director of Critical Futures Lab argues that “In the United States the future is synonymous with optimism, solutionism, and the promise of a “sublime technological future,”.
As we look to the future of the design practice, I am curious and look forward to the new models and variants of existing models that will emerge as the practice potentially moves towards a broader non-human focus.
