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

by Mike Monteiro

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

Design is the intentional solution to a problem within a set of constraints.

Just as a rising tide affects all boats, taking a shit in the pool affects all swimmers.

“Beloveds, these are some bad, ugly, angry times. And I am so freaked out. Hatred has stolen the conversation. The poor are now voting against themselves. But politics is not about left or right. It’s about up and down. The few screwing the many.” —Molly Ivins, columnist, political commentator, badass

The world isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as it was designed to work. And we’re the ones who designed it. Which means we fucked up.

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.

Upton Sinclair so eloquently put it: It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

The boy kings of Silicon Valley love a good algorithm—they’ve designed some great ones over the years. But there are problems even the best math can’t solve.

“Social media has been described as more addictive than cigarettes and alcohol, and is now so entrenched in the lives of young people that it is no longer possible to ignore it when talking about young people's mental health issues.” Shirley Cramer, chief executive, Royal Society for Public Health

In the words of the late great Ann Richards, they were “born on third base and think they hit a triple.”

We need to value the consequences of our actions more than the cleverness of our ideas.

Allowing a twenty-year-old to amass $100K in debt without teaching them the skills they’ll need to help pay off that debt is criminal.

Design is not about expressing yourself. Design is not about following your dream. Design is not about becoming a creative. Design is about keeping people from doing terrible things to other people.

A design education needs to build fierce designers who are not afraid to stand up to the people and companies they work with. We need to build designers who understand their job is not to be a pair of hands, but to be society’s gatekeepers. We need to train designers who aren’t afraid to ask why and say no.

perpetuated by anyone who claims the mantle of “creative,” which is a self-loathing term that needs to be killed with fire.

Today’s designers need to be systems thinkers, experts in regulation, collaborators, communicators, and fearless.

At the scale we’re working, when we fuck up, we don’t just break code, we break people. We break relationships. We break civil discourse. The moment to slow down is here.

We are white men building tools for white men.

When you use your voice to question someone else’s humanity, you forfeit yours.

There’s no quicker way to destroy someone’s confidence than teaching them that what they’re saying isn’t as important as what you’re saying.

The people affected by our actions are always more important than our intent.

I believe the people coming up after us will do a better job than we did. I believe that, as a 51-year-old white male living in America, my job is to clear the path for the voices I’ve silenced either knowingly or unknowingly. I cannot be a good ally because I’ve benefitted too much from the world I was born into.

Earn your death by making room for the generation behind you.

We don’t get to stand in front of the raging dumpster fire we created and ask for a medal.

Ethics cannot be a side hustle.

in the words of the great John Lewis, make good trouble!

If you’re serious about making a social impact, your first question should be where are people getting screwed the most? Financial services. The medical industry. Education. Civil services. (Your city needs you!)

If you’re passing notes to the people on the outside, you’re not changing things from the inside. You’re a hostage.

there is nothing harder to change than company culture.

I get it. You like to make things. You became a designer because you enjoyed designing. I did too, but there’s more to this job than being happy someone is paying you to design something.

You are responsible for what you put into the world. You are responsible for the effect your work has on the world.

So, I get that you like making things, but making things at the expense of someone else’s freedom is fucked.

All of Silicon Valley is a revenge fantasy about getting picked last at dodgeball.

Sometimes merit needs a push. You can’t level a playing field without bringing in a few bulldozers.

Twitter makes money by getting you to fight with Nazis.

We’re strip-mining humanity for engagement and fracking the decency out of society because we’re working within a system of rewards that doesn’t give a damn about long-term effects, only short-term gains.

When monsters knock, we need to be the ones who knock back.

To design is to influence.

To design is to influence people. To design is to build new connections in people’s minds. To design is to build relationships where there previously weren’t any.

If you’ve hired me to do good work, I owe it to you and more importantly, the people that work is going to affect to do good work.

We need to advocate for the people who aren’t in the room and stand up to those who are. That’s the job.

Unless you walk into a situation willing to get fired for doing good work, you’re holding back.

Work like a scientist but present like a snake-charmer.

The best, most effective, way for you to effect change is to stay and fight. Persuade others. Present good solutions, and fight for them.

I’m just gonna call it a universal truth. Nazis were/are hateful fucks, and sabotaging their work isn’t just ethical, but is your duty as a good human being.

Sabotage is an ethical option when a better option isn’t available to you.

“I want to do something, but I really like getting this big fat paycheck.” Then no, sabotage isn’t ethical. It’s a way to justify the biweekly tug at the teat of unethical profit while wearing your Stay woke shirt to Sunday brunch.

When your labor is being used to unethical ends, you must put down your tools. When your labor is being used to spread inequality, you must put down your tools. When your tools are being used to take away people’s humanity, you must put down your tools.

The promise of the internet was that it was going to give voice to the voiceless, visibility to the invisible, and power to the powerless. That’s what originally excited me about it. That’s what originally excited a ton of people about it. It was supposed to be an engine of equality.

We failed. We failed because we were naive enough to believe everyone had the same goals we did. We failed because we underestimated greed. We failed because we didn’t pay attention to history. We failed because our definition of we wasn’t big enough.