  Humanity-centered design is a concept of emerging interest in HCI, one
motivated by the limitations of human-centered design. As discussed to date,
humanity-centered design is compatible with but goes beyond human-centered
design in that it considers entire ecosystems and populations over the long
term and centers participatory design. Though the intentions of
humanity-centered design are laudable, current articulations of
humanity-centered design are incoherent in a number of ways, leading to
questions of how exactly it can or should be implemented. In this article, I
delineate four ways in which humanity-centered design is incoherent, which can
be boiled down to a tendency toward hubris, and propose a more fruitful way
forward, a humble approach to humanity-centered design. Rather than a
contradiction in terms, "humility" here refers to an organic, piecemeal,
patterns-based approach to design that will be good for our being on this
earth.
