Designing for the Greater Good
Before I got into UX design, I assumed it was just apps and websites. I had no idea how far the discipline could reach — or that it could be used for the greater good.
My first UX course, Design for the 21st Century with Don Norman through the Interaction Design Foundation (IxDF), changed that. I expected new tools or trending practices. Instead, I got something better.
We started with the United Nations' 17 Sustainable Development Goals — no poverty, good health, quality education, gender equality, and more. I already knew good UX had to be accessible. I hadn't considered that it could help solve global problems.
Copyright United Nations
For our project, we each picked one Goal to tackle. My instinct was to feel overwhelmed — my own recycling barely dents the world's environmental problems, so what could I really do? But that's the wrong scale to think at. Complex problems need systems, not individual heroics.
I chose Zero Hunger, and instead of a global fix, I went local. Local is where things actually get done, and what works in one place rarely transfers to another.
The concept: a grocery delivery system for seniors in Houston's Third Ward, a predominantly Black, low-income neighborhood. I focused on seniors because getting to a grocery store is often genuinely hard for them — no car, arthritis, no way to carry bags home on a bus.
H-E-B, a Texas grocery chain, already places stores in food deserts like the Third Ward and offers delivery — but for a $7.95 fee. On a fixed income, that fee is the whole barrier.
My design: seniors order groceries through a dedicated app. H-E-B batches the week's orders and delivers them free, in bulk, to a neighborhood church. Volunteers then handle the last mile to each person's door.
I designed the app itself to a level that could realistically be built. But the app was the easy part — the real work is the system around it: H-E-B has to agree, a church has to agree, volunteers have to show up.
That's the lesson Don Norman kept returning to: you solve problems by working with systems, not around them.
Two takeaways stuck with me most — UX and design thinking can genuinely help address global problems, and systems thinking is what makes that possible.
I've since taken two more IxDF courses and two masterclasses, and I recommend them without reservation. Members get unlimited courses and $5 masterclasses. Use my link for 3 free months when you sign up for an annual membership.
