User-Centered Innovation Is Not Sustainable – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review

March 22, 2010

creativity / design / sustainability / user experience

On the limitations of user-centered design. “Only leaders and designers who are driven by a vision and who explicitly search a priori for those sustainable behaviors can tune out the unsustainable needs of 99% of users and focus on the few exceptions.” It’s important to notice what this article does not say: that user insights are not precious and necessary. They are. But here, they are necessary within the context of a vision, and in this example there is focus on users who are needles of sustainability in the haystacks of consumption.