Should we move from Human to Interaction-Centered Design?
As the discipline of design has become more relevant for businesses over the last decade, human-centered design became jargon across different industries, more notably technology companies. By putting humans in the center of the design process, could we be objectifying humans to the point of losing touch to their own mutable needs?
Humans are social animals, and our behavior changes according to many variables. We are constantly interacting with others and the environment, and we are subject to hormones and health conditions. Whit this in mind, I noticed myself frequently using the term interaction-centered design in place of human-centered design, both when I was co-creating in small groups of creatives or pitching something to stakeholders. And most importantly, it helped me articulate with greater clarity my design decisions.
The benefits of human-centered design are undeniable. This approach requires companies to consider the final user as well as the designer in their decision making. Additionally, the human-centered design provides a clear framework the designer can use to plan and speak about design processes. Most importantly, it helps create products and services that solve real problems.
Despite these benefits, it’s not rare to see the human-centered design applied in limited ways. For example, understanding the user in an individualized and static fashion, as if their needs were a constant and didn’t vary depending on their social life, moods, recent events in their lives, basically everything he/she interacts. One person’s interests and behavior can change dramatically throughout a single day. So, why should we stick to the needs of a unique persona when designing a digital solution?
The Interaction-centered framework
The interaction-centered terminology surfaced while I was designing a solution for a multi-sided market company where I currently work (Lua.net), which, at its core, creates Saas to facilitate communication between three different market players (suppliers, independent sellers, and buyers). Instead of focusing on each persona individually, I proposed seeing them in pairs and concentrate on their trades. It was an excellent way to demonstrate how complex networks worked.
Looking at the users in pairs might be a natural progression from product design to systems design. Within the hyper-connected world in which we live, everything is a system. So, focusing on the connections between and among the parts seems more relevant than considering its parts in isolation. Even a toaster could eventually decide which bread you should have for breakfast and how to toast it based on your recent meal activity logs and comparisons with other users’ dietary habits
This paradigm shift for me as a designer made more sense as I found parallels in other domains, such as languages and medicine. Looking at things in an object-oriented way might be more common in western cultures, while eastern culture has a more systematic perspective. These differences are the central topic in these EBS’s documentaries that compare how western and eastern cultures see the world and communicate differently.
One could say that all these interactions I am advocating to be the focus on the design process are what defines the human-centered design. If that is the case, I assume the nomenclature limited my vision. Now, when I think of interaction-centered design, I always look at the users’ needs as part of a more significant system of exchange pathways. And it seems I had found a better way to avoid the trap of looking at the user as an independent entity, which encourages me to create more comprehensive designs solutions.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
