Toward Humanity-Centered Design without Hubris

Abstract

Humanity-centered design is a concept of emerging interest in HCI, one motivated by the limitations of human-centered design. As discussed to date, humanity-centered design is compatible with but goes beyond human-centered design in that it considers entire ecosystems and populations over the long term and centers participatory design. Though the intentions of humanity-centered design are laudable, current articulations of humanity-centered design are incoherent in a number of ways, leading to questions of how exactly it can or should be implemented. In this article, I delineate four ways in which humanity-centered design is incoherent, which can be boiled down to a tendency toward hubris, and propose a more fruitful way forward, a humble approach to humanity-centered design. Rather than a contradiction in terms, "humility" here refers to an organic, piecemeal, patterns-based approach to design that will be good for our being on this earth.