Designing for People

My practice

Digital products change people's minds and behavior.

Designing for people requires an attention to all parts of that idea. From the usability and learnability of digital products, to the aspects of change, to human psychology and performance, that is the frame for my work as a digital designer.

Related practices are my core specialty Instructional Design and adjacent specialties Human Factors Engineering and digital product development. Beyond that, the presence of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) in digital products means that designers must enlarge the scope of professional concern. Given the current state of digital life, and the potentials for better or worse of AI, design must: (1) deliver on the promises of enhancing well-being, accelerating learning, and improving performance, (2) conceive alternatives to the models of addictive engagement and exploitation in consumer products, and (3) remediate the affects in society of digital products that create or disrupt social, political, and economic systems. Such an expansion of concern is the impetus for new ways of thinking about what we do. I think Human Data Interaction (HDI) best describes where the field of digital design can grow and where my practice will evolve in the next decade.

Design for change

We live in an individualist "I" culture that often ignores both the collective "We" and the contextual "It" where "it" is the school, the business, or the organization. We gain nothing as designers by playing along with selective blindness. Incentives and disincentives have powerful social and structural dimensions. Likewise, social and structural environments can augment, supplement, or impede what a person can do.

These insights have been systematically researched and described by VitalSmarts in their book Influencer. Authors describe the six levers of influence as they tell the stories of some of the most successful change efforts in recent history from around the world. They also advise designers to avoid relying on too few levers of influence, for example, relying on education alone for societal change. Or in the world of business, relying on training alone for organizational change. In this quick set of slides, I translate the six levers of influence into several points of view. What does influence look like to designers and managers? And what do they look like from the first person perspective?

Plan for change

When designing for change in organizations, it is a common strategic practice to bridge the gap between current and future state. Change management often starts with an inventory of processes and process designs. For the sake of change, however, it's important not to stop at an inventory. Far more understanding is required before organizations reliably have the capacity for change. In some circumstances, operational modeling and operational planning are the path to success. In the slides below, I situate planning in the context of the six levers of influence, as a social and structural ability.