Human-centered design is fantastic, designers all agree. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread and it will make the world a better place. At least, that’s what we designers like to think is the result of our work.

I came across this intriguing model by Ralf Beuker, called Design Strategy at a Glance, and am torn between delight at its interestingness and a creepy feeling that my goal as a designer is to improve the world as a side benefit to ensuring my employer makes money.

When I examine the model, and especially the language, people become target users and making the world a better place turns into reaching strategic objectives. This kind of language, the language of business, says we only care about the humans if doing so will boost profits. Now, I’m not saying this is the case, but it sounds that way. And sometimes I don’t like the way it sounds.

It is my hope that as management programs and managers themselves embrace design, it will be not merely a tool to exploit, but will instill a change in thinking, a philosophical and ethical stance that acknowledges the service element of design. By that I’m referring to design as “service on behalf of the other,” a point from Nelson and Stolterman’s The Design Way. Of course, the “other” could be an organization, which does consist of people. And keeping organizations going is a worthwhile endeavor, considering the people who rely on organizations for their well being. But the above model does not address this. Perhaps that’s just the reality of business and management speak.

But I’d like to think it’s possible to design the language of business to sound more human. Strengthening brand, executing strategy, and making things good for people through human-centered design all need to live harmoniously to receive mutual benefit. Designers should be conscious of the symbiotic relationship that exists with business and management, and be wary of being seen only as a tool for profit. It’s great that design becoming more strategic and designers are able to employ a more human-centered approach. But I wonder, to what end?

This weekend I was awarded most valuable player for Alameda Athletic, a soccer team I play for in the East Bay.

Yesterday I read about iLike providing a syndication platform to help artists connect with fans through custom iPhone Apps. It seems the commercials don’t lie. “There’s an app for that” is increasingly true. The iLike move reminded me of when web tools first emerged to help people create sites to promote themselves, their business, or whatever. Now it’s happening with iPhone apps.

Then I read a quote pulled from the Buckinster Fuller Challenge website: “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

Apple has done that with the app store, and others are following. On the mobile phone, the web browser is being replaced by a new model: apps powered by Internet data. If making apps become easier, and services like iLike facilitate the creation of apps by layman, like a website, every company, brand, and individual will soon have their own mobile app. As if reading my mind, Advertising Age had this article about brands that already have apps: Mobile Marketing: Is ‘App-vertising’ the Answer? Uniqlock, Adidas, Chanel, Audi, Dockers, Burger King seem to think the answer is yes.

But if everyone and brand has an app, like most websites, there will be some that we use often, and many that we don’t. And if apps on mobile phones become more like how we interact with websites, we’ll need tools to help us navigate and manage the system. I have seven full screens of iPhone apps, which make navigation and management a chore. What will happen with more? Sadly, it doesn not seem that Apple has addressed this for iPhone 3.0. I wonder if another soon to be unveiled app store, which promises 20,000 download possibilities, has considered the impact of the shift to apps.

But don’t let this discourage you from creating your own app and adding it to the system. A rush to app overload may speed up the design of new services to solve the problems created by the new model.

I saw a screening of the film Objectified, after which the director, Gary Hustwit, and two of the designers featured in the film, Bill Moggridge (IDEO) and Dan Formosa (Smart Design), did a little Q&A.

One audience member asked Moggridge to reflect on defining interaction design as a discipline. In his response, he said that it was necessary at the time to define it as a discipline because software was so new and no one knew how to design it. But now that it’s pervasive, interaction design as a discipline may no longer be necessary.

As someone with a masters degree in interaction design, this caught my attention. Though because I have a design job that is neither industrial design nor communication design, it seems that interaction design, or at least some form of design that deals with the less tangible, is needed. However, his statement speaks to the many communication and industrial designers who feel they have had the same focus on behavior that interaction designers, including myself, like to refer to as their domain.

With the interaction design community still struggling to define itself, this statement is worth some thought.

photo from ISIS

Last month, I presented at the Sex Tech, a conference that, to my surprise, had nothing to do with making sex better through technology. Instead, the conference brought together people involved in adolescent sexual health, sex education, HIV prevention, STD prevention, and sexual literacy. I was there with Carrie Chan to talk about our work in designing a mobile service to help HIV positive youth take their medication and stay healthy.

This was the first conference I had been to that was not design focused. Very few attendees knew much about design. But that didn’t stop them from trying to understand the people they hoped to impact and designing solutions in an attempt to make positive change. Are they not designing, I wondered. I was reminded of the many discussions I’ve had about enabling design capability in others, and the authors who assert that everyone designs or has the ability to design.

But something appeared to be missing. While we often say that design roams in fields of ambiguity, these guys seemed to be muddling around in a different darkness. Each effort at developing a solution, while based on much personal knowledge of the people for whom the solution was aimed and experience in developing past solutions, still seemed like a shot in the dark. Research data, while rich, provoking, and confirming, offered little way to move forward.

Overall, though commendable, I felt the efforts lacked the discipline and rigor that a design approach offers, and the quality that designers strive to ensure. What would happen if they had some designers on their team? More broadly, this question led me to wonder what if all important issues had designers involved? If as a people we were more skilled at design, more skilled at bringing meaningful changes into the world, what might that world be like? Is it naive to consider that design could have such great impact in the world, and that designers could facilitate this? Or we are just immature in our knowledge and use of design?

A hypothetical talk aside, the conference illustrated an opportunity for design in the issues surrounding youth and sexual health. What other issues are out there that design is not involved in where it could make a difference?