Last week I had the opportunity to participate in the Humane Design workshop during the International Design Week. I thought that it would be interesting to try something new, that would also give me ideas for my next steps or ideas in general for my topic for the Design & Research class.
Humane Interaction Design’s main focus is on designing for humans in the real world, which aligns with my topic. The goal is to create interfaces that do not sell anything, that don’t try to change your mind, manipulate you, etc. Nowadays many businesses, and companies strive to create products that do not really serve people. Most of them are too capitalized and focus only on getting something out of it, rather than doing something for the user. This results in people losing trust in technology and everything modern.
Humane design focuses on designing with empathy and ethics. To my mind, this is necessary for my topic because, through the design process, it ensures that interfaces are not only usable but also respectful of the user’s diverse culture and background, which I think sometimes is overlooked. We could see and experience this when we were talking about the results of our experiments. Being more empathic helped us connect with people on a deeper level, learn about their life stories and understand their problems more.
During our workshop, I also learned that people actually strive for connecting with someone or something that would appreciate their culture, background, and their differences. No matter what or where they come from, people want to feel seen and understood. I think it would be challenging and interesting at the same time to design an interface that would answer those needs and feel humane during usage.
This workshop experience was really nice because it was completely different from what we are used to doing in everyday life. It reminded us about the values of connecting with people, experiencing emotions in real life, and about the importance of staying human.
