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

by Mike Monteiro

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.