Authors:
Michele Visciòla
The world of design that puts humans first is at a crossroads. What is happening to user-centered design (UCD) and its twin, human-centered design (HCD)? The signals aren't looking great. Just this January, user experience veterans Jeff Sauro and Jim Lewis shared some troubling news. Their survey, conducted through the international User Experience Professionals Association, revealed the worst job market contraction they've ever tracked [1]. Looking specifically at the U.S., Jared Spool paints an equally concerning picture. The tax credits that once fueled the industry have dried up, as have those coveted high-level strategic positions [2].
Yet not everyone sees doom and gloom. Mark Vanderbeeken recently challenged us on LinkedIn [3] to consider a different perspective: Perhaps human-centered approaches aren't dying but rather transforming. While business narratives suggest these values matter less, he believes they're simply evolving into something new. This conversation about transformation isn't new. Back in 2021, as we were all still adjusting to pandemic life, Peter Merholz, mentioning his colleague Jesse James Garrett in a blog post in 2021 [4], wondered if we were "waking up from the dream of UX." He questioned whether our digital economy had abandoned the beautiful vision that once drove us—the idea that user experience design could bring humanity and community to the heart of technological innovation.
Insights
→ Human-centered design's role has been increasingly co-opted by industry models that prioritize engagement metrics over human agency.
→ Redefining HCD's mission beyond seamless interaction design to foster cognitive agency, ethical engagement, and long-term sustainability is necessary.
→ HCD can evolve toward a more holistic vision that aligns technological innovation with environmental limits, social well-being, and economic sustainability.
Whether we're witnessing a healthy evolution or concerning decline matters deeply right now. Just look at how our sustainability goals are struggling to gain traction. We know that environmental, cultural, and behavioral factors are all interconnected pieces of the same puzzle. If we ignore these connections, we risk letting political and economic interests—those blind to sustainable futures—determine our fate on this planet. What happens to HCD might just tell us something important about our future. Are we still designing for better humans, or have we lost our way?
My view is that we're standing at a critical crossroads where HCD and HCI professionals must honestly reexamine and help reconfigure the labor landscape for practitioners in both technical and social innovation disciplines. This reassessment and envisioning needs to be broad—spanning industries, geographies, and technological domains—and deep, going beneath surface-level job trends to understand fundamental shifts in how value is created and measured. By "broad," I mean that we need to look beyond traditional tech companies to healthcare, education, sustainability, and public sectors where human-centered approaches may be evolving at a different pace. By "deep," I envision examining not just employment numbers but questioning our foundational methodologies, tools, and even the ethical frameworks guiding our work.
The stakeholders in this conversation must expand beyond current practitioners and leaders of tech companies. We need to bring together educators shaping the next generation, business leaders who control resources, policymakers with regulatory influence, representatives from underserved communities whose voices are often missing, and, of course, everyday people whose lives our designs touch. Even AI developers and environmental scientists should join this dialogue, as their work increasingly intersects with human experience design. This heterogeneous landscape is at the center of HCD with its different levels of readiness to change, willingness to accept changes, and a variety of sensitivities to incentives to change.
HCD and HCI professionals must honestly reexamine and help reconfigure the labor landscape for practitioners in both technical and social innovation disciplines.
This reflection might require us to reconsider the very concept of "user centered." The term itself may have become insufficient for capturing the complex, multidimensional relationships that exist in contemporary sociotechnical systems. Rather than maintaining the designer-user dichotomy that implicitly positions people as reactive recipients of our innovations, we might need conceptual frameworks that acknowledge the distributed agency, interrelated responsibilities that characterize our increasingly networked reality, and conflictual interests that sometimes drive transformations and ecosystemic change. What paradigm might better serve the values that originally inspired the human-centered movement while addressing the unprecedented challenges of our time?
