Why Speed Isn’t Always an Asset in Technology
It wasn’t long ago that James Heywood, founder of the ALS Therapy Development Institute, observed, “Technology is moving faster than the research establishment.” Indeed, in a world of mindless scrolling made effortless by the simple movement of a finger, and heart rate monitoring now a fashionable daily-wear feature, modern technology has prioritized human convenience above all else; so much so that we can hardly keep up with it.
It is only gradually, whether we’re scrolling for the umpteenth hour, paying an electricity bill online, or filling yet another shopping cart on yet another e-commerce platform, that we begin to realize the dangerous gap between human needs and the technology tasked with solving real-world problems. In Low-and-Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), for example, well-intentioned tools often fail because they overlook cultural, economic, and infrastructural realities.
The Human-Centered Design Approach
The human-centered design philosophy emphasizes building technology around people’s needs, behaviors, and contexts. Pioneered by advocates like Don Norman, this approach sees design as a bridge between innovation and usability.
One clear lesson: prioritizing user experience over speed leads to more sustainable results. Unfortunately, many digital transformation projects fail — over 70% according to a 2022 McKinsey study — because they don’t align with user behavior or organizational culture.
But while within these evolving discourses surrounding the ‘purpose’ of tech-driven innovations we find relevant gaps within the many drawbacks associated with ‘slumping’ for authentic listening—to frontline workers, patients, teachers—we often forget the largest drawbacks that will hit us the hardest in the long run: the inefficiency of prioritizing speed over user insights, leading to spending more time later fixing something that doesn’t work—a two-way opportunity cost that gives us a choice between short-term shortcuts over long-term sustainability. The diagram below highlights some human-centered design approaches that can be employed at different points of a project.
Lessons from Low-and-Middle-Income Countries
Amidst iSprint’s work at the intersection of public health, education, and social impact where context matters deeply, we’ve come to see a pattern: tools well-intentioned for human ease tend to miss the mark in practice, particularly within the context of LMICs.
A famous example is the One Laptop Per Child initiative. While it aimed to foster self-learning among children in LMICs, it overlooked critical barriers like low teacher literacy and limited internet connectivity in rural areas. The result? A well-funded project that missed the mark because it didn’t design for context.
This is where inclusive technology design matters most. Without co-creation and local input, tech risks becoming digital imperialism, often disguising itself as a ‘savior’ complex, measuring success from the vantage point of funders in the Global North, rather than from the lived realities of those in the Global South. Take, for example, the fact that in many developing contexts, digital illiteracy is often coupled with a heightened fear of data surveillance.
Numbers can’t always capture the why behind user behavior. One co-design workshop found that midwives avoided using a reporting feature — not because it lacked value, but because it made them feel monitored. This is exactly the type of insight metrics alone would miss, but human-centered research can uncover.
Moving Forward: Building Equitable and Inclusive Technology
While it is practically impossible for there to be wholly objective in the design process of contemporary tech innovations, what is needed is a shift from general tech-driven ‘ethno-centralism’ that continues to center its ‘default’ user: literate, urban, digitally fluent, likely male, for the broader aim of bridging the digital divide between diverse user groups. According to the German Institute for Global and Area Studies, some countries in the Global South have less than 5% of adults able to perform basic digital tasks. When we design for the margins, we create technology that works better for everyone.
So where do we go from here? We will always face pressure to prioritize speed over depth — clean metrics over messy human realities. But the opportunity cost of rushing is high: spending more time and money later fixing technology that doesn’t work.
The future of human-centered technology means:
Slowing down to listen before designing.
Co-creating with communities, not just testing on them.
Using numbers wisely but never relying on them alone.
If we embrace this approach, we can shift from profit-driven design to purpose-driven innovation — and ensure technology serves people, not the other way around.