Hi #SmartCommunity friends,

We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands on which we live, work and record this podcast and pay our respects to Elders past and present. We extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening.

In this episode of the Smart Community Podcast, I speak with Professor Martin Tomitsch, Head of the Transdisciplinary School at UTS, about the evolution and future of human-centred design.

Martin shares how human-centred design has shaped technology and innovation over the past few decades, why we need to critically reflect on its unintended consequences and how we can ensure emerging technologies like AI remain grounded in diverse human perspectives and ethical design practices.

We discuss dark patterns, persuasive technologies, social media, circular economy opportunities and the importance of designing not just for users, but for communities and society more broadly.

As always, we hope you enjoy listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed making it.

What we cover in this episode:

• Martin’s journey into human-centered design
• The origins and evolution of human-centred design
• The rise of design thinking in organisations
• The difference between user-centered and human-centered design
• Dark patterns and persuasive technologies
• The unintended societal impacts of platforms like Airbnb and Uber
• Ethical design and the future of AI
• Why diverse perspectives matter in technology design
• Technology’s role in enabling circular economy initiatives
• The importance of transdisciplinary thinking for complex challenges
• Moving from human-centred design to life-centred design

Quotes:

“Rather than just thinking about the technology, thinking about how can we build technologies so that help people and solve problems for people.”

“Human-centered design starts by understanding people and people’s needs, then after having an initial understanding of the problems, creating prototypes and then importantly testing those prototypes with people.”

“There was actually a shift…where we used to talk about user-centred design…And then we came back to human-centred design, based on the acknowledgement that we shouldn’t just be designing for users.”

“One of the risks with AI is that people might be starting using it instead of actually doing user research, sort of collecting, gathering user requirements just via LLMs.”

“We need to consider all of the perspectives, not just the users… thinking about the other communities that might be affected by that.”

Links:

Martin’s website

Connect:

Connect with Martin via LinkedIn and the UTS website.

Connect with me via email: hello@mysmart.community

Connect with My Smart Community via LinkedIn, Instagram or YouTube.

The Smart Community Podcast is produced by Perk Digital.