From Mission to Vision: The Unexamined Assumptions of HCD
For the past two decades, usability, HCD, UX research and design, and design thinking have significantly shaped the global transformation of human interactions with technology and labor. The most profound impact has been seen in the widespread adoption of digital narratives and technologies, which have redefined how people work, communicate, and engage with leisure. These shifts have resulted in increased productivity, enhanced accessibility, and broader opportunities for digital experiences. The disciplines of HCD, UX research and design, and design thinking emerged as tools to ensure that technological systems align with the cognitive, physical, and social characteristics of human users. The core mission of HCD professionals has been to make perceptual-motor, communications, and social processes—as supported by and through digital technologies—more intuitive and automated in digital interactions.
This mission has had a significant and far-reaching impact. The success of social platforms, digital applications, wearables, and complex digital systems owes much to the ease of use and accessibility that HCD practices have enabled. This very success, the elimination of barriers to interaction, however, is problematic for various reasons. Furthermore, I believe that it has been inappropriately "sold" as a broader vision and underlying presumed mission: the assumption that HCD is inherently improving the world.
This assumption, widely accepted without critique, has led generations of HCD professionals to believe that their work is inherently beneficial. This leap from mission to vision, however, has masked deeper risks. These risks have been exacerbated by a constant influx of individuals without foundational training or credentials into the industry, many of whom rely on poor-quality education or dubious short-term courses. By unquestioningly aligning with dominant industry narratives, HCD has, in many cases, not only failed to challenge exploitative business models but also inadvertently enabled them. Inherent good is not enough; true impact requires actively driving transformative, inclusive change that prioritizes people's well-being over industry conventions.
The Consequences of an Uncritical Approach
The conflation of the sometimes-unspoken mission and the stated vision, as well as the tactical constraints of the technology production environment, has created vulnerabilities that digital economy investors and corporations have exploited. This is not merely about the manipulative dark web or the spread of misinformation—it extends to broader structural issues. These include the following:
- Surveillance and data extraction: Many HCD practices have been leveraged to optimize user engagement, often at the cost of privacy and agency.
- Addiction and stickiness: Designs meant to facilitate seamless interaction have contributed to compulsive digital behaviors rather than fostering meaningful engagement.
- Automation and job destruction: The very success of HCD has contributed to the standardization of digital interfaces, reducing the need for skilled HCD professionals while simultaneously eliminating traditional jobs through increased automation.
It is notable that HCD professionals voiced big-picture concerns but were not heard. Industry production barreled ahead. And now, HCD, UX, and HCI professionals find themselves in a paradoxical situation: The professionals responsible for making digital experiences frictionless have been pushed to the margins. As automation platforms absorb best practices for interface and interaction design, HCD expertise is being commodified, leaving fewer roles available and reducing the discipline to a set of standard guidelines embedded within technological infrastructures.
Rethinking HCD's Role for Sustainable Innovation
To move forward, we must critically reassess the values and vision that guide HCD. Rather than simply making digital interactions effortless, HCD should evolve toward fostering agency, ethical engagement, and sustainable innovation. This shift requires a fundamental transformation of its mission, moving beyond usability, and quick and dirty UX and design thinking toward the following five pillars, which, I believe, could frame sustainable innovation.
Enhancing individual and collaborative agency by designing for cogent human interaction rather than passive consumption. For example, instead of passive content consumption, Wikipedia focuses on prosumers who actively contribute knowledge, edit articles, and engage in discussions, reinforcing both individual agency and collaborative intelligence. Consider also Fairbnb.coop, a cooperative platform that offers sustainable vacation rentals, such as B&Bs, apartments, and agritourism. What sets Fairbnb.coop apart is its commitment to community-powered tourism: 50 percent of the platform's commission from bookings is donated to local social projects in the visitor's destination. The platform emphasizes responsible tourism by collaborating with local communities and ensuring that hosts and guests benefit equally. It also supports initiatives such as combating food waste, promoting intercultural coexistence, and revitalizing neighborhoods. In the politics domain, Decidim is an open source platform designed for participatory democracy. It helps organizations and communities make collaborative decisions by providing tools for discussions, proposals, voting, and more. It is widely used by governments, associations, and other groups aiming to enhance transparency and citizen engagement. Similar platforms are under development to facilitate urban renewal and inform collaborative urban planning. Another valuable example is Hylo, a free and inclusive virtual coordination space launched by the Planetary Health Alliance Online Members Community, where members can easily connect, sustain collaborations, and share "who's doing what, where" in planetary health around the world. Hylo users can easily find other changemakers according to geography, skills, and interests. They can share announcements, discussions, events, requests, and offers, and start projects and groups to pursue action for planetary health.
