I find myself growing increasingly uneasy with the term "user-centered design." The word "user" carries a secondary meaning—"consumer of drugs"—which evokes notions of dependence, fleeting gratification, and exploitation. Meanwhile, "centered" inherently excludes everything and everyone outside its focus. I understand that sometimes it’s a placeholder term before we have a specific noun, a defined “customer” segment in place. But even when we have figured out the segment, we often think of them in abstract terms like “user”. It never really goes away.
We need a new term and a new way of thinking about design. I call it** "Adaptive Relational Design"**. This approach focuses on the dynamic relationships between people, systems, and their environments. It emphasizes adaptability to context and evolving needs, fostering designs that grow with and respond to the interconnected ecosystem of human motivations and circumstances.
This is about our relationship with ourselves, our relations towards others, and our social constructions. The set of connected elements and their interplay, i.e., between the functional, social, and emotional.
This way we are free to make sense of structure while achieving mastery in the craft of doing design work.