Buckle up as we chart through a new wave of ⟡ shifting tech and design paradigms ⟡
Humanoid AI staring at you — Image by author
As many tech professionals anticipate the worst-case scenario (AI world-wide domination and mass unemployment, yep, I said it), I cannot help to think we’ve already been here before.
AI might be tech-bros’ shiniest new toy, but this is not the first wave of innovation we ride as humanity, nor the first change in human-computer technologies design paradigms.
Not at all..
But we seem to have forgotten that.
Every time I open Medium or LinkedIn these days, I inevitably fall down the rabbit hole of AI doomscrolling:
2025 be like — Image by author
Posts from people fearing AI tools will take their jobs, and feeds flooded with incendiary headlines everywhere. That horrific video with the twitching humanoid robot from Clone Robotics popped up like right out of our nightmares. Designers are mad because AI can do wireframes now, and devs are now also mad because vibe-coding is the new no-code on steroids. To top it all off, people used the newest ChatGPT-O4 image generation to appropriate Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli’s signature style for their entertainment. And then, because this was not enough… dozens of character toy figures took LinkedIn hostage.
It’s been some weeks…
We are drowning in tech, and 2025 is just taking off.
Tools enabled by AI technologies are on the rise, the motions of deep change are set up, and nothing any of us do will stop them.
Revolution is smiling down on us. Will we, as designers and technologists, rise to the challenge or crumble under our own past conceptions of apocalyptic AI sci-fi scenarios?Click here if you want listen my recommended music to ambient your reading time 
Hit the pause button: History hints we can effectively ride this wave instead of drowning in it
Technological breakthroughs have continuously shaped humanity for the past centuries, transforming how we live, work, and interact with the world. ↬ As theorists and economists have pointed out, we move in innovation waves or cycles.
From Nuremberg’s printing press to the light bulb to personal computers, every wave of innovation is characterized by the appearance of new tech advancements that threaten to change everything as we know it. Every new technology introduces a new scope of possibilities in different domains, as well as unexpected dangers.
Additionally, as explored in the 2018 Equity Gilt Study by Barclays, every innovation breakthrough is followed by an increase in productivity:
Barclays chart illustrates the correlation between technological breakthroughs in the past 5 centuries with the increase in productivityWhile I couldn’t find a more recent version of this chart, it’s not hard to speculate that if we extended the timeline to cover the 2020s, we would observe a continuation of the upward trend.Speculating further, with the acceleration of AI capabilities and their integration in everyday systems, 2025 could mark an inflection point, marking the beginning of a much steeper curve in the decade to come.
Most of our past breakthroughs were met with fear and skepticism at their conception and faced numerous detractors. Sounds familiar?
One of our biggest evolutionary strengths has been our capacity to engage in creating tools that allow us to manipulate our environment to our advantage. Yet, we are also creatures of habit, and many dislike change in the face of new advancements.
What we are experiencing now is no different from what we’ve previously experienced. However, it feels augmented because, unlike back then, we are now hyperconnected 24/7, overwhelmed by an infinite amount of information sources, and technology is now outpacing our ability to catch up with it:
“The Wisdom Gap” chart by Center for Humane Technology shows how, as tech advances at ever more rapid speed, our capacity to understand its implications falls behind
Diverse voices in support and against AI clash in the vast void of the internet, making fears larger and distrust higher. Plus, we cannot deny the weight of ten or so decades of sci-fi movies and series painting AI as the destroyer of our species, thus shaping our cultural view towards these technologies.
So let’s put things into perspective
Humans have been building tools and systems that work in our favor for centuries. New tools based on AI technologies are nothing more than that: tools created by humans; more complex ones for sure, but tools nonetheless.
Every new technology unlocks new products, tools and system possibilities.
↓
New products/tools/systems generate new human-technology interactions.
↓
New interactions and relations with tech evolve into new design paradigms to meet emerging human needs in the face of these advancements.
It’s best to think of AI in terms of its capabilities
↬ Think of AI as a sort of Swiss knife. It’s not a single tool. It’s a system that contains many different tools/capabilities, and it’s up to us to choose which ones to use, when, why, and how.
Over time, the individual tools/capabilities will keep evolving, making AI’s scope wider and more robust. That’s why designers must work to ensure future advancements in these areas focus on responding to human needs mindfully, ethically, and responsibly.
By the way… not every product needs AI, despite what many tech-high folks want to make you believe. Not every company or venture needs to be anointed with machine learning to be useful or relevant. Shocking!
It’s not the knife, it’s who’s holding it and how they use it — Image by author
Design waves in human-technology interaction: From personal computers and the rise of human-centered design to human-centered AI
Although we can find the first traces of human-centered thinking in the work of human factors specialists, engineers, and psychologists in the days of early computers, we could see designers’ central involvement in shaping technology began around the 1980s with the creation of graphical user interfaces (GUI) and the mass introduction of personal computers in people’s homes and offices.