Addressing cognitive automatisms through nudging, boosting, and de-biasing strategies that encourage critical thinking, rather than exploiting automatic behaviors. For example, Mozilla's Privacy Not Included initiative provides clear, accessible information on data privacy practices, nudging users to make informed choices rather than simply accepting default settings. Its buyer's guide is designed to help consumers make informed decisions about Internet-connected products. It evaluates the privacy and security of gadgets, apps, and smart home devices, highlighting potential risks and offering tips for safer shopping. The guide includes features like a "Creep-O-Meter" for user ratings and warning labels for products with significant privacy concerns. Google's Digital Wellbeing features include screen time reminders and grayscale mode to encourage mindful device use rather than unconscious scrolling. Its suite of tools is designed to help users manage their screen time and build healthier digital habits. Some of its key features include timers that set daily limits for app usage to avoid overindulgence and Focus Mode, which temporarily pauses distracting apps to help users concentrate on tasks. These kinds of features should become the de facto interaction standards by focusing on differential strategies to encourage all users to master their well-being. In Europe, renewable energy communities (RECs; https://masterpiece-horizon.eu/) are creating conditions to boost new members' energy literacy to become active prosumers and learn to manage energy saving and self-sufficiency. Additionally, the platforms for REC encourage users to learn more about their environment and how to shape policies, rules, and values of the service. Consider then the Heterodox Academy (https://heterodoxacademy.org/), previously known as the OpenMind Platform, a tool designed to reduce polarization by helping users reflect on cognitive biases and engage in constructive discourse. The platform advocates for reforms in policy and culture that uphold universities as institutions founded on principles of open inquiry, diverse perspectives, and productive debate, dedicated to truth seeking and generation of knowledge.
Correcting the unintended consequences of automation by ensuring that technology complements human skills rather than replaces them. Can we still change the direction of digital technologies? Who is dealing with "policies to reorient technology"? Despite the countless criticisms directed at the European digital industry's inability to keep up with innovation due to policies that regulate citizens' rights, I think the economic commitment made by the EU from 2021 through 2027 is remarkable. With 95.5 billion euros invested, it is the largest innovation and research program in the world (https://bit.ly/4jmEzps) that will continue after 2027 through a large variety of inclusive acceleration programs, which are still under discussion, to promote greater control and a local self-regulatory capacity on the use of automation and artificial intelligence in all industrial sectors. In the health and care domain, for example, most AI-based healthcare tools designed in Europe assist doctors rather than replace them, ensuring that human expertise remains central in decision making. Consider the approach followed by Sophia Genetics (https://www.sophiagenetics.com/). To serve doctors and patients, it developed AI tools that democratize data-driven medicine for genomic data analysis, and support precision medicine and cancer diagnostics.
