You are here… or they are here?
This is a topic that feels very pertinent to some of the terrible situations happening in the world right now and the shifting of geopolitics.
In Multiplied, I wrote about the need to be far more radical in how we place and keep users at the centre of all our work, and how otherwise:
“Given the positions of power we hold as delivery teams or public servants, we risk placing ourselves at the centre of how problems are solved, working from our own perspectives of what other people need–including any assumptions and biases we might have.”
Understood in this way, design is radical because it goes against something that’s increasingly hardwired into us by the way we use technology–that we are at the centre of the map. Everything revolves around us: our world view, interests, values, and, most of all, how everything else should best meet our needs in a given situation.
We see the world from where we stand in it
Technology gave us the Sat-Nav or the Google Maps experience that says “You are here.” As this 2012 BBC article explains, modern maps put everyone at the centre of the world.
I’m also reminded of how, historically, countries put themselves at the centre of world maps. The artefact and its perspective becomes defined by who commissioned or owned it. In this way, the models of the world we build and understand become politically biased as well. Just think about the recent U.S. renaming of the Gulf of Mexico by the Trump administration. This type of change is only possible if you own and influence the politics of the map (in this case Google).
With being the centre of our own worlds, the products we buy are increasingly more personal or tailored to us. We also live in our own increasingly joined-up service ecosystems. AI now promises us super-assistants to make us more productive, enhancing our personal experience. It’s all a promise of productivity–with us at the very centre.
To me, this feels increasingly like a world of hyper-individualism where personal interests, empowerment and abilities, are prioritised over community and collective well-being.
A challenge for the role of design
This is a big challenge for design because it’s radical to put someone else at the centre of the map – to design for people and places that might have previously have been on the edges of our consciousness or thinking.
For the public sector, this is the need for a more humble mindset – one which recognises other actors and contributors and the value of coproduction and community stakes. To achieve this, we have to be deliberate with how we place others at the centre of our work while recognising that each individual perspective also has it’s limitations.
This makes me think about the challenge of designing for individual needs when doing so may come at the expense of thinking more broadly about how best to meet the collective needs of users, communities, or even all of society. It definitely goes against the increasing digital strategies to personalise and optimise for individual levels of experience and outcomes.
These are bigger questions I think we can ask. Not just ensuring that the central perspective we’re working from isn’t our own, but shifting our thinking toward what might happen and how the world can be reconfigured when “They are here.”
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.