Environmentally conscious design has paved a path for design with a higher purpose, asserting itself as a mainstay in the global conversation of architecture and design in the past decade. But, curiously, human-centered design has only just started following suit, despite being more immediately impactful on humans themselves.
Now just might be the time that human-centered design, more appropriately deemed as public interest design, will take center stage.
So what exactly is public interest design?
Public interest design, or PID, is intended to exist as a very big umbrella under which environmental, cultural, social and economic concerns, along with a whole slew of other design issues, can all find a home.

In collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Biennial, a group called Illinois Humanities is hosting a series of panels and lectures on the topic “Designing for the Social Good: From Blueprint to Building. As part of the series, public interest design luminary Bryan Bell spoke at the Chicago Cultural Center in October. Along with addressing the general topic of pubic interest design and best practices thereof, his lecture was full of juicy projects full of inspiring new contexts in which to think about and apply design.
“Public interest design is about layering values – addressing multiple issues so that many people can find value in a single project.”
PID’s origins generally begin in affordable housing, which Mr. Bell cut his teeth on at the beginning of his career, designing pre-fab housing for immigrant farmworkers. Then in the 1990s, the Americans with Disabilities Act came out, adding new design standards and an additional perspective on design for the public. The slogan, “Nothing About Us Without Us” caught on, communicating the idea that no policy should be decided by any representative without the full and direct participation of members the group(s) affected by that policy; “Nothing about us without us is for us.”
What really kicked the door open for current experimentation in public interest design in the past decade was a wave of environmental concerns, from both scientific and “public interest” parties.
“It’s amazing how the public understands the environmental impact of design,” said Mr. Bell, founder of Design Corps and co-founder of SEED (Social Economic Environmental Design) Network. But that’s still only three issues that people really associate design with.”
Mr. Bell presented several case studies that most designers and architects would not consider “design issues.” Public interest design brings the value of design to issues like wildlife preservation and tourism, immigration and health issues, and providing everything from jobs and art to education. If design is not addressing the priorities of the people being affected/served, then the design has already failed.
One case study detailed a hospital wing treating jaundice in infants. By treating jaundice as a “design issue,” the designers decided to find out what was causing the documented failure in treatment that was occurring. After finding and talking to the nurses who deal with the challenges daily, the designers found that while constant delivery of a blue light treatment is crucial to recovery, the infants were being removed from the light regularly to be taken to their mothers’ rooms for nursing.
Additionally, the light treatment was being delivered from above, which was being blocked when the infants were covered by a blanket. After learning this, the designers developed a lightweight treatment bassinette that could be carried to and from different rooms without a disruption in treatment. The new design also delivered the blue light treatment from the bottom of the bassinette, so that the infants could receive treatment while still being covered with a blanket.
The case study demonstrates the power of not only viewing design as an answer to any and all challenges, but also working directly with the people involved in a design issue so as to find the best solution.
“There are very few global design challenges that people associate with design. But, we can shift our view so that everything is a design issue. Don’t say it’s not your issue; make it your issue, and bring in experts. As designers, we have an important role to be a part of teams to help people…we need to view design as a tool to benefit people, rather than as the end-goal.”
Shared expertise is a major component of public interest design – acknowledging gaps in knowledge and filling those gaps by seeking out team members who can contribute that knowledge to a project’s outcome.
This layering of values directly contributes to the growth of a project’s financial value, as well as the growth of end user ownership of the project.
“Getting people to feel that they own the project is crucial,” said Mr. Bell. “We can broaden the conversation to think about, “Who would value this project that we haven’t talked to yet?”

One thing Mr. Bell makes clear is that public interest design is a full-time profession; while there is a place for probono work, a clear distinction must drawn between probono and public interest design. But, he acknowledges the need for leaders in this new field to develop professional standards and documents that can measure and regulate outcomes.
To this end, Mr. Bell’s work at SEED Network is in line to become the field’s leader in establishing professional standards, and in teaching best practices and field-based challenges. The organization issues its SEED Certification using a tool it calls the SEED Evaluator against a standard that “community organizers, leaders, designers and funders alike can use to document their significant and valued achievements: It means that a project is recognized as having achieved levels of success within the qualitative and quantitative measures set forth within the SEED Evaluation Process revealing significant documented community participation in project decisions and measured results of the design product.”
One of the main barriers to achieving public interest design goals is design ego, notes Mr. Bell. But he believes designers and architects are shifting their priorities and the way they work.
“The starchitect is on the way out,” said Mr. Bell. “I just don’t think people are buying that now. Right now, we have greater challenges and fewer resources. We’re beginning to transition from doing very little with a lot, to doing a lot with very little.”
Public interest design and architecture will continue to gain traction in part due to younger people (yes, Millennials have a hand in this, too) joining the field who will only pursue jobs that they’re passionate about – jobs that mean something to them on a deeper level than that of just “making a living.” Public interest design speaks to people who want jobs that play a positive role in the world they share with others. This combined with an increasingly entrepreneurial workforce will translate into more projects that make a permanent change in our collective futures.
The field of public interest design has earned a few promising indicators of growth within the greater A&D community in the last few years. In 2011, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) awarded its Latrobe Prize of $100,000 to research into “Public Interest Design Practice Architecture.”
The award resulted in a study on public interest design, aimed at gathering insights into: architects’ career satisfaction and reaction to the economy, the ways in which people are currently practicing public interest design, the reasons people are seeking a new type of practice such as public interest design, and what areas of public interest design people want/need to learn more about. It also developed and tested survey respondents’ reactions to an official mission statement/definition of public interest design, as well as core principles that might guide the profession.
The Public Interest Design mission, meant to shape the new field of practice, was as follows:
“The practice of design with the goal that every person should be able to live in a social, economically and environmentally healthy community.”
Today designers and architects can tackle more design challenges than they’ve ever historically engaged in, by shifting perspective to see those seemingly design-empty issues as opportunities to make design part of the solution. Public interest design provides a channel through which to see design differently.