In these current times, every-one of us have begun to have a more heightened sense of responsibility towards various aspects of our daily lives, like spending more time with family, trying to eat healthier, saving for the longer term, respecting the environment and being more kind to others, signalling a more inward shift in human behavior. This requires everything around us that we interact with to support, accommodate, adjust and adopt for this shift in our behavior.

Every day, our activities require interaction with countless systems that drives and influences our behavior. This behavior has an impact on ourselves, possibly other people and the environment we operate as a whole. Hence it is important that the impact of these behaviors is more positive, supported by well, thoughtfully and responsibly designed systems.

Design is a combination of three attributes – form (shape, size, physical or virtual), function (what it is designed to perform) and efficiency (how well it performs). Systems with responsible design means, that each of these three attributes are thoughtfully designed to ensure that the human behavior they cause has the least negative impact – on themselves, on others and the environment. As these systems are being used, it will constantly encourage, re-enforce and sometimes control human behavior for better impact.

As the inward shift in human behavior continues to evolve, systems need to evolve in parallel, with responsible designs causing responsible behavior.

In the next part, we will dive deeper into the specifics of each of these three design attributes, explore some of the ways on how the attributes can be responsibly designed and identify some real-world examples that is already out there.

Sriraman Raghunathan
Digital Innovation & Strategy Principal
Marlabs