Actually Designing for the Human: Three Stories That Got It Right
Three stories that remind us: the most powerful designs are the ones that truly understand who we are.
I got my first piece of personal tech at 10 years old. An iPad I was so scared to ask my dad for, It was my first window into a world I could touch and shape, one swipe at a time (this was a different era, the house computer was in the living room era). I remember scrolling through the App Store, drawn to anything colorful, and downloading a game that everyone in school was talking about: Dumb Ways to Die.
The game was chaotic, jellybean-shaped characters died in the silliest ways imaginable eating expired mayonnaise, poking a grizzly bear, dancing on train platforms. I played through the entire thing, giggling through the absurdity, never realizing until the very end that it was a public safety announcement.
Years later, that memory stuck with me, not because the game was clever (which it was), but because it worked. It never told me to be careful around trains. It didn’t lecture me. It played with me. And through that, it landed its message (Years later I still hum the song at the subway).
I think about that often now as someone who studies human-centered design. Because the truth is a lot of what we call “user-first” is really “solution-first in disguise.” We build dashboards, optimize flows, and call it empathy. But the most impactful designs I’ve seen didn’t begin with just visuals. They began with a story, a ritual, a shared behavior, something deeply human.
Here are three projects that remind me of what it actually means to design for people. Not users, Not metrics, But people.
🎮 1. Dumb Ways to Die — The Game That Tricked Me Into Caring
Melbourne’s Metro Trains launched “Dumb Ways to Die” in 2012 to address a growing problem: people ignoring train safety. Traditional PSAs weren’t working. So the agency McCann flipped the script.
They created a song. A song so catchy it shot to the top of iTunes in 28 countries. A game so viral it racked up over 300 million downloads. It featured dozens of minigames, each more absurd than the last—lightly toasted electrocution, snake kissing, poorly timed balloon rides.
“We weren’t trying to scare people into behaving,” said John Mescall, creative director of McCann. “We wanted to make something they would actually care about and want to share.”
And it worked. According to Metro Trains, the campaign led to a 21% reduction in near misses and accidents at railway stations in the months following its launch.
The brilliance of “Dumb Ways to Die” wasn’t in the mechanics. It was in the understanding: that humor, surprise, and a sense of play are often more persuasive than instruction. Especially for younger audiences. Especially for me, at 10.
It didn’t feel like safety education, It felt like fun. And that made it unforgettable.
🐟 2. The Fish Doorbell — A Civic Ritual Disguised as a Button
The second story found me in a place that couldn’t have been more different: my symbolic logic class.
It was one of those particularly slow days, where time drips instead of ticks. A friend nudged me and whispered, “You have to see this.” I looked over and saw a livestream of nothing. Just water. Murky, calm, occasionally interrupted by a flicker of movement.
And then, a fish. A small one. It swam by. We both instinctively clicked the button that said: Ring de Bel.
That was my first experience with Visdeurbel, the Fish Doorbell. It’s a Dutch civic tech project that tackles a surprisingly niche yet ecologically important problem: each spring, fish try to migrate upstream, but floodgates in cities like Utrecht block their path.
Instead of installing expensive sensors or hiring specialists to monitor the waters, the city installed a public livestream and asked citizens to help. See a fish? Ring the bell. It alerts the water authority to open the gate.
“People love being part of something that helps nature,” said Jeroen van Herwaarden, the project lead. “It makes them feel connected, useful even joyful.”
And it wasn’t a one-off novelty. In the 2023 migration season, over 1 million people from more than 80 countries tuned in. Thousands rang the bell. The fish got through.
There’s no app. No login. No gamification. Just a screen, a bell, and a shared responsibility.
It’s a design that’s quiet, participatory, and almost oddly meditative. A moment of civic pause, and a reminder that technology doesn't have to replace humans, it can simply invite them.
🕊️ 3. The Hargila Army — Bird Baby Showers and Conservation by Culture
I discovered the final story this year, while reading the TIME Women of the Year list. One name stood out: Dr. Purnima Devi Barman. Her title? Conservation biologist. Her superpower? Baby showers.
In Assam, India, the greater adjutant stork or Hargila was critically endangered. The birds are huge, scavenger-like, and often viewed as bad omens. Their nesting trees were being cut down. Eggs were destroyed. People wanted them gone.
Dr. Barman understood that conservation wouldn’t work unless it came from the community itself. So she did something brilliant: she turned bird conservation into a celebration.
She organized Hargila baby showers, complete with traditional songs, sweets, and rituals. Women in the villages began to see the storks not as pests, but as family. They started protecting nesting trees. Kids grew up calling themselves “Hargila siblings.”
“People don’t protect what they don’t value,” she told TIME. “We had to make the Hargila part of their identity.”
Her movement now called the Hargila Army has grown to over 10,000 women. It has helped double the number of stork nests and move the species from “critically endangered” to “endangered” on the IUCN Red List.
No devices, no software, just deep listening, cultural fluency, and a whole lot of joy.
What These Stories Teach Us
None of these solutions began with “Let’s build an app.” They began with a question:
“What makes people care?”
And the answers weren’t just digital (even if the means of distribution were), they were deeply human.
In Melbourne, it was a song too silly not to sing.
In Utrecht, it was a fish too quiet not to notice.
In Assam, it was a stork too misunderstood not to love.
Designers love to talk about MVPs, dashboards, flows, and systems. But human-first design asks something different: What is the most emotionally resonant, socially participatory, and joyfully weird way to solve this problem? This is what user delight truly means to me.
And Sometimes this leads to an app, sometimes it leads to a livestream, sometimes it leads to a bird-themed baby shower. But it always starts with people.
These stories and my recent rumination of them have shifted how I think about my design process.
I used to approach surveys and usability tests with a focus on efficiency get the feedback, synthesize the insights, fix the flows. But lately, I’ve found myself asking different questions. What would it look like to approach research with the same kind of joy, ritual, or curiosity that made these case studies so powerful?
This shift isn’t fully formed yet. But it’s made me pause before jumping into the usual frameworks. I’ve started noticing when people light up during interviews, not just when they get stuck. I’ve begun framing product evaluations less like a checklist and more like an exploration. Not everything needs to be optimized. sometimes it needs to be felt.
The fish doorbell, the bird baby shower, the jellybean deaths, they’ve nudged me toward a more human lens. One where design isn’t just about solving friction points, but about making space for emotion, participation, and maybe even a little absurdity.
I’m still figuring out what that looks like in practice. But this reflection has already changed what I notice. And that feels like a good place to start.