Fostering sustainable change by designing systems that prioritize long-term well-being over short-term engagement metrics. This represents a fundamental shift away from conventional business logic that fixates on quarterly reporting cycles and the "hockey stick" growth model. Traditional business frameworks evaluate success through immediate metrics, such as user acquisition rates, engagement spikes, and quarterly revenue growth. This approach often sacrifices future sustainability for immediate results. The hockey stick model—where businesses accept flat or minimal growth before a dramatic upward curve—has become the gold standard for success, particularly in tech. A more sustainable approach would redefine core metrics around long-term value creation. A value-based "lifetime customer value" model can better capture the full economic impact of business decisions beyond immediate quarterly reports. On the contrary, developmental cultures of perpetual beta products have created an environment where only initiatives demonstrating hockey stick growth can receive continued investment, potentially abandoning solutions with steady but meaningful long-term potential. True sustainable change requires a combination of new approaches and metrics, such as extending evaluation time frames beyond quarterly cycles (e.g., implementing three-to-five-year assessment windows for strategic initiatives and creating milestone-based evaluation systems that reward steady progress rather than just rapid growth); developing metrics that capture holistic well-being (e.g., measuring customer improved domain literacy through knowledge assessment tools, quantifying positive environmental impact via carbon footprint reduction and resource conservation, and tracking meaningful employee participation in managerial decisions through decision influence scores and implementation rates of employee-driven initiatives); creating incentive structures that reward long-term thinking (e.g., designing compensation packages tied to sustainable outcomes, establishing recognition systems for savings strategies that build organizational resilience, and rewarding employees who help customers make informed decisions about complex products like insurance contracts); and building governance models that protect sustainable initiatives from short-term pressures (e.g., establishing independent oversight committees with sustainability mandates, implementing decision frameworks that require consideration of long-term impacts, and designing choice architecture that nudges stakeholders toward generous, community-minded options rather than merely convenient ones).
Rather than simply making digital interactions effortless, HCD should evolve toward fostering agency, ethical engagement, and sustainable innovation.
Expanding knowledge and skills by making technology an enabler of learning and self-improvement rather than a passive tool. This transformation requires intentional design and implementation that promotes active engagement rather than passive consumption. Consider Scratch from the MIT Media Lab (https://www.media.mit.edu/projects/scratch/overview/), which exemplifies this approach. As a visual programming language, Scratch empowers children to develop coding and problem-solving skills through creative exploration. Unlike traditional digital media that positions users as mere consumers, Scratch transforms them into creators, fostering computational thinking and digital literacy from an early age. In the AI domain, this principle can be extended by focusing on foundation models as building blocks while developing domain-specific small language models. These targeted models, particularly when open source, can address local and specialized skill and know-how needs that global models might overlook. By customizing technology to specific contexts educational institutions can develop AI tools aligned with local curricula and learning approaches; communities can preserve cultural knowledge through specialized language models; and organizations can create tools that address unique challenges in their domains. The goal is to progressively support sustainable and collaborative agency for positive, inclusive change. When communities have access to technologies that enable active learning and locally relevant solutions, they gain the tools to address their unique challenges while contributing to broader knowledge ecosystems.
Boosting Brain Capital and Personalization
I presented examples that document how sustainable behaviors in complex and fragile ecosystems could and should become the focus of HCD, combining proper vision and mission. By supporting the brain capital—the cognitive and social capacities that enable individuals and communities to thrive in a complex landscape—we will enable sustainable innovation. I have been working on developing a holistic narrative on sustainable innovation [5], building upon the invitation to reimagine the economy by promoting what the 33 authors of a fundamental paper call the "brain economy" and the establishment of so-called brain capital [6]. According to these researchers affiliated with 41 institutions of research excellence, "brain capital can be developed, strengthened, and empowered, as well as deteriorate or be impoverished depending on the stimulation and dynamics between the person and the social context."
In the digital economy, content personalization certainly constitutes added value compared to other forms of quality service delivery. From a HCD perspective, personalizing means organizing and offering service models that appropriately respond to the contextual and personal variables in which individuals finds themselves. This is achieved through the definition of reference models on which to base choice architectures, articulated with consideration for characterizing differences and heterogeneous readiness conditions. Personalization allows for the treatment and reduction of the undesired effects of systematic tendencies due to perceptual-motor automatisms and judgment. While it is neither realistic nor desirable to eliminate systematic tendencies (i.e., de-bias), it is possible to take them into account by adopting corrective methods for myopic behaviors and boosting strategies to foster better literacy, agency, and self-efficacy. The reference models for behaviors serve to establish the definition of personal objectives in every area. This perspective challenges the prevailing narrative that equates technological progress with a particular kind of business economic growth that benefits the few, forcing us to rethink what it means to "improve the world" in a postmodern, digitized era.
