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User-centred vs human-centred design

An important distinction for methodology planning

H Locke
1 min readOct 16, 2021
A graphical icon of a human standing in the centre of concentric circles

Regular readers will know that I experience the daily joy that is working in a marketing agency. Because of this, I spend a significant amount of time correcting assumptions, de-risking projects and generally UX-plaining terms that people are using inaccurately and sometimes dangerously, when it comes to project delivery.

One of the classic misconceptions that I’ve been trying to overcome for years, is the interchangeable usage of of “user-centred” and “human-centred”. To be clear, they are similar, but they are not the same thing.

User-centred and human-centred methodologies are not the same thing.

What’s the difference?

At first glance the two methodologies look similar. And at the core they use many of the same methodologies and deliverables. However there are

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H Locke
H Locke

Written by H Locke

UX person. I design things and I study humans. 150+ articles on Substack https://hlockeux.substack.com/