Summary: Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered by Donald A. Norman

• Embark on a journey with Donald A. Norman’s “Design for a Better World” to understand how human behavior shapes our future and the planet’s sustainability.
• Uncover the transformative power of design thinking in creating a sustainable and humanity-centered world—continue reading to see how you can contribute to positive change.

Recommendation

Humanity is in need of a design shift, as it faces “wicked problems” such as climate change, says designer Donald A. Norman. The design of your everyday world is failing you and society as a whole, perpetuating unsustainable patterns that serve the needs of the powerful and wealthy at the expense of the most vulnerable and those living in poverty. Leveraging systems thinking and calling for a new “humanity-centered design” ethos, Norman will inspire you to reclaim your agency by taking control of the design choices you face each day.

Take-Aways

• If you want to “save the world,” make better design choices.
• Building a more sustainable, inclusive world requires human behavioral change.
• Embrace the five principles of “humanity-centered design,” serving entire ecosystems.
• Change human behavior by connecting data to meaningful narratives.
• Choose metrics that are relevant to everyone – not just the wealthy.
• Metrics such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fail to capture the complexity of human life.
• Leverage circular design principles, taking inspiration from natural systems.
• Change is difficult, but not impossible – humanity must collectively mobilize to solve “wicked problems.”

Summary

If you want to “save the world,” make better design choices.

Humans have designed nearly every aspect of the world today, from the trees that grow – and don’t grow – in your neighborhood to the norms silently dictating the polite way to eat. In fact, everything you view as part of your reality is artificial, in a sense, ranging from geographic borders to money itself. Yet, few people view the constructs governing their lives as human-designed, viewing them instead as “natural,” as they’ve been in place for so long. This needs to change, because many of humanity’s design choices are failing us, and it’s time to work to improve the ideas, laws, beliefs, customs and forms of government that shape our current reality. The complex systems shaping life on this planet are largely unsustainable, leaving humanity on the brink of depleting its natural resources, in a climate crisis and perpetuating socioeconomic disparities.

“The good news is that if human behavior, artificial beliefs, and customs got us into this situation, then we should be able to change beliefs and behavior and get ourselves and the other inhabitants of this planet out of it.”

Luckily, every human designs and has the power to enact change. Any time you make a deliberate choice to modify your behavior to execute an action more effectively or easily, you’re making a design decision. Everyone can participate in designing a better world and working to repair the destructive impacts of past design choices. Many of today’s design choices reflect Eurocentric values and power structures of the colonial past – it’s time to decolonize design, working to create more inclusive cultures. Professional designers have a particular responsibility to redefine what “good” design is, ensuring it is sustainable and responsive to the concerns of marginalized voices.

Building a more sustainable, inclusive world requires human behavioral change.

The world is on the cusp of the fifth Industrial Revolution, which ushers in an era of fully automated, highly intelligent systems, quantum computing power and other disruptive technological advancements, in areas such as blockchain and synthetic biology. However, while many people believe it’s possible to solve the current climate crisis with technology, perhaps even surrendering human control to it, they’re missing the point. You can’t find solutions to the climate crisis without addressing its underlying cause – human behavior. As environmentalist Paul Hawken explains: “The ultimate power to change the world does not reside in technologies. It relies on reverence, respect and compassion – for ourselves, all people, all life.”

“Design must change from being unintentionally destructive to being intentionally constructive: repairing what’s gone wrong, collaborating with marginalized voices and sustaining the Earth’s limited resources.”

Shifting human behavior requires developing conscious awareness of the invisible forces that inform your behavior, which are often unconscious and habitual. In the physical world, the term “affordance” – coined by psychologist J.J. Gibson – describes the actionable properties of objects and how they relate to actors (for example, a chair “has the affordance of support” for people of a certain size). Likewise, in society, artificial conventions impact human subjects, creating “societal affordances” that encourage certain actions and “anti-affordances” that discourage others. For example, a person might live in a culture that encourages them to drink soup with a spoon, as opposed to straight from the bowl. Develop your awareness of the cues, or “signifiers,” that create the context in which you interpret the relationships and constraints around you, reminding yourself that they’re arbitrary, and thus changeable.

Embrace the five principles of “humanity-centered design,” serving entire ecosystems.

