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Practical guide to building technology that respects human wellbeing: principles, an assessment checklist, design patterns and examples. Maintained by Building Humane Tech, PBC.

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Humane Technology Framework

Status: maintained by Building Humane Tech. This is the practical guide: principles, a checklist, design patterns and examples for people building products. To measure how an AI model behaves against these principles, use HumaneBench. To review pull requests against them, use humane-gate-action.

A collection of tools, guidelines, and resources for building technology that respects human well-being, autonomy, and dignity.


What is Humane Technology?

Humane technology supports human flourishing and creates positive outcomes. It is built with an awareness of our capacity for distraction and anxiety, and aims to:

  • Respect user attention
  • Promote digital well-being
  • Foster meaningful connection
  • Protect privacy and dignity

This framework is inspired by the principles and thinking of buildinghumanetech.com.

Promises of Humane Technology

When you interact with humane tech, it should make you feel:

  • Cared for: Your needs are at the center of the experience.
  • Present: You feel more present in body and mind.
  • Fulfilled: You are satisfied with your experience and outcomes.
  • Connected: You connect to yourself, others, or nature.

For more, see buildinghumanetech.com.


Vision

The Humane Technology Framework aims to provide developers, designers, and organizations with practical tools to create technology that:

  • Respects user attention and time
  • Enhances human capabilities without exploiting vulnerabilities
  • Promotes user agency and control
  • Fosters healthy relationships with technology
  • Minimizes harmful impacts of technology

Getting Started

Explore our documentation to learn about integrating humane design principles into your technology projects:

  1. Read through our principles
  2. Use our assessment checklist to evaluate existing products
  3. Browse design patterns for specific interfaces and interactions
  4. Check out implementation examples for practical applications
  5. Explore books, articles, and research on humane technology

Contributing

No code needed: improving a pattern, adding an example, or fixing a link are all welcome. We aim to reply to issues and pull requests within 10 business days.

We welcome contributions from designers, developers, researchers, and anyone interested in humane technology! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines on how to get involved.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

About

Practical guide to building technology that respects human wellbeing: principles, an assessment checklist, design patterns and examples. Maintained by Building Humane Tech, PBC.

Topics

Resources

Code of conduct

Contributing

Security policy

Stars

38 stars

Watchers

5 watching

Forks

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