Cognitive Ink’s Human Centred Design Principles

15 Jun

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the number of product, service and experience design principles that pervade the world.

Some are very specific to lower-level concerns, like principles of grouping, to make interfaces easier to comprehend. Others are more abstract, like how we should ‘sail towards Blue Oceans,’ to find products and services that are radically new business areas.

Over the years, we’ve settled on a set of principles that sit somewhere in the middle, focused on end-to-end experiences, but still grounded in the practical choices made when building better things and building things better.

Welcome to Cognitive Ink’s 10 Principles of Building Better Systems for 2025…

The Principles

#1: Start With People

There’s a lot of focus on the environment lately. This is sensible. As a species, we’ve taxed the natural world so much that we’re now harming the long-term survival of all life on earth.

However, there’s a good argument that humans remain the centre of both the problems and the solutions to our future. We build technology both to service human needs, and to address problems created by both human behaviour and previous rounds of technology.

So, future-facing things should be designed with people and their behaviours in mind. People will be the ones who empower a move to a cleaner, fairer and better future for all. Or, people will be the species most likely to hold up progress to a better future.

#2: Respect The User, And Everyone Else

There’s never been an elegant word for the people that use the things we make. ‘User’ brings less-than-ideal connotations; implying power-imbalances, harmful behaviour or more. But it remains true that there is usually someone who uses the things we make. Someone pokes the buttons, interacts with the interfaces, listens to the feedback of the agents, or decides based on algorithms.

It’s arrogant to assume that we can completely understand what it’s like to be someone, to live their life, to be in their context. But we can work harder to appreciate their position. We can involve them in the design process. We can build and test things with them, and ensure they are represented in the things we make.

However, beyond the user, also comes the vast web of stakeholders affected by the things we make. People that build a product, support it, pay for it, benefit from it, legislate it and more. They might not be direct users, but their needs matter.

This approach of learning with people must include the most basic of all human civilities; respect. Too many design efforts are laden with power-imbalances or contempt.

The world is full of forgotten things that failed to respect people’s needs.

Be better.

#3: Build Sustaining Value

Things built with sustaining value offer a bi-directional exchange. They benefit the people or organisation who offer the products or services, and they benefit the people using the selfsame experiences.

Not every business needs to be a charity, but a certain amount of stewardship must exist to ensure customers are enriched as business benefits.

Non-sustaining value creation is parasitic, vampiric and finite. It creates markets that exhaust the people within them. Predatory businesses are always be on the move for new opportunities to exploit. Then comes the short-term ‘sugar rush’ of growth, with an addicted user-base and excellent profit numbers.

But it all crashes in the end, with the business equivalent of diabetes.

#4: Do No Harm

The things we make shouldn’t exploit people, prey upon their biases, or leave them worse off.

Granted, it’s difficult to be sure we’re creating zero harm experiences. Any system, however noble, uses resources. Some people might miss out on opportunities. Our success might affect other organisations. There may even be unintended consequences.

However, it’s ethical and good business sense to focus on offering value and doing as little hard as possible.

We’re very used to assessing risks and opportunities. So, without slipping into some sort of quasi-mysticism, we should also assess and measure harm.

We need to do is understand the consequences of the things we make.

#5: Test and Release

The larger and more complex the system, the harder it is to know how it will affect people.

On one hand, the ‘move fast and break everything’ technocultural mantra appears to be successful at shipping innovative products and services. But it often results in a lot of broken things; people, markets, political processes and cultural contracts.

There’s another way.

Build prototypes…

…and test them.

Build more prototypes and test them again.

Build bigger prototypes, at a bigger scale…

…and test them again.

Build and test products, services and experiences before they scale to a point of no return. Learn as much as you can early.

That’s it.

It’s that simple.

#6: Use The Science

Science thinking, empirical data, observation and evaluation are the basis of both excellent research and design.

Anything else is just guesswork.

We’ve spent several thousand years developing excellent scientific methods for many domains. Dropping all of that learning, those methods and approaches in favour of some sort of quasi-emotional flurry of sticky-notes is insanity.

It isn’t a foolproof plan, but a mantra from many years ago, ‘measure something,’ applies here. Measuring the wrong thing can be misleading and even dangerous. But it’s probably better, on balance, than measuring nothing and scientific thinking is based on measurement.

So when in doubt, start measuring something.

Then form fair hypothesis, conduct controlled experiments with the things we make and use logical and empirical thinking to solve problems.

#7: Systems Thinking Always

It’s always about the system.

We can’t escape it.

Things, procedures, environments, and people don’t exist in isolation. They are always part of a larger system and smaller systems are usually part of larger systems. It extends upward (and downward) in a near-infinite regress. So much so it can be a little overwhelming.

That’s okay.

It’s in those strange intersections that things get interesting.

We don’t need to design for everything, for every part of the system (or system-of-systems). But we need to understand that the things we make are part of a network of relationships.

#8: Choices Matter

The last principle is perhaps the most important.

A technology’s design influences people and outcomes, for good or for ill. So we must make the best choices possible.

If we make things, we handle them.

I’ll grant the largest burden of choice rests with those who hold the most power in the dynamic; those leading, investing, and deciding on how things are made. Put another way, for leaders, it isn’t enough to plead ignorance, lack of capacity, reduced budget, business pressures or distal responsibility.

Yet, even if we’re a bit-part player in a vast organisational machine, making only small decisions, we share some responsibility for the thing being made.

We must make better things.

And that will come down to our choices.

Principles change, and that’s okay

We’ll probably change our minds at some point, offering new principles for a constantly changing set of circumstances, but not for a while.

And that’s okay.

This set of principles were chosen to have a certain longevity.

Drawing from Usability, Human Factors and Experience Design, they’re more philosophical observations than a set of research and design instructions. They aren’t about a specific technology, methodological fad or innovative buzz-word laden framework.

Which means you can use them to guide you to a stronger, clearer, and more ethical product or service.

Enjoy the journey.