A Call for a New Vision
We are not starting from scratch. We can draw inspiration from foundational figures, such as Joseph Licklider, who, 65 years ago, envisioned human-digital machine symbiosis as a means to foster collaboration, coordination, and governance rather than mere efficiency [7]. His vision of technology as an enabler of human intelligence and collaboration remains relevant today, but it must be adapted to address the ethical, economic, and political challenges of the contemporary digital economy and all its derivatives, such as green economy, circular economy, and impact economy. As HCD professionals, we must reclaim our agency in shaping the future of digital innovation. HCD should evolve beyond making digital interactions frictionless and cultivate adaptiveness and behavioral readiness, empowering people with the cognitive tools and agency they need to navigate complex systems sustainably. This transformation requires a fundamental shift in how we measure success: not by ease of use or engagement metrics, but by our ability to foster brain capital that enables individuals and communities to develop sustainable behaviors in increasingly fragile ecosystems. This means challenging the dominant business models that exploit user behavior and advocating for design principles that cultivate rather than manipulate.
The urgency of this paradigm shift cannot be overstated. Every technological choice we make today establishes precedents that will shape human-technology relationships for generations to come. As designers and researchers, we bear a responsibility not just to our clients or employers but also to society, including those whose voices are often marginalized in technological discourse. This requires us to develop new frameworks for accountability that transcend market-driven metrics and instead privilege long-term societal resilience and equitable distribution of technological benefits.
We stand at a junction: Will HCD continue to serve the interests of platform autocracy and oligarchists, or will it redefine itself as a force for sustainable, ethical, and socially responsible innovation? The answer depends on our willingness to critically engage with our own assumptions and to shape a vision that aligns with the long-term well-being of individuals and society. We cannot allow the enormous potential of advanced technologies, such as AI, to be exploited for the benefit of a few opportunists and investors who disregard the consequences, and the direction humanity will take.
I invite readers to engage critically with the ideas presented in this article. What blind spots might exist in my analysis? How might the proposed reconceptualization of HCD be implemented across different cultural and economic contexts? What alternative frameworks might better address the challenges I've identified? By fostering open dialogue and diverse perspectives, I hope we can collectively refine and strengthen the vision for a human-centered digital future that truly serves humanity's most pressing needs while respecting planetary boundaries.
References
1. Sauro, J. and Lewis, J. How does the UX job market look for 2025? MeasuringU, Jan. 7, 2025; https://bit.ly/4jNryoJ
2. Spoon, J.M. Why is the UX job market such a mess right now? UX Collective, Jan. 16, 2025; https://bit.ly/3Y9IJII
3. Vanderbeeken, M. Is UX research too often the method of last resort? Experientia, Oct. 2, 2024; https://bit.ly/444k2kD
4. Merholz, P. Waking up from the dream of UX. Peter Merholz (blog), Feb. 3, 2021; https://bit.ly/4jvumXy
5. Visciola, M. Sustainable Innovation: Thinking as Behavioral Scientists, A cting as Designers. Springer, 2022.
6. Smith, E. et al. A brain capital grand strategy: Toward economic reimagination. Molecular Psychiatry 26 (2021), 3–22; https://bit.ly/3GiqgU1
7. Licklider, J.C.R. Man-Computer Symbiosis. IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics HFE-1, 1 (1960), 4–11.
Author
Michele Visciòla is president and founding partner of Experientia Global SA. His mission is to shape sustainable innovation by understanding the complexity of behavioral, social, cultural, economic, and technological determinants and drivers of people, places, and organizations. He aims to foster systemic change, encourage responsible leadership, and promote inclusive, participatory approaches that enhance resilience, equity, and long-term impact. [email protected]
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