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

by Mike Monteiro

You avoid talking to your friends and family about your company and ethics because, well, your company is always in the news for their lack of regard for people’s privacy, data, and overall well-being.

There will always be designers willing to trick and manipulate people for a paycheck. (I hear Twitter is hiring!)

In 2014, Facebook ran an experiment on over 600,000 human beings using their service. Facebook filled those users’ newsfeed with overwhelmingly negative news to see if it had an effect on those users’ mental health. Facebook ran a human mental health experiment on its own users without their consent. Obviously anyone with mental health issues had no opportunity to opt out. Neither did anyone else. It was designed that way.3

We’re following the orders of unethical people.

We need to care much more about the effects of our work than the cleverness of our pixel positioning.

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.

We are not pixel pushers. We are gatekeepers.

Our profession needs to be willing to speak truth to power. We need to say no, ask why, and check receipts. We need to advocate for the people who aren’t in the room and stand up to those who are. That’s the job.

It’s easy to look confident when you know what you’re talking about. (To be clear, you should know what you’re talking about most of the time.) But letting people know that you’re confident enough to admit that you’re at a loss is when you beat the level boss. No one has all the answers, and pretending you do doesn’t make you look confident; it makes you look like a fool.

As long as you are a designer, you have a responsibility to make the world better for the rest of humanity.