Amoral Design vs Human-Centered Design

Developers should understand amoral design to recognize when their work might inadvertently cause harm, such as in cases involving privacy violations, addictive features, or biased algorithms, and to transition towards more ethical practices meets developers should learn and use human-centered design when building applications, websites, or digital tools to enhance usability, reduce user frustration, and increase adoption rates. Here's our take.

Amoral Design

Nice Pick

Developers should understand amoral design to recognize when their work might inadvertently cause harm, such as in cases involving privacy violations, addictive features, or biased algorithms, and to transition towards more ethical practices

Pros

• It is particularly relevant in fields like social media, gaming, AI, and data-driven applications where design decisions can have significant societal consequences
• Related to: ethical-design, user-experience-design

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Human-Centered Design

Developers should learn and use Human-Centered Design when building applications, websites, or digital tools to enhance usability, reduce user frustration, and increase adoption rates

Pros

• It is particularly valuable in projects where user experience is critical, such as consumer-facing apps, enterprise software, or accessibility-focused solutions, as it helps align technical implementation with user needs through feedback loops and validation
• Related to: user-experience-design, user-research

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Amoral Design is a concept while Human-Centered Design is a methodology. We picked Amoral Design based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Amoral Design wins

Based on overall popularity. Amoral Design is more widely used, but Human-Centered Design excels in its own space.