Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It

by Mike Monteiro

I am writing this in 2019. I have no doubt that if Victor were still alive, and I sat him down and told him how magnificently we’d fucked up the internet, Victor would justifiably lose his shit.

I was once called a fascist for suggesting that designers should have a code of ethics. It should freak you out that gangsters can agree on a code of behavior but designers can’t. Crime is more organized than design. About a year ago, I decided to write a code of ethics. It’s open-sourced. Take it. Make it better. Treat it like a living document:

the way you do your job and handle yourself professionally affects everyone in that community. Just as a rising tide affects all boats, taking a shit in the pool affects all swimmers.

Never throw another designer under the bus to advance your own agenda. This includes public redesigns of someone else’s work, spec work, unsolicited work, and plagiarism.

Twitter saved itself from bankruptcy by allowing fascists to run free and by allowing a seventy-two year-old racist xenophobe to break every single one of its rules because he was bringing

them engagement. In 2018, it paid off financially. Twitter finally had its first profitable quarter!14 Jack Dorsey, who is technically an invertebrate, was vindicated.

The GDPR isn’t an outlier. It’s the first big step toward a more government-regulated internet. And we don’t get to complain about it because we had an opportunity to regulate ourselves and we didn’t.

In some cases, the companies started out fine, and made the decisions to take ethical shortcuts, usually because of a lethal combination of market forces and unethical staff (including leadership). In Twitter’s case, we can almost pinpoint the exact second this happened: It’s when they measured a Donald Trump tweet that broke their guidelines against the engagement it was getting, decided to leave it, and started defending that decision.

traditional Chinese qipao dress. Cultural appropriation? You bet. Bad taste? Without a doubt. So, why am I putting it in the ordinary column? Because eighteen-year-olds do stupid things.

On September 17, 2018, the New Yorker published a devastating profile on Mark Zuckerberg, written by Evan Osnos, titled Can Mark Zuckerberg Fix Facebook Before It Breaks Democracy.3 I encourage you to find and read the whole

There’s a concept called an Overton window, which describes what we’re willing to discuss or tolerate over time—or as the window opens or closes. What was once unthinkable (window closed) such as putting children in cages or constant surveillance or a president breaking with standards of decorum, slowly becomes policy (window open) as we get used to new behavior. Now, this isn’t always a negative. Overton’s window can also be applied to things such as gay marriage, black presidents, and legal weed, all of which were once unthinkable, even in my lifetime, and have come to pass.

I can either go along with what I’m being told to do, which would be the unethical thing to do, because I have evidence that Alex Jones is harassing people and has indeed broken our rules. Or, I can do the ethical thing, fight to do my job, and have Alex Jones banned. Except… except… I have a small child with a health problem and she’s on my insurance, which my employer

provides. I cannot fault someone for choosing their kid in that situation. The problem here isn’t someone making an unethical decision, although they are. The problem is the system which puts a worker in that position.

We must be free to do our jobs, and to do them as they need to be done without our family’s healt...

Bring up irrelevant issues as frequently as possible. Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision. To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them undeserved promotions. Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done. Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.

It was supposed to be an engine of equality.

Suddenly, everyone could tell their story. Suddenly, everyone could sing their song. Suddenly, that one weird kid in Helena, Montana could find another weird kid just like them in Bakersfield, California and they could talk and know they weren’t alone. Suddenly, we didn’t need anybody’s permission to publish. We put our stories and songs and messages and artwork where the world could find them. For a while it was beautiful, it was messy, and it was punk as fuck. We all rolled up our sleeves and helped to build it.

The people who would sack you in a heartbeat to improve their quarterly earnings report are not your community, and they don’t deserve your allegiance. When companies design their workplaces to mimic the trappings of community (many tech workers go directly from college campuses to corporate campuses, making the mental mapping that much easier), they’re taking all those good feelings that you have about community and transferring it to their own ends. They’re buying your loyalty with corporate haircuts, weekend trips to Tahoe, and a therapist within walking distance of your desk—in an office where your manager can see who walks in and out.

When people start dying, we regulate industries and we license practitioners.

Design is the solution to a problem, but that problem is never your self-esteem.

I don’t give a good fuck whether you’re a Democrat, a Republican, a Tory, a Socialist, a Liberal, a Conservative, a Mason, a Whig, or whether you take your orders directly from L’il Wayne albums played backward. As long as you are a designer, you have a responsibility to make the world better for the rest of humanity. If you are a designer, you are a human being first. It is your job to stop those that would denigrate humanity for their own selfish benefit.