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

by Mike Monteiro

(To be fair, not even in my wildest dreams did I think even those dirtbags would be okay normalizing fascism to make that happen. Yet here we are.)

Every human being on this planet is obligated to do their best to leave this planet in better shape than we found it. Everyone on the planet is obligated to respect every other human being on this planet.

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

Throughout their entire career, a designer seeks to learn. That means confronting what they do not know. It means listening to other people’s experiences. It means welcoming and encouraging people who come from diverse backgrounds, diverse cultures. It means making space at the table for people whom society has historically kept down.

There are two words every designer needs to feel comfortable saying: “no” and “why.”

The current generation of designers have spent their careers learning

We need to slow down and measure what our work is doing out there in the world. We need to measure impact on the people whose lives we’re affecting. Then, we need to design things that improve the lives of the people who make them and the people who use them; design things which have a positive impact on society at large.

you’re hiring someone who performs a service, not a servant. There’s a difference. I’m not there to do your bidding, I’m there to solve a problem or reach a goal that we agreed upon.

My city is a fucking mess. My country is a fucking mess. The internet is a fucking mess. But in none of those cases is the whole answer to look for efficiencies. We need to celebrate the differences. Celebrate the reasons the metro stops aren’t all the same. Celebrate the crooked streets. Celebrate the different voices. Celebrate the different food smells. Understand that other people like things you don’t, and you might like things they don’t. And it’s all cool! That’s what makes this city, and all cities, a blast. When all these amazing people, some of whom we don’t understand at all, go online, they are going to behave as inefficiently in there as they do out there. That is awesome. Your job, the glorious job you signed up for when you said you wanted to be a designer, is to support all of these people. To make sure none of these incredible voices get lost. And to fight against those who see that brilliant cacophony as a bug and not the greatest feature of all time.

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

It takes more than guts. It takes knowing what questions to ask. It takes knowing how to test the effects of the product. It takes knowing how to build a good argument. And it takes seeing yourself as an equal stakeholder in the product. It takes seeing yourself as a gatekeeper.

New skills for schools to teach designers

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

We need to train designers who aren’t afraid to ask why and say no.

I’ve seen plenty of creative people’s careers derail because they couldn’t manage their shit. They couldn’t present their work effectively They couldn’t speak about project goals. They couldn’t elicit or respond to feedback. They didn’t know to ask why, and they were afraid to say no. I want you to manage your shit.