At the 2000 Design Education Forum South Africa conference, Richard Buchanan championed the integration of human-centred design principles into a new framework for design which merges design practice, design education, and design research. Speaking to an audience of South African design educators, Buchanan emphasised the pressing need for emerging designers to confront the myriad social, political, and environmental challenges facing contemporary South African society. To address these issues effectively, Buchanan advocated for the cultivation of a broader humanistic orientation among designers so as to navigate the socio-technical complexities inherent in these challenges. Despite being articulated in this instance over two decades ago, Buchanan's call for human-centred design to advance “the value of human beings interacting with other human beings and discovering new kinds of interactions among people and their cultural and natural environment, with a goal of enhancing human dignity and supporting human rights,” retains its urgency, given the escalatory nature of the crises demanding attention on domestic and global scales.

In his reflection on the principles of human-centred design, Buchanan develops on a theme broached by Dr. Kader Asmal—at the time the South African Minister of Education—in his opening address at the same conference: design “finds its purpose and true beginnings in the values and constitutional life of a country and its peoples.” Formulating this conception of design into a principle of import to “all countries in the emerging world culture of our planet,” Buchanan proposes that “design is fundamentally grounded in human dignity and human rights.” Coupling this principle to that “major tenet of new design thinking”—human-centred design understood as the placement of human beings as central in our work—Buchanan points to the expansive scope for design this discloses:

“Human-centered design is fundamentally an affirmation of human dignity. It is an ongoing search for what can be done to support and strengthen the dignity of human beings as they act out their lives in varied social, economic, political, and cultural circumstances.”

As Buchanan continues to point out, the issues surrounding human dignity and human rights provide a new perspective for exploring the many moral and ethical problems that lie at the core of the design profession:

“The implications of the idea that design is grounded in human dignity and human rights are enormous and deserve careful exploration...We should consider what we mean by human dignity and how all of the products that we make either succeed or fail to support and advance human dignity. And we should think carefully about the nature of human rights—the spectrum of civil and political, economic and social, and cultural rights—and how these rights are directly implicated in our work.”

While Buchanan’s elaboration of a “new framework for design” will not be elaborated here, it is worth reflecting on the definition of design he proposes towards such a framework:

“Design is the creative human power to conceive, plan and realize products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of their individual and collective purposes.”

Design, then, while grounded in human dignity and human rights, is also a practical discipline of “responsible action for bringing the high values of a country or a culture into concrete reality.”

Buchanan proposes an understanding of design “not as a discipline for molding passive clay to the will of a designer—and his or her sponsor—but as a discipline of collective forethought, anticipating the possibilities for individual and collective growth that are available in any environment.” Design necessitates an understanding of the substantial content of products. It demands a readiness to collaborate with all stakeholders involved in a venture. “It requires,” Buchanan concludes, “that we take good care of each other as we work toward common goals that benefit everyone.”

Read Buchanan’s ‘Human Dignity and Human Rights: Towards a Human-centred Framework for Design’ here.