Non-user community
What is non-user community?
Have you ever wondered who will wear the second-hand clothes you threw in the collecting bin? Have you ever asked yourself who is mining the precious metals that go into your smartphone? Have you ever wondered how locals might feel about your tourist trip to Barcelona? Those are people who do not have a say in the design of our clothes, phones, or holiday booking platforms but are impacted by it, directly or indirectly. Sometimes, the effects are positive, but often, they are not.
These non-user communities often live in vulnerable places and are often already affected by the impact of climate change.
As a lot of design is rooted in a Western patriarchal modernist and brutalist way of thinking, we can also identify women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and Indigenous communities around the world as another group of non-users.
Learn more about Non-user communities
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Including non-user communities in the design process facilitates the understanding and awareness of positive and negative impacts of all who are directly or indirectly living in the impacted environment. This helps designers think about accountability, responsibility, environmental impact, social impact, equity, equality, and many other elements that can help position, and frame insights to bring benefits to non-user communities.
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Non-user communities can facilitate the ways we design through action research processes, making non-user communities part of the design process from the start. By having non-user communities input, designers can gather insights to further reframe impact and find inclusive, holistic solutions.
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TBA
Life-Centered Design Fundamentals Course
Join designer and creative professionals from all over the world and make the shift from human to life-centered design and make a real impact with your work.
