Human Centered Design’s Fatal Flaw

The term sustainable is problematic. Since its widespread use in the early 2000s, it has been politicized, diluted, ridiculed, and is losing its potency to address the critical environmental issues it raises, namely the anticipation of a massive extinction event created by the mis-use of resources to fuel the global capitalist growth model. This event has been predicted to reach a tipping point within the next 50 years and is proving to be humanity’s biggest challenge to untangle. The survival of our species is directly related to the way we successfully engage with the earth’s biological systems. As designers of products and services in the world of global consumer culture and its environmental and social consequences, we must design for all life, and abandon the conventional “human-centered design” lens. Human centered design is fundamentally flawed. To put the human at the center of everything is as fallible as describing the earth as the center of the universe. We need a new approach to design. We need a “life-centered” design approach in order to be truly human-centered. We must consider the impacts of each design decision on the ecosystem, the economy, the social costs and benefits.

Mutualism is a term rooted in biology, sociology, and economic principles. In biology it is the way organisms of different species exist in cooperation with each other so that both species benefit. Socially, mutual organizations describe a flattened form of resource distribution. This doctrine has laid the groundwork for services such as Social Security, and Universal Basic Income. Economically, it is rooted in the Anarchist and socialist economic models, a decentralized system where individuals or collectives own their own means of production.

Circular Systems

The industrial manufacturing infrastructure has changed very little in the last 50 years, despite huge technological advances and innovation in other industries. Optimizing existing infrastructure only delays the inevitable depletion of material resources and the increased probability of a global ecological crisis. There is an innovation inertia created by the investment into the petrochemical energy grid. When a new product is needed, its manufacturing should promote new models of energy and its materials should exist in closed loops and be digestible instead of geological. How do biological networks operate in balance? How might we operate within these networks to maintain mutual abundance? Biomimetic growth and saturation mechanisms need to be implemented in our manufacturing processes.

There is no utopia

In a utopia, who takes out the garbage? To live in this world is to stand in the middle of contradiction, and it is impossible to escape it. Drop the idea of the perfect solution. Lean into the contradiction and let it drive the process. Expose awkwardness and failures as entities that question the status quo. Embrace the creative agency and the unpredictability of the individual. Design for diversity of expression. Use making as a way of thinking. Use objects and materials to create alternative metaphors to question dominant design models. Iteration is not a fishing expedition, it is the methodology of evolution.

Possible Future: Cities will become forests

This future rests on the cooperation of technology, biology, business, and government entities towards a common goal. Designers and biologists will partner with businesses and governments to develop infrastructures that leverage hybridized properties in modified species of algae, mycelium, insects, plants, animal and human biology to: clean the atmosphere, provide abundant food, generate materials, medical treatment, internet connectivity, transportation, etc. These processes will simultaneously improve the global ecosystem and the human condition. Technology and biology will merge seamlessly and humanity will have bountiful resources that can support its growing population while simultaneously benefiting the world’s biodiversity.

The events that will characterize the next 50 years will be: replacement of fossil fuels with renewables, decentralized power grids, bio-materials replacing plastics, closed manufacturing loops that embrace the cradle to cradle model, use of data processing to create increasingly efficient systems of communication infrastructure as proposed by Jeremy Rifkin, and William McDonough. The 50 years following will be characterized by the growth of genetic design and the introduction of biological “machines” that would evolve from the synthesis of electronics and neurology. Humans will be able to grow and repair their organs, and edit their genetics to enhance selected physical and/or mental capabilities. The final 50 years will be characterized by the full integration of other biological systems. Designers will have full mastery of genetic mechanisms, and bio-systems. Cities will become forests and humanity will have a net positive impact on the rest of life on earth.