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

by Mike Monteiro

We need to fear the consequences of our work more than we love the cleverness of our ideas.

When you are hired to design something, it is for your expertise. Your job is not just to produce that work but to evaluate the impact of that work. Your job is to relay the impact of that work to your client or employer.

If you are part of a team, your team should strive to reflect those people—even better your team should include those people. The more a team includes the audience it is problem-solving for, the more thoroughly it can solve those problems.

Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion.

For years we referred to people who weren’t crucial to our products’ success as “edge cases.” We were marginalizing people. We were making a decision that there were people in the world whose problems weren’t worth solving.

They are not edge cases. They are human beings, and we owe them our best work.

You are part of a professional community, and the way you do your job and handle yourself professionally affects everyone in that community.

If you work for free, the designer behind you will be expected to do the same.

There are two words every designer needs to feel comfortable saying: “no” and “why.” These words are the foundation of what we do. They’re the foundation of our ethical framework. If we cannot ask “why,” we lose the ability to judge whether the work we’re doing is ethical. If we cannot say “no,” we lose the ability to stand and fight. We lose the ability to help shape the thing we’re responsible for.

We have a skill-set that people need in order to get things made, and that skill-set includes an inquiring mind and a strong spine.

While I don’t doubt there were a few people trying to right the ship from the inside, you simply cannot correct a problem that management doesn’t see as a problem.