FEED
Side project
Tell us what your side project does.
Humane by Design (https://humanebydesign.com/)
is a resource for designing ethically humane digital
products through patterns focused on user well-
being. It’s essentially a collection of best practices,
organised by overarching principles, that consciously
prioritises people’s time and attention.Why did you create it?
I wanted to explore ways designers and developers
can create products that are less invasive, addictive,
dishonest or harmful to the people using them. The
reality is many products and services out there use
exploitative practices that monopolise people’s time
and prioritise business goals over human ones. UX
plays a critical role in this – persuasive design is
useful for keeping people engaged but at what cost? A
lot of discussion on this seems to suggest designers
and developers can have little to no impact. This
project is intended to counter that narrative and
explore patterns that can add up to a larger impact.What were you hoping to achieve?
My hope for this project was to start defining how we
can build more humane technology. Instead of
technology enhancing our abilities as humans, we’ve
seen it become a vehicle for extracting our attention,monetising our personal information and exploiting
our psychological vulnerabilities. Designers and
developers play a key role in the creation of such
technology and it’s time we take responsibility. Many
agree but there’s ambiguity over how they can have
an impact. I wanted to outline practical ways that we
could begin actually doing something about it.What technologies were used in building it?
I’m a big JAMstack fan because of the simplicity and
power it provides but also because of its focus on
performance. For Humane by Design, I used the static
site generator Hugo paired with the JavaScript
streaming task runner Gulp, to do things like
transforming Markdown and Hugo templates to
HTML, process Sass to CSS and building an SVG sprite
out of icons. Finally, deployment is made super easy
through Firebase, which caches files and serves them
via CDN edge servers all around the globe. As far as
design goes, I used Sketch and good old-fashioned
pencil and paper.How has it been received?
Really well because a lot of folks in the tech industry
are asking similar questions. It’s time we slow down
and be more intentional with the things we are
building and putting out into the world. Many agree
with this and are looking for ways it can be done.What do you think you’ll do next with it?
The project is centred around practical ways we can
build technology that consciously prioritises people’s
time and attention, so I’d like to continue defining
these patterns. I’d also like to open source the project
so that others can contribute as well.SIDE PROJECT OF THE MONTHJON
YABLONSKI
Yablonski is a
multidisciplinary
designer, speaker, writer
and digital creator based
in Detroit. He’s currently
working on the next
generation of in-vehicle
interactive experiences
as a senior product
designer at GM.
w: jonyablonski.com
t: @jonyablonskiINFOHUMANE BY DESIGN
We have a heart-to-heart with Jon Yablonski on
his site promoting ethical design principles