Where do we go from here? User centricity helped us build software, but what comes next?

The past: the genius designer

• design through ideology
• Vignelli, Da Vinci, Le Corbusier etc.
• master designer will intuit problems and find solutions, a moment of genius
• designing with atoms

The present: the user-centric designer

• designer has a toolkit to understand needs (observing and talking to users)
• treats user as a subject for study
• build for the most common, overlapping needs
• rigid flows and boundaries
• designing with pixels
• undoubtedly ignores the long tail because software becomes profitable at scale

The future: end-user driven design

• users are given lego pieces
• AI assists turning natural language to code
• fewer ‘app’ silos
• increased sense of user ownership
• designers create capabilities
• low floor and high ceiling
• complexity can be derived from combining a few simple pieces (refer to nature)