It was then that the need for ways to make technology understandable and accessible to the general public came into focus.
Tracing back the evolution of computer technologies and design in the past, I could theorize that we’ve undergone three major waves in human-computer interaction, and we are now at the starting point of the fourth.
Why am I telling you this?
Because it’s important to recognize the story of HCI. There, we will find anecdotes, principles, and frameworks helpful to make sense and navigate the shifting design paradigms of these times.
Plus, it’s important to visualize and understand how human-technology relations have evolved over time with computing advancements.
Four waves of HCI design — Image by author
↬ 1st wave: Computers as specialist tools (1940s-1980s)
In the early days, computing technologies were primarily developed by military and academic institutions to perform specific and complex tasks, such as ballistics calculations, codebreaking, and scientific simulations.
These machines were MASSIVE, and operating them was highly difficult, requiring specialized training. Which meant only a small handful of individuals had access to them.
During this time, we can find the early seeds of human-centered design: In 1958, Professor John E. Arnold of Stanford University proposed that engineering designs should take into account human needs and not just technical function. Later, towards the end of this wave, Don Norman popularized the term “user-centered design”.
↬ 2nd wave: Personal computing and early HCI (1980s-2000s)
With the development of graphical user interfaces (GUIs), personal computers (PCs), and input devices like the mouse and keyboard, computers started making their way into people’s homes, offices, and hearts.
As more people started using computers for everyday tasks, the need emerged for intuitive systems that “non-experts” could easily understand and use. Behold: the origins of HCI (human-computer interaction) as a discipline.
↬ 3rd wave: Era of human-centered design (2000s-2020s)
Now this one we know by heart.
In the early 2000s, organizations like IDEO and Stanford d.school popularized the Design Thinking approach, which became widely accepted by different organizations and gained a lot of traction (still does).
Something interesting happened during this period: we saw human-centered design gain relevance, beyond traditional product design, across many other industries/disciplines.
As the web expanded in the early 2000s, roles like Information Architect, Interaction Designer, Web Designer, and Usability Specialist started to emerge, eventually leading to the formalization of the UX design role as we know it.
This role gained increasing significance as digital products and services proliferated. Today, companies still actively invest in design as a strategic capability, building UX teams to build holistic, meaningful, and positive user experiences based on data and research insights.
Worthy mention:
A pivotal moment occurred in 2016, when AlphaGo, developed by DeepMind, defeated world Go champion Lee Sedol, marking a clear shift in tech’s focus for the next decade. If you ask me, presenting AI advancements in this manner didn’t exactly help beat the “AI is here to replace us” allegations, but, oh, well…
Here’s where the line begins to blur as we step into new territory. One could argue we are still somehow standing at the 3rd wave, even as the 4th begins to unravel.In this in-between space, we find ourselves navigating the past, present and emerging future of design — all at once. We are at an inflection point! Isn’t that exciting?
↬ 4th wave [current times]: Charting through human-centered AI (2020s-onward)
This one is tough to describe since we are witnessing it take shape live.
Around 2020–2023, we saw a major boom in machine-learning capabilities, a field tech companies have long invested in. Since then, we’ve seen many AI tools hit the market. With each new feature, tensions grow, and the long-existing fears about these tools replacing human workers, generating job displacement, and altering our ways of living in unimaginable ways, increase.
We currently seem to be divided between:
— AI enthusiasts, who are extra eager to explore AI’s potential.
— AI skeptics who worry about ethics, bias, and control risks. The ones playing doom play scenarios over and over in their heads.
— AI agnostics, who still aren’t entirely sure what is even going on…
Somewhere in the middle, we have designers, developers, and researchers trying to make sense of this new wave and help shape it.
Some are working in ways centered on protecting human well-being, security, and dignity. Others (either for personal belief systems or economic incentives) seem more aligned with certain corporate interests, where replacing humans with machines to reduce production costs is not just a possibility, but a business incentive.
Human-centered design (HCAI): A new framework for the new times
With AI’s ever-increasing developments and introduction into human lives, it’s become necessary for those designers/technologists who feel skeptical of the risks posed by these technologies to find new frameworks that allow them to work towards the future while maintaining their moral compass pointing north.
For this reason, an increasing number of scholars, researchers, and industry leaders have been evolving the concept of Human-Centered AI.
This concept takes the things we love and adore about user-centered design practices and translates them to fit the new needs and priorities that arise with increased AI automation technologies.
It seeks to help us navigate this new tech horizon so we can design tools that leverage AI’s capabilities in a way that is still centered on taking care of human needs and preventing AI’s potential negative consequences.
“This technology is made by people and it’s going to be used for people. Fundamentally, how we create this technology, how we use this technology, how we continue to innovate, but also put the right guardrails, is up to us humans doing it for humans.”— Dr Fei-Fei Li
Let’s put it into a definition:
Human-centered AI (HCAI) is an emerging approach that seeks to place human needs, values, and capabilities at the forefront of the design, development, and implementation of AI technologies.
