Beyond Human Centred Design: Designing for Centaurs Instead

Many of us were raised on human-centred design. Our practice is firmly rooted in methods such as personas and journey maps that help us get an understanding of who we’re designing for. HCD gave us a framework to tame complexity by putting humans at the centre of problems and designing around their needs. It has been great at streamlining users’ everyday activities, like navigating a city (Google Maps), socializing (Snapchat, Facebook), and shopping (Amazon). It got us far.

But the world has changed and it’s time for us to evolve beyond our roots.

This is a critical time for us to examine the human context. We have access to more data about ourselves and the world than ever before, we have mobile supercomputers at our fingertips, and AI has firmly taken root in the products and services we interact with daily. Computers are becoming more than devices that optimize our life, or make us more efficient. They’re starting to augment us, giving us entirely new capabilities. They’re starting to work with us, not just for us.

The trouble with human-centred design is that it’s too narrow a lens to examine a world like that. Believing in the potential of people is very different from making humans the only thing in the centre. Today, we need to design not just for humans, but for centaurs: human-machine hybrids built to do more than any person or computer could accomplish alone.

In this talk, I’ll explain how, in this next iteration of design, we don’t have to incorporate all the elements of HCD. I’ll share examples of centaur products and lay out the new rules of design to optimize for them. Participants will leave with a new perspective and a set of principles for going beyond HCD into the world of Centaur Design.

Transcript

2. Beyond Human Centred Design: Designing for Centaurs Instead
3. The problem with Human Centred Design What is Centaur Design? What are the possibilities for design?
4. N O W Beyond Human Centred Design
5. 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design?
6. 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design?
7. 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design?
8. Echo chambers
9. M I D D L E What is Centaur Design?
10. cen·taur de·sign /ˈsentôr/ /dəˈzīn/ A new practice that involves designing for different types of species: human-machine hybrids operating within complex, networked systems. Design’s next big paradigm will have to account for a wide variety of what it means to be a person.
11. 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design? • Rooted in historical narratives • Known for being chaotic and wild • Hybrid species, not half-breeds • Able to divine the future
12. Industrial Design Customer: Individuals Focus: Purpose: Aesthetic product systems physical artifacts mass production Organizations Value digital systems interaction digital products Human Centred Design Networks Augmentation computational systems symbiosis intelligent agents Centaur Design Inspired by John Maeda, Design in Tech Report, 2019
14. 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design? Industrial Design Human Centred Design Centaur Design
15. Overlaps
19. Liminal Spaces Liminal Thinking, Dave Gray
20. “within a few moments I found myself forgetting all about my physical design and realizing that everything I was really interested in was happening in my relationship with…the screen.” - Bill Moggridge
21. Industrial Design Human Centred Design Centaur Design possibility space
22. Industrial Design Human Centred Design Centaur Design possibility space
23. F U T U R E What are the possibilities for design?
24. celebrate differences. you do you, i’ll do me. P O S S I B I L I T Y ! 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design?
25. the cooperative living together in intimate association, or even close union, of two dissimilar organisms. - J.C.R Licklider, Man-Computer Symbiosis “ ”
26. “ ” the cooperative living together in intimate association, or even close union, of two dissimilar organisms. - J.C.R Licklider, Man-Computer Symbiosis
29. Kira Systems
30. [AI] can really help lawyers sift through these documents, and cut down on the sometimes deliberate verbosity of these documents, which can allow one party to mask core issues. - Zakir Mir, lawyer “ ”
31. Understand (and reveal) the seams, limitations and frictions. Image Credit: Reddit thread “You're an asshole, Roomba”
32. 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design? work on language, literacy and new meaning. P O S S I B I L I T Y !
33. Grace Hopper
34. Manipulating symbols was fine for mathematicians but it was no good for data processors…very few people are really symbol manipulators…So I decided data processors ought to be able to write their programs in English, and the computers would translate them into machine code. - Grace Hopper “ ”
36. Algorhyme I think that I shall never see A graph more lovely than a tree. A tree whose crucial property Is loop-free connectivity. A tree that must be sure to span So packets can reach every LAN. First, the root must be selected. By ID, it is elected. Least-cost paths from root are traced. In the tree, these paths are placed. A mesh is made by folks like me, Then bridges find a spanning tree. - Radia Perlman
38. New meaning. Brought to you by: Giphy!
39. embrace the mess of being in the world. P O S S I B I L I T Y ! 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design?
40. “ ” Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and artificial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed… - Donna Haraway
41. “ ” Unicorns are magic. They come down from The Magical Castle on another planet to grant wishes to children. I saw one at school named Pinky. I hope I see him again.
42. It is revolutionary for any trans person to choose to be seen and visible in a world that tells us we should not exist. - Laverne Cox “ ”
43. They say home is where your heart is. Mine is among the stars, across the universe. - Octavia Butler “ ”
44. Decenter humans and expand what it means to be a person.
45. turn things upside down. P O S S I B I L I T Y ! 1. Beyond Human Centred Design 2. What is Centaur Design? 3. What are the possibilities for design?
46. Anatomy of an AI System, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler
47. From: Dynamicland, Brett Victor
50. Heart over head.
51. Understand (and reveal) the seams, limitations and frictions. Explore new language, meaning and modes of communication. Decenter humans and expand what it means to be a person. Start anywhere but with people. Centaur Design
 Working Principles
52. Thank you!