Artwork: Peeps by Gillian Levine

To solve big-scale design problems, Don Norman recommends engaging with the community that has these problems and leveraging existing creativity and experience.

The principles of human-centered design have proven to be effective and productive. However, its approach is generally used in situations where professionals determine the needs of the target populations and then develop products and procedures to address the needs. This is Top-Down design: starting with higher-level conceptualizations and then refining the ideas and concepts to specific instances of products or services. This works well for mass-produced items which only allows limited specialization for individual needs and requirements.

We propose a radical change in design from experts designing for people to people designing for themselves. In the traditional approach, experts study, design, and implement solutions for the people of the world. Instead, we propose that we leverage the creativity within the communities of the world to solve their own problems: This is community-driven design, taking full advantage of the fact that it is the people in communities who best understand their problems and the impediments and affordances that impede and support change. Experts become facilitators, by mentoring and providing tools, toolkits, workshops, and support.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MErVreaVK4Y&feature=emb_title

Jeremy Meyerson, from London’s Royal College of Art, has proposed a closely related approach “Scaling Down"

The growth model of the 20th century required that designers and companies achieve economies of scale. Scaling up involved abstraction to make large-scale production possible for the global industrial economy. In the 21st century, social challenges are increasingly disrupting world markets. This changes the focus of the design process. Designers once needed to learn just a little about large groups of people to serve mass markets. Today, they must learn a great deal about relatively small numbers of people. They must shift from concentrating on what makes groups of people similar to what makes them different.

Myerson proposed five principles of scaling down. They complement the approach in this paper by being very similar in spirit, but from a slightly different perspective, introducing slightly different concepts. Here are his principles: