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Human Dignity and Human Rights: Thoughts on the Principles of Human-Centered Design

As I walked on the shore of Cape Town to the opening ceremonies of a conference on design in South Africa, I saw through the rain and mist a small sliver of land in the bay. Naively, I asked my host if it was part of the peninsula that extends south of the city or an island. With what, in retrospect, must have been great patience, she quietly explained that it was not “an” island, it was “the” island. I was embarrassed, but I knew immediately what she meant. I spent the rest of the evening thinking about the political prisoners who were held on Robben Island, human rights, and the irony of a conference within sight of Table Bay that seeks to explore the reshaping of South Africa by design. I was helped in these thoughts by the address of the Minister of Education, Dr. Kadir Asmal, who opened the conference by exploring the meaning of design, the need and opportunities for design in South Africa, and, most importantly, the grounding of design in the cultural values and political principles expressed in the new South African Constitution. I have never heard a high government official anywhere in the world speak so insightfully about the new design that is emerging around us as we near the beginning of a new century. Perhaps everyone in the audience was surprised by how quickly and accurately he captured the core of our discipline and turned it back to us for action. Many of his ideas were at the forward edge of our field, and some were further ahead than we are prepared to admit. For example, I believe we all recognized his significant transformation of the old design theme of “form and function” into the new design theme of “form and content.” This is one of the distinguishing marks of new design thinking: not a rejection of function, but a recognition that unless designers grasp the significant content of the products they create, their work will come to little consequence or may even lead to harm in our complex world. I was particularly surprised, however, by Dr. Asmal’s account of the creation—and here he deliberately and significantly used the word “design”—of the South African Constitution. He explained that after deliberation the drafters decided not to model the document on the familiar example of the United States Constitution, with an appended Bill of Rights, but rather to give central importance from the beginning to the concept of human