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

by Mike Monteiro

This book is for everyone who designs things, whether they claim the title or not. 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. They should read this book.

Knowing this and ignoring it is also a political act, albeit a cowardly one.

“You are responsible for what you put into the world. And you are responsible for the effects those things have upon the world.”

Design for the Real World

I owe it to Victor to write a book as angry as his, and what I lack in his academic precision, I will make up with more anger and as much hope and love as I can muster.

I am telling you, we can change the world because there are more of us regular people than there are of them. More importantly, they cannot design the things they imagine without regular people like us. Our labor is what makes us special, and what gives us power. When we turn that labor into a force for making the world better for the largest number of people possible instead of using it to make a few people even richer than they already are? Then, and only then, we may be actually able to change the world. Then we get to go home and live ordinary

The work we do has become astonishingly complex in the last twenty years. I don’t just mean technically complex, that was the easy part. I mean ethically complex. Our field has matured and we need to mature along with it.

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

When you do work that depends on a need for income disparity or class distinctions to succeed, you are failing at your job as a human being, and therefore as a designer.

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

An object that is designed to harm people cannot be said to be well-designed, no matter how aesthetically pleasing it might be, because to design it well is to design it to harm others.

Nothing a totalitarian regime designs is well-designed because it has been designed by a totalitarian regime.

we’re not hired to just dig a ditch, but to evaluate the economic, sociological, and ecological impact of that ditch. If the ditch fails those tests, it’s our job to destroy the shovels.

Asking ourselves why we are making something is an infinitely better question than asking ourselves whether we can make it.

If your work is so fragile that it can’t withstand criticism, it shouldn’t exist. The time to kick the tires on what you’ve designed comes before those tires hit the road.

The more a team includes the audience it is problem-solving for, the more thoroughly it can solve those problems.

Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion. I’ve seen all-male all-white teams taking “empathy workshops” to see how women think.

They are not edge cases. They are human beings, and we owe them our best work.

You are part of a professional community, and the way you do your job and handle yourself professionally affects everyone in that community. Just as a rising tide affects all boats, taking a shit in the pool affects all swimmers.

A designer seeks to build their professional community, not divide it.

A designer welcomes a diverse and competitive field.

We must make space for marginalized voices to be heard in the profession. Diversity leads to better outcomes and solutions. Diversity leads to better design.

Not hiring someone because they’re not a good cultural fit is either elitist, racist, or sexist, or all three.

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.

Every single one of those examples above could’ve been stopped by enough people asking “why,” saying “no,” or a combination of both.

We are gatekeepers. Nothing should be making it through the gate without our labor and our counsel.

Sure, everyone remembers Frankenstein’s monster, but they call it by his maker’s name. The worst of what we create will outlive us.

When we move fast and break things and those things get bigger and bigger, the rubble falls everywhere, destroying communities and the rising dust blots out the sun.

Twitter saved itself from bankruptcy by allowing fascists to run free and by allowing a seventy-two year-old racist xenophobe to break every single one of its rules because he was bringing them engagement.

Twitter finally had its first profitable quarter!14 Jack Dorsey, who is technically an invertebrate, was vindicated.

Every single employee working at Twitter in the last few years saw exactly where it was headed—if they didn’t, it’s because they weren’t looking.

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

For the record, these aren’t answers I expect designers to come up with by themselves, but through asking questions and working collaboratively.

I asked him how he justified keeping Donald Trump on Twitter. I asked him how he justified not banning known white supremacists like David Duke and Mike Cernovich. In both cases, he gave me the free speech spiel he has memorized.

There was going to be a magical algorithm that took care of everything. He didn’t say magical. That’s my take.

Jack’s main priority was making sure he couldn’t be accused of having made a decision. His obsession with remaining impartial has made him impotent to act, even on the side of decency. He wants to be able to cast blame on an algorithm, rather than his own actions. That way he wouldn’t have any blood on his hands.

Let’s start by amplifying the voices of those who’ve been silenced, not protecting the voices of those who’ve silenced them. A system that protects bullies isn’t a system we should be putting our labor into.

An algorithm is not a spine.

Intentionally pulling the plug on someone who’s trolling women on your service is a decision. It requires agency, leadership, and a point of view.

By the way, I offered to walk over and turn off Trump’s account myself. Jack didn’t take me up on it.

Last time I was at my folks’ house, my dad made a salad. Told me everything in it came from his garden. “These tomatoes are delicious dad.” “Best fucking tomatoes you ever ate.” They were indeed.

“You may be hiring us and that may be your name on the check, but we do not work for you. We’re coming in to solve a problem, because we believe it needs to be solved and it’s worth solving. But we work for the people being affected by that problem. Our job is to look out for them because they’re not in the room. And we will under no circumstances design anything that puts those people at risk.”

One, you don’t want me designing at your level, you want me designing at mine. That means you don’t get to pull the strings, I do. Two, 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.

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.

Sadly, Uber is not an exception, but the rule and aspiration in Silicon Valley. 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.

John Rawls proposed an idea for determining the ethics of a situation, he called it a veil of ignorance. He later expanded on the idea in his book A Theory of Justice.

It’s very simple: when designing something, imagine that your relationship to that system gets determined after you’ve made it. For example, if you’re designing a system of government that allows slavery, you might end up being enslaved. If you’re designing a ride-sharing service, you might end up as the driver or the rider.

Designing with a veil of ignorance in place increases the odds that what we’re designing is just, and it also increases the chances that we’re not destroying the ecosystem that benefits us.

What we need to worry about isn’t unethical industries. It’s unethical decisions made over time because of ill-conceived motivations.

Well, every place you work has someone responsible for making sure the work you’re doing is ethically sound. I’ll give you a minute to figure out who it is.