We were designing relationships, not flows

Early in my career with identity technology, something became undeniable very quickly.

We were not designing for convenience or conversion. We were designing systems that mediated trust, consent, access, and legitimacy, often in situations where getting it wrong had serious consequences.

Failure was not confusion or drop-off. Failure was exclusion, mistrust, or harm.

Traditional UX logic began to show its limits. Flow efficiency did not guarantee understanding. Clarity of interface did not ensure dignity of experience. We were not designing flows. We were designing relationships, between people and systems, between individuals and institutions, between present actions and future consequences.

That realisation forced a shift.

I stopped designing from the screen outward. I began designing from the human realities underneath: how people experience power within systems, how trust is built and withdrawn, how consent is felt rather than captured, how recognition changes behaviour, how people avoid or resist when systems feel misaligned.

Design became less about interface and more about translation, taking complex human dynamics and giving them legible, respectful form within technology.

This permanently changed how I work.

I now treat design as a means of aligning human logic with system behaviour, ensuring that what a system does, what it signals, and how it feels to move through it are not in conflict.