Human-centeredness

Technological development is not autonomous, nor inevitable. A focus on human judgement and collective action should inform our design actions as a society, so that we are actively deciding how technology should change the world, rather that just assuming that it does.

The experience of manual engagement with our world, of making and fixing things, is vital to the idea of human agency and dignity, but is often denied by designed objects that seek to smooth the rough edges for us.

When work is rooted in a reality external to yourself, you are taught a kind of humility in order to reach a level of understanding that then empowers you to act. This can be an unselfish way to see the process of design.

A film editor’s role as “ombudsman for the audience” shares the practiced empathy that a designer should have for people who use their designs. At the same time, both the editor and the designer can’t follow their audiences blindly.

When errors occur in the use of a product, people shouldn’t blame themselves, but should instead put the fault on the design and the designer. The designer, in turn, should take this responsibility for error seriously.

User-centered design is meant to steer away from design driven by designer bias, market forces, and false idols of novelty and prestige. It prioritizes the relationship between user and designed system over everything else.

Users build the intentional relationships between objects through use, not the designer. Instead of planning for specific scenarios of use, designers should consider how an object is made available for appropriation and adaptation.

When designing technology for a community of practice, pay attention to how action is taken, not just what action is taken. The observability and understandability of action in context, its accountability, is a necessary part of how a result is achieved.

Field interviews with users should follow a kind of “master/apprentice” relationship model, with consideration of context, partnership, interpretation, and focus.

Conviviality is a term to describe individual freedom through creative intercourse with others and the environment. It is offered as a counter to a philosophy of industrial productivity.