Are we reaching the limits of what human-centered and user-centered design can cope with? Developing new design methodologies and tools to unlock the potentials of data technologies such as the Internet of Things, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for the everyday job of design is necessary but not sufficient. There is now a need to fundamentally question what happens when human-centered design is unable to effectively give form to technology, why this might be the case, and where we could look for alternatives.

Design history tends to focus on designers and design outcomes, primarily objects. In contrast, historical accounts and analyses of designing are rare. This paper argues for the need of design histories that also address the origins of our design methods with respect to contexts, values and ideas in order to understand what these actually bring to the contemporary design situation. To illustrate what such a historical approach to design methods might bring, we present a study on the origins of Scandinavian user-centered design. In particular, we discuss the Home Research Institute's (HFI) development of methods for investigating and reforming everyday life and domestic work in mid-1940s Sweden.