Framework · coined by Luana Micheau · first cited 2024

Care-Conscious Design

Care-Conscious Design is a design approach that treats care, cognitive load, and human biology as first-class system variables — not edge cases, not accessibility bolt-ons.

Generic product design assumes an ideal user: continuous attention, unlimited time, uninterrupted cognition, average biology, no care responsibilities. Care-Conscious Design starts from the opposite: the user is interrupted, embodied, distributed, and carrying invisible load.

The consequence is not a redesign of decoration — it is a redesign of default state.

The five care-conscious lenses

1. Interruption Blindness — where the product punishes users for having lives.
2. Care Infrastructure Collapse Invisibility — where continuous availability is priced in as free.
3. Care Theatre vs Care Consciousness — where the interface performs care instead of practising it.
4. Ayni Violation — where the interaction breaks reciprocity (borrowed from Andean cosmic-balance frameworks).
5. Numerical Exclusion — where dyscalculic and low-numeracy users are treated as user error rather than design failure.

Trauma-aware patterns inside care

Trauma-aware interaction is not a separate product line. It lives inside Care-Conscious Design: safe exit, consentful reveal, and absence over silence. Trauma-Informed UI as a peer framework and design-system claim has been retired.

• Safe exit — the way out stays visible; exposure risk can be reduced without justification theatre.
• Consentful reveal — sensitive media and data stay covered until the user opts in.
• Absence over silence — missing values are named as missing; the product does not invent, then explain.

Field chapter for cognition under interruption: Care Under Load.