Right now, everyone’s trying to create, innovate and experiment, and that’s a good thing. But with all that momentum, it’s easy to hit a tipping point. New tools, new platforms, new ways of working—when too many things roll out all at once, it stops feeling energizing and starts feeling overwhelming.
Teams today are flooded with possibilities, unsure what’s worth adopting and what’s hype. That kind of saturation makes it hard to move forward. People get stuck trying to decide what matters, and that indecision can lead to change fatigue, frustration, or even disengagement. People start thinking, “Wasn’t AI supposed to make things easier?” Instead, they’re navigating 30 different tools with no clear guidance. And each one adds complexity, introducing its own period of frustration, confusion, or resistance before teams begin to see value.
Consider the case of a Fortune 500 company that rolled out 17 AI tools in 12 months. Several teams launched AI-powered assistants across different departments, each with different names, interfaces, and functionality. Employees weren’t sure which assistant to use for what task. As a result, adoption dropped below 20%, and many users reverted to manual processes or email inquiries. A follow-up pulse check revealed that people felt more overwhelmed than empowered. By launching many tools quickly without integration or clear guidance, the company created friction, not progress.
Technology isn’t the issue—it’s how we’re using it. The focus tends to land on what’s technically possible, not whether it actually helps people. It’s like building a fast car without knowing who’s driving or what they need it for. If it doesn’t move people forward in a way that matters, it’s just noise.
That’s where end-user-centered design comes in. It shifts the focus to the people who will actually live with the solution. Adoption doesn’t happen just because something is technically brilliant. It happens when it meets a real need, in a way people actually want to use.
# A Human-Centered Design Approach
AI can compound problems rather than solving them, especially when each rollout adds another tool, another login, and another demand on users’ time. That leads to resistance rather than adoption.
The anxiety doesn’t stop at complexity. When conversations shift too quickly to automation and replacement, employees start to see AI as a threat. Even if the intention is to enhance human capability, a poorly communicated rollout can trigger fear and resistance. If the narrative around AI skips over the value it adds to human work, people naturally question its purpose.
To change this narrative, leaders can embrace a human-centered design approach grounded.
To learn what the key steps are, head over to Techstrong.ai to read the rest of the article.
