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

by Mike Monteiro

We designed a financial incentives system that would lead Mark Zuckerberg to assert what’s good for the world isn’t necessarily good for Facebook; and lead Jack Dorsey to believe engagement was a more important metric than safety. Either by action or inaction, through fault or ignorance, we have designed the world to behave exactly as it’s behaving right now. These are our chickens coming home to roost.

If you’re affecting how a product works in any way whatsoever—you’re designing. For example, a product manager who allocates half the resources your team requested to finish a project is most definitely having an impact on the final design. They’re designing.

design is a political act. What we choose to design and more importantly, what we choose not to design and, even more importantly, who we exclude from the design process—these are all political acts.

It should freak you out that gangsters can agree on a code of behavior but designers can’t. Crime is more organized than design.

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

A designer uses their expertise in the service of others without being a servant. Saying no is a design skill. Asking why is a design skill. Rolling your eyes and staying quiet is not. Asking ourselves why we are making something is an infinitely better question than asking ourselves whether we can make it.

The role of criticism, when given appropriately, is to evaluate and improve work. Criticism is a gift. It makes good work better. It keeps bad work from seeing the light of day.

Just as a rising tide affects all boats, taking a shit in the pool affects all swimmers. If you are dishonest with a client or employer, the designer behind you will pay the price. If you work for free, the designer behind you will be expected to do the same.

A designer takes time for self-reflection. No one wakes up one day designing to throw their ethics out the window. It happens slowly, one slippery slope at a time. It’s a series of small decisions that might even seem fine at the time, and before you know it you’re designing a filtering UI for the Walmart online gun shop.

How has become more important than why. How fast can we make this? How can we grab the most market share? How can we beat our competitors to market?

When we move fast, we break things. It’s one thing to break a database, but when that database holds the keys to intimate relationships and the names of two thousand caged babies, the database isn’t the only thing that breaks.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

How is it free speech when it silences so many? I’m all for protecting free speech. Let’s start by amplifying the voices of those who’ve been silenced, not protecting the voices of those who’ve silenced them.

Once Uber’s goal moved from providing a car-sharing service to using a car-sharing service to make themselves and their investors rich, the delicate balance between drivers, riders, and Uber was destroyed.

Uber set out to build a tool that democratized access to cars. It ended up building a tool that further impoverished the poor. The service model was fine, but the financial model it used for growth could only ever be as ethical as the people who strove to benefit the most.

Take a bunch of entitled white boys, give them a ton of money, fill them with the fear of the money running out, and you’ve created a perfect recipe for inexperienced people making really bad short-term decisions that have a tendency to fuck everything up. (To be fair, in Travis’ defense, he did have the experience. He’s just a dick.)

Any system eventually bends to the ethics of those designing it, but also to those investing in it, because they have as much of a hand in designing a product as anyone, sometimes more. When the credo of the people making the tool is “I got mine, fuck you,” the system reflects that.

So the next time you’re in the company cafeteria and someone’s going on about disruption, as they enjoy their lovingly prepared locally-sourced meat—ask them why they feel safe eating it. Ask them how they’re sure their meal is maggot-free or that it hasn’t been sitting in a stockyard under a blazing summer sun for a week. Turns out, we’re all in favor of regulations when it comes to what we shovel into our mouth. Not so much when we’re spewing ideas about disrupting the cities we live in.

Today’s design students don’t need help with their self-image any more so than any other students. Creativity can’t be the cornerstone of a design foundation anymore. We need to teach students the responsibilities of their craft, and it needs to be done at the foundational level. We need to value the consequences of our actions more than the cleverness of our ideas.

Design schools aren’t training their students how to have those conversations. Designers aren’t going to win these conversation while they see themselves as special creative unicorns.

The biggest problem, by far, is they confuse solving design problems with personal expression.

Teaching a designer to be creative without teaching them ethics is akin to a medical school teaching a surgeon how to open up a torso without teaching them how internal organs work.

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.

I have no doubt that the first “designer” ever hired in Silicon Valley was hired to do a skin job. “We’ve built a thing. It looks like shit. Make it not look like shit.” It’s a bit like asking someone to turn a folding chair into a mid-century lounge chair. I can duct tape a pillow to the seat, but the actual opportunity to design any comfort into that chair is long past.

“Anyone who influences what the design becomes is the designer. This includes developers, PMs, even corporate legal. All are the designers.”

You cannot not design. The early engineers of Silicon Valley were, in fact, designing things. James Liang was hired by Volkswagen as an engineer. This doesn’t change the fact that he designed the tool that landed him in jail. Engineers design things all the time. What a professional designer brings to the act is intention. But in order to do that, the designer needs to behave intentionally. Designers are dead. Long live design.

All the white boys in the room, even with the best of intentions, will only ever know what it’s like to make decisions as a white boy. They will only ever have the experiences of white boys. This is true of anyone. You will design things that fit within your own experiences.

Twitter never built in a way to deal with harassment because none of the people designing it had ever been harassed, so it didn’t come up. Twitter didn’t build in a way to deal with threats because none of the people designing it had ever gotten a death threat. It didn’t come up. Twitter didn’t build in a way to deal with stalking because no one on the team had ever been stalked. It didn’t come up. That’s not to say those things don’t happen to white boys. They do, but very rarely.

As Twitter grew, it became harder and harder to go back and fix the foundation that was now propping up a towering inferno of garbage. At this point, abuse and harassment are as much a part of the Twitter experience as retweets and faves.

The idea that every voice is worth being amplified is core to Twitter’s philosophy. Theoretically, I agree with that, but when theory hits reality, the results aren’t always pretty. Because the reality is that some of those voices are using their augmentation to silence others. When you use your augmented right to question someone else’s right to live, love, and/or pray as they see fit—you lose the right to that augmentation.