fitting the Machine to the Man
What do you think of when you hear the term human-centered? It’s not the first time you’ve heard it. Out of ten LinkedIn profiles, it’s bound to pop up more than once—perhaps even alongside other tired words like empathy and detail-oriented. It paints a pretty picture, sure. Your design process pulled together on an axis, orbiting the shining mass of histories, experiences, and identities that is your userbase. You’re the center of my universe. Romantic. But in a field so saturated by claimed empathy, it’s easy to gloss over the footprints we’ve followed up until now, ignoring the groundwork of this kind of thinking.
The 1900s (specifically 1933 to 1965) brought foundational ideas about the role of users within the design process. In his book Designing for People, industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss writes “strong-willed men rejected tradition where it stood in the way of utility and comfort” (20), encapsulating the attitudes that he and his contemporaries carried into their work. You see this in the iterative nature of Dreyfuss’ Model telephone—first the 302 and later the Princess phone—as he and his team tinkered with the position of the numbers (inside the finger holes or outside?), the curve of the headset (can it be hands-free?), and other factors.
Anthropometry, or the measure of the human body and its capabilities, played a huge role in this as well. Both Ernst Neufert (an architect) and Niels Diffrient (an industrial designer) created anthropometric graphics to grasp the opportunities hidden within one’s physical relationship with a tool or object. Neufert’s work specifically caught my attention. He viewed human bodies as industrial components, cogs in a much bigger machine, and thus sought out ways to consolidate human tools to fit an “ideal human form.” I don’t quite agree with this approach—the word ideal grates on my nerves in 9 situations out 10—but there’s no denying that there’s value to be found in the idea that we should be designing with users, not just for them.
Of course, no one better epitomizes Dreyfuss’ words (nor the true meaning of the term human-centered) better than Catherine Beecher and Ray Eames. Beecher quite literally “rejected tradition” by designing a compact, dynamic kitchen space, threading science into women’s roles (then) as homemakers. Although she lacked the resources to actualize these plans to the fullest degree, she paved the way for women everywhere to iterate upon their spaces and identities. Similarly, Ray Eames and her husband Charles Eames experimented with an impressive range of media, innovating in spheres of art, design, architecture, and user research while also promoting usability, accessibility, and diversity of thought.
You’ll find figures like these at the center of being human-centered. Nowadays, being human-centered is our tradition, and I’m confident in saying that it’s much more helpful than its predecessors. Still, we shouldn’t get too absorbed in patting ourselves on the back, nor put our design process up on a pedestal and expect it to stay there. After all, we’re people, not planets; we don’t always stay on course.
