In contrast to Human-Centered Design (HCD), which is a design approach that focuses on the users' needs and context (you may refer to the ISO definition), I would like to discuss what I term Human-Redundant Design, which is a different approach to design systems where the users, and all their differences and variations, have little-to-no effect on the design of the system.
I don't believe this approach runs in complete opposite of HCD, and perhaps could be complementary. In scenarios where consistency is needed, or that users could vary widely, the right solution could be to employ a "one size fits all" approach that seeks to factor out individual differences as much as possible.
HRD already exists in certain systems which I shall use as examples. I hope my analysis of it could be better formalised through writing it down.
An Illustration - McDonald's
The "redundant" aspect implies that as far as the user is concerned, they are only there to "push buttons", and their unique traits do not affect processes. This is not to be read with pessimism. In certain tasks, the is little need for personalisation.
Take, for example, the process of making fast food. In my teenage years, I spent a few months working in McDonalds to earn a little pocket change. Their processes are quintissentially human-redundant; anyone from a child, a person with Down's syndrome, to an elderly person, could perform the tasks... and you may very well find such a combination of people working the same shift in the kitchen.
While the kitchen looks a little different now, this scene from The Founder (2016) captures the secret sauce that made McDonalds the definition of fast-food today. Even a proprietary tool is used to give a "precise shot of ketchup and mustard". Not much is left to the user's discretion, unless you ask for "no salt" on the fries.
Acknowledging User Error
HRD is complementary to the following saying: "There is no such thing as user error." Don Norman, in his works, addresses the concepts of errors in details, but by-and-large, I agree with this saying. Many things can be boiled down to design errors, and errors in design are where errors in usage are enabled.
Acknowledging that users can and will be forgetful, intoxicated, distracted, and so on, one approach to designing around "unsuitable" users is to decrease the factor of impact the user has on a system. If you have heard of fast food workers showing up high on marijuana or hungover, you should by now agree with me that fast food systems are good examples of human-redundant systems.
Universe of Users
HRD is just as important when your possible users are ill-defined. Because you still go through the hiring processes to be placed behind the grill at McDonald's, there is a degree of control to the possible users of the system. There are times where the user is just "anyone and anywhere". Take for example, an ATM. Placed on any given street, you could encounter a regular person (already ill-defined from the get-go), elderly, disabled, hearing/sight-impaired, a tourist, etc. How do you make sure everyone knows what to do?
The focus of design research in this use case should then be less on users and more on the process of interaction itself. There is also no distinction between an expert user and a new one. ATMs will walk you through each step, pausing each time and leaving no instruction implicit.
Non-human Agents
I foresee that processes in which humans are redundant could just as well be automated, which also implies that the "user" is irrelevant to the equation. As a matter of fact, in scenarios like factory work and even food preparation, certain tasks are things that machinery will only continue being better at. I do want to know, what is it that has stopped McDonald's from being fully automated?
As advancements in artificial intelligence continue to progress, automation of tasks is not the only area where innovations are made, but also re-designing systems to facilitate automation. That is to say, the domestication of technology[1].
Take, for example, the re-modeling of code documentation from the form of a human-readable manual, into a machine-scrapeable, tokenizable document for large-language models (LLMs) to parse, through which humans are expected to interface with[2].
What about us?
Automation is slowly being injected into processes worldwide. In a sense, we are designing ourselves out of the equation. When searching for a job, it is no longer recommended that you make a flashy or non-linear résumé; first contact with them are no longer made with human eyes, but with automated systems that will benefit from an intuitively-structured, semantically-labeled document.
We should seek to achieve a balance in design and be careful not to write us out completely. We are at the stage of technological domestication where a human touch is cherished, like with handwritten postcards instead of email, the barista asking you "the usual?" over ordering through an interface, or getting a free beer because you've been a regular at the bar. It's the little things that make us human.
"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
Footnotes
[1] I recall having read some articles where this topic is discussed in detail, but I don't have any sources right now. Perhaps some of the works cited here could be enlightening.[2] While I myself personally do not make use of generative AI or LLMs as much as the next person, I acknowledge the advancements made thus far, especially in the realm of programming.
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