Human-Centred Design's Christian roots

Human-Centered design aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements.

At its core, HCD is humanist design - it puts the experience of the individual at its centre. With this basis, HCD aims to improve human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability. Equally, HCD aims to counteract possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance.

Humanism derives ultimately from claims made in the Bible. That humans are made in God’s image; that his Son died equally for everyone. That everyone is equal - that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. From those seeds planted 2000 years ago, Tom Holland argues in Dominion, that secularism, the enlightenment and humanism emerged from these fundamentally Christian assumptions and moral values.

It follows then that Human-Centred Design, the pre-eminent design movement of the past 40 years, shares these Christian origins and its underlying assumptions.

With Christianity as the ultimate seed of HCD - two questions spring to mind:

• Does making explicit these origins help us to better design from a HCD-perspective?

• Does making explicit these origins shine light on possible short-comings of HCD?