While “human-centered design”, a term that came into use in the 1980s, focuses on the need to design for the individuals your product was intended for, “humanity-centered” design has a different emphasis. While there are merits in designing for ease of use, humanity-centered design takes things a step further by also accounting for the sociotechnical system users reside in. Humanity-centered designers understand the interrelatedness of all components of life on Earth; they serve humanity by embracing a holistic design ethos, considering the health of the planet as a whole when making design choices.

“Ideas and innovation can come from anywhere, anyone.”

Humanity-centered design centers around the following five principles:

1. Solve root issues – Don’t simply address symptoms of the problem. For example, the root cause of waste is the societal embrace of modernity’s flawed understanding of “progress,” which puts too much faith in the virtues of science and engineering, fueling a continuous cycle of manufacturing disposable consumer goods for capitalist markets.
2. Design for ecosystems – Replace anthropocentric design with design that serves entire living systems and their physical environments.
3. Consider interdependencies and long-term impacts – Many of the most destructive impacts of the artificial world on the ecosystem and society will only become visible after several years.
4. Test and refine designs – To better meet the needs of the humans and ecosystems you design for, embrace a process of continuous experimentation and improvement.
5. Prioritize community interests – Rather than design in a top-down manner, imposing your design preferences on communities designers should act as community facilitators, enablers and resources, working to help people address their needs. You can’t bypass gaining the cooperation and trust of those you’re designing for. It’s also essential that you solicit design ideas and input from communities you’re serving, remembering that everyone has the potential to be a good designer.

Change human behavior by connecting data to meaningful narratives.

Scientists must make a concerted effort to communicate their research – especially that pertaining to threats such as climate change. If you frame the problem of climate change as an imperative to stop the global average temperature from surpassing preindustrial levels by more than two degrees, few people will connect to your message. But if you focus instead on the need to prevent disasters triggered by a warming climate, such as monsoons and wildfires, you’ll be more likely to connect with people. Don’t just focus on “doom and gloom” warnings – also include positive messages, giving people a sense that they can enact meaningful change.

“How do designers transform complex technology into systems that people find so easy to use that they say it is simple? The secret is to make it meaningful.”

When communicating complex problems, simplify your message enough for people to understand, using everyday examples and language. This can entail working with professionals, such as journalists and documentarians, to better connect to a broad audience, and leveraging design features, such as dashboards, to graphically convey information. While numerical tables can seem cold and abstract, connecting them to compelling narratives can illuminate the links between these metrics and the everyday lives of human beings, ensuring people better understand the information and take action. The best narratives are formed by human experiences: They act as vehicles containing goals, constraints and challenges and can trigger casual event chains.

Choose metrics that are relevant to everyone – not just the wealthy.

Many of the metrics people use aren’t actually meaningful to the public, and even contain hidden biases. For example, cost-benefit analysis and risk management metrics use monetary estimates that favor expensive businesses, homes and buildings over inexpensive ones, and contain the hidden bias that it’s best to spend money protecting the wealthy. Protecting an expensive beachfront property should be just as inherently valuable as protecting the home of a low-income citizen.

“Many of the most important aspects of life cannot be readily measured, but this does not minimize their importance.”

Embracing “humanity-centered design” means carefully considering the impact of your design choices on equity, fairness, prejudice and bias, while considering the needs of all humans – as well as all living beings within ecosystems. Leverage non-traditional design metrics, as many of the traditional numerical methods leveraged by the physical sciences can’t adequately capture many of the complex factors that give one’s life a sense of meaning. Taking inspiration from the social sciences, designers should incorporate qualitative metrics people care about, relating to criteria such as security, wellness and happiness. The United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, which rank countries based on factors such as hunger and poverty levels, provide a useful starting point.

Metrics such as Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fail to capture the complexity of human life.

People use the following three indicators to measure the worth or values of a nation, which all fail to reflect the complexity of human life in some way:

1. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – GDP represents the economic value of the goods and services a country produces. While it captures monetary value, it fails to capture the full human experience behind the numbers, ignoring factors such as “quality of life.” Metrics such as “freedom from hunger” and “quality of governance” aren’t included in the GDP.
2. Human Development Index (HDI) – The HDI expands upon GDP, by also measuring humans’ potential and capabilities, not just economic growth. While HDI considers factors such as life expectancy and education, it doesn’t represent factors such as poverty and human security.
3. Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) – The GPI factors in environmental concerns, such as pollution levels, when measuring the economic value of a nation. However, like the previous two indicators, it’s limited by the fact that it reduces all metrics into a single monetary figure, and thus fails to provide meaningful insights into the complex interplay of different attributes.

