Human-centred-design is dead, long live human-centred design!

There’s growing criticism about Human-Centered Design (HCD) and its impact on major contemporary issues.

While HCD and Design Thinking are increasingly used in product and experience development, especially in big tech, the reality is that HCD has notable problems.

Join us as Dan Dixon and Stéphan Willemse take us through the origins of HCD and its current applications. More importantly, they’ll explore the future beyond HCD — what this future looks like, and how it’s different from what we see today.

They’ll discuss moving beyond human-centric approaches, revisiting systems thinking and assemblage theory, and they’ll challenge the traditional concept of ‘design’ to understand what needs to come next.

Our presenters

Dan Dixon is User Experience (UX) and Research Director at Digital Arts Network. He’s a long-term practitioner of human-centred experience design and has a wealth of experience in discovery and qualitative research. He’s worked in academic, agency and client-side roles in both the UK and NZ, covering diverse fields such as digital, product design, creative technology and game design. Dan’s history has blended a background in the digital industry with teaching creative technology and researching user experiences.

Stéphan Willemse is a Strategy Director at Digital Arts Network. He uses creativity, design and strategy to help organisations innovate towards positive, progressive futures. He works across innovation, experience design, emerging technologies, cultural intelligence and futures projects. Stéphan works with clients such as Starbucks, ANZ TradeMe and the public sector. His idea of the perfect board meeting is at a quiet surf break. He thinks ideas are powerful and that his young twins ask the best questions about the world we live in.