UX Design and Responsibility: What is Technology’s Role in Humanity?
User experience (UX) and usability have evolved significantly over the past decades. Since the mid-20th century, UX design has responded to different challenges at different times: at first, it helped shape the foundations of the IT industry, defining how humans could even interact with computers.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the focus shifted toward usability, leading to the creation of Nielsen’s heuristics and usability testing methods, which standardized how we evaluate interfaces.
By the 2000s, UX matured beyond just efficiency and usability into a broader field centered around experience. Designers began considering how technology not only enables actions but also affects users’ emotions, behavior, and identity.
But now, in the 2020s, UX faces a new, modern challenge. Usability is no longer just about removing obstacles, and user experience is not merely about maximizing fluency. What is the designer’s responsibility when technology doesn’t just support human action but actively shapes their perception of reality and decision-making?
In an era of AI, automation, and personalized design, UX can either empower people to live consciously and responsibly—or lull them into passivity and detachment from reality. Over-optimized “user-friendliness” can lead to a loss of awareness about how technology influences choices and behaviors. This raises a fundamental question: What kind of relationship do we want technology to have with humanity?
UX Design Is Not About Escaping Reality
User experience is not about making life effortless in a way that removes human responsibility or disengages people from reality. Good design does not eliminate effort altogether but rather supports us in acting effectively, consciously, and meaningfully.
When we design interfaces, tools, or services, the question is not just how to make things flow smoothly—it is also about the kind of relationship we are shaping between humans and reality.
AI and automation can foster healthy adulthood, but they can also encourage passivity if their primary goal is to “make life easier” at all costs. There is a difference between removing unnecessary friction and designing experiences that constantly push people toward the path of least resistance. Ease, in itself, is not a value—clarity, fluency, and honesty are.
As a designer, I aim to create honest experiences: effective and supportive tools that do not manipulate users but instead leave them responsible for their own thinking and choices. Smart tools that empower and insipire curiosity. Technology should neither be intrusive nor unnecessarily complex, but it also should not become so invisible that people stop being aware of how and why they use it.
A well-designed user experience does not coddle or pacify—it creates space for people to be active, thinking, and capable adults.