Leverage circular design principles, taking inspiration from natural systems.

Those working in design can help prevent climate change, protect the diversity of life on Earth and improve the quality of human life by working to reduce waste. Educational institutions should educate designers about the realities of the world, ensuring they understand topics such as business models, technology and global politics. Designers must develop the capacity to understand and alter the supply chains fueling environmental destruction. They must work to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources and create products that are less energy intensive and generate less waste in the manufacturing stage.

“The 20th century was the age of waste: pervasive, ubiquitous and harmful waste – a plague that is still with us in the 21st century.”

Embrace a circular design ethos, viewing pollution and waste in the design process as design flaws, as opposed to inevitable by-products, aspiring to use more renewable biological raw materials. Ideally, people should be able to repair, upgrade and reuse products. When creating disposable products, designers should ensure they’re recyclable, while considering the possibilities of new experimental materials (for instance, creating plastic from seaweed). Regenerating natural systems should be your goal: Just as scavenger animals eat dead animals in nature, you should aspire to emulate nature by designing products that can easily re-enter the natural world.

Change is difficult, but not impossible – humanity must collectively mobilize to solve “wicked problems.”

History demonstrates that changing people’s behavior and beliefs is possible, but takes time. For example, despite the fact that women began campaigning for their right to vote in 1848, the United States didn’t grant them that right until 1920. People also tend to focus more on short-term results than the long-term consequences of their actions, making change difficult, due to the perceived short-term costs associated with doing things differently. Other barriers to change include a deficit of understanding, a reluctance to give up your habitual way of doing things, the human tendency to wait until disasters happen to respond (as opposed to taking preventative action) and individual selfishness. People aren’t typically the conscious rational decision-makers they believe themselves to be, and make decisions based on emotion and their subconscious, reflexive responses to situations. Yet the response to disasters, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, reveals that collective behavior change is possible when people actually mobilize toward a common goal.

“We, the people of Earth, have work to do: We must make our voices heard.”

To survive, people must both demand systemic change from leadership in industry and politics and take bottom-up action, working to enact meaningful change. New technologies have the potential to help humanity reduce its destructive impact on the planet (for example, cleaning the air), but to fully leverage their potential, technologists working in fields such as artificial intelligence must team up with social scientists, working to enable equity and eradicate bias. Solving complex sociotechnical problems requires an incremental, flexible, cross-disciplinary approach to design, in which different groups collaborate, sharing successes and failures, while continuously searching for constructive solutions to humanity’s shared challenges.

About the Author

Donald A. Norman is the author of numerous books about design, including The Design of Everyday Things; Emotional Design; Living with Complexity; and The Design of Future Things. He’s also the director of the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego. Business Week named him one of “the world’s most influential designers.”

Genres

Design, Nonfiction, Sustainability, Philosophy, Environmental Science, Human Behavior, Social Change, Economics, Ethics, Innovation

Review

“Design for a Better World: Meaningful, Sustainable, Humanity Centered” by Donald A. Norman is a thought-provoking exploration of how human behavior has led to our current global predicament, from collapsing social structures to the climate crisis. Norman, a renowned design thinker and author, argues that the root of these issues lies in the long-held erroneous belief that the earth’s resources are infinite. The book is structured around three major themes: meaning, sustainability, and humanity-centeredness.

Norman emphasizes the importance of quality of life over monetary rewards, advocating for a restructuring of how we live to better protect the environment and focus on all of humanity. He presents an eye-opening diagnosis of where we’ve gone wrong and offers a clear prescription for making things better. The book proposes a new way of thinking that recognizes our interconnectedness in a complex global system, where even simple behaviors have far-reaching impacts.

The author identifies economic metrics that contribute to the harmful effects of commerce and manufacturing and suggests a recalibration of what we consider important in life. Drawing from his experience as both a scientist and business executive, Norman provides insights on how to implement these changes while maintaining a thriving economy.