Good question Nate. I think starting with stories (not scenarios) and characters (not users) and leading with design, story tellers is a start. Looking at multiple paths for moving between idea and material, allowing for loops and swerves. Probably not allowing markets and engineering to lead the way they often do. And not even designing for markets because there can only be conservative, incremental movements. And that means doing many, many projects in a light-weight, very swift iterative approach with no clear visions of a final-final. So, that means — hone the skills necessary to work with ideas, listen to contervening ideas, get things done in 3, 30, 60 day cycles, enough to make a hundred “things” that can be shuttled around to gentle and rough “readers” who can parse the idea and give feedback and evolve the concept. Quick, fast, non-markets or “engineering possibility” driven design. Phew. Imagine what a small, crackerjack design team could do with a few or four million and four years time, just to spark a little innovation. A kind of bailout plan for stagnating innovation markets or whatever.

my point is not to sound contrarian but rather constructive. I was curious what specific examples existed of sites or technologies designed with a human approach as opposed to the other way around.

Indeed..time to get rid of the hyphen-computer thing..