↬ It strives to ensure future developments in this area move from a tech-centric focus to a human-centric focus, where the capabilities offered by AI technologies are applied to serve society’s most pressing needs and aspirations for the greater good. Augmenting human capabilities instead of replacing humans.↬ It also aims to prevent the proliferation of AI developments that can, consciously or unconsciously, harm humans on an individual or societal level. I would add that we also need to extend this concern beyond humans to evaluate how the structures that sustain AI systems impact our environment’s well-being.
Ten principles for human-centered AI
Drawing from the insights of authors and researchers on this topic, I’ve put together ten key principles to guide those working on the design and development of human-centered AI tools.
10 principles for HCAI design and development — Image by author
Visualizing tensions for AI future developments
As per usual, humans rarely see eye to eye. We always sit somewhere on a spectrum of divergent and convergent opinions. Visions for AI technologies are no less the case as they reflect the different intentions of the people who create and design them.
Thinking of this, I put together a matrix to help identify where AI-based tools might fall within a 4×4 spectrum, organized by two axes: one mapping control dynamics (human vs machine), and the other focused on the tool’s underlying intent: replacing humans or augmenting human capabilities.
(Vertical axis 
) Who holds the baton: Human control Vs. Machine autonomy
(Horizontal axis ↔) Underlying intent: Replace human work Vs. Augment human capabilities
Human-AI dynamics matrix — Image by author
You can use this matrix to evaluate potential AI product ideas or analyze existing tools/systems, especially as we further step into new ways of working and engaging with AI-based tools and systems.
More than anything, I created this tool to serve as a visual aid, a conversation starter to ask:
— What kind of realities are we building?
— Which quadrant are we aiming for?
— What future are we charting towards?
Closing thoughts on designers’ new roles
As human-centered AI (HCAI) is still in its infancy, we as designers have an invaluable opportunity to help shape the future. After all, not everyone gets to be alive during a time marked by such immense societal, technological, and scientific changes.
As trying — and sometimes uncomfortable — as navigating these uncertain times may be, I’d rather focus on the opportunities AI advancements offer than shy away from them like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand.
↬ Opportunities to revolutionize healthcare, accelerate scientific discovery, track government corruption, make education more accessible, uncover new forms of creative expression, and more — if we choose to steer AI with intention and care.
It will be hard work, I don’t doubt that.
Building upon AI capabilities means doing the hard work: thinking critically about these shifts, pondering worst-case scenarios, designing for futures we still don’t see, constructing new interaction systems, and constantly rethinking how we design (Which I think is where many designers feel discouraged. Constant advancements = Constant re-learning = Discomfort).
Maybe it is time to embrace that discomfort.
In the following decades, designers will work radically differently from past generations.
We will have to constantly learn new technologies, new tools, and new systems. Adaptation and flexibility will not be a “nice to have” but an imperative necessity. We will need to detach ourselves from specific tools, because there’s no time to be married to a single platform or solution. New tech will emerge at the “speed of light”. We will have to be more critical, future-thinking, intellectually driven, and human-centered than ever.
We will evolve because we have to.
We will safeguard the future, so there’s still a future worth living for.
This is no small feat. Which is why I frown upon designers and technologists who just go with the flow and follow the hype around AI, putting critical and ethical thinking on the back burner.
Please don’t be one of those.
The work we do today will shape not only our lives but also the futures of countless generations to come.
I encourage you to carry this responsibility in your heart and mind as you design for a better world.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you for taking the time to read this article ⟡ Hopefully, it gave you some new knowledge and ideas to ponder on.
Att. Estefanía 🞼
References:
Human-Centered AI, by Ben Shneiderman (book)Creating a human-centered AI experience, by Mary Daniel (article)Human-Centered AI: Ethical Considerations in Building Artificial Intelligence, by Reid Hoffman in interview with Dr. Fei-Fei Li (transcript and audio recording)Transitioning to Human Interaction with AI Systems: New Challenges and Opportunities for HCI Professionals to Enable Human-Centered AI, by Wei Xua, Marvin J. Dainoffb, Liezhong Gea, and Zaifeng Gao (academic article)Guidelines for Human-AI Interaction, Microsoft (academic article)People +AI Guidebook, Google (web guidebook)Empowering Humanity: Questioning The Dawn of Human-Centered AI, by Julia Mitsiakina (article)What is Human-Centered AI (HCAI)?, by Interaction Design Foundation (article)Navigating AI design: the new blueprint for designers, by Sarah Tan (article)Can we design AI to support human flourishing? | AHA Symposium 2025, by MIT Media LAB (video recording)
Riding the wave: from human-centered design to human-centered AI was originally published in UX Collective on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
