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

by Mike Monteiro

We are so fucked. In fact, we are so fucked, it may already be too late for this book. By

We are so fucked. In fact, we are so fucked, it may already be too late for this book. By the time you read this, Greenland may have melted, causing the world’s oceans to rise by twenty feet. By the time you read this, everyone in the United States may be dead in a gunfight. By the time you read this, some idiot country may have launched a bomb at another idiot country. Facebook may have accidentally released everyone’s private information into the public sphere, Twitter leadership may be getting measured for their new Hugo Boss uniforms, and Silicon Valley may be lobbying Congress to just make women illegal. In which case, nothing in this book will matter.

We designed the combustion engine that led to global warming (climate change deniers can just stop reading right now). We designed the guns that kill school children. We designed shitty interfaces to protect our private information. We designed the religions that pitted us against one another. We designed social networks without any way of dealing with abuse or harassment.

Should we survive the current clusterfuck by the very slimmest of margins, this might be a good time to ask ourselves how we got here, what our role was in getting here, and what our role will be in making sure we don’t get here again. That’s what this book is for.

Should we survive the current clusterfuck by the very slimmest of margins, this might be a good time to ask ourselves how we got here, what our role was in getting here, and what our role will be in making sure we don’t get here again.

If you work at a nonprofit, great. I love you. Stay there. Help everyone get clean water and free goats.

The goal of this book is to help you do the right thing in environments designed to make it easier to do the wrong thing.

The goal of this book is to help you do the right thing in environments designed to make it easier to do the wrong thing.

If defending the world from monsters doesn’t get you just a little bit excited, this might not be the right book for you.

I intend to show you that 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.

As the great Victor Papanek once said, “You are responsible for what you put into the world. And you are responsible for the effects those things have upon the world.”

As the great Victor Papanek once said, “You are responsible for what you put into the world. And you are responsible for the effects those things have upon the world.”

My vocabulary is blessedly limited and I’ve never found a fifty dollar word that couldn’t be replaced by a nickel word.

My vocabulary is blessedly limited and I’ve never found a fifty dollar word that couldn’t be replaced by a nickel word.

The world isn’t usually changed by special people. It’s changed by ordinary people who take it upon themselves to take a stand because they’re trying to lead ordinary lives and something stupid gets in their way.

The internet is a harassment and abuse factory in part because designers implemented things they shouldn’t—like Facebook’s ad network that allows advertisers to target by race, and because companies didn’t implement things they should have—like Twitter’s failure to deal with abuse.

The internet is a harassment and abuse factory in part because designers implemented things they shouldn’t—like Facebook’s ad network that allows advertisers to target by race, and because companies didn’t implement things they should have—like Twitter’s failure to deal with abuse.

writing this book is placing a bet on hope.

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

You can’t fix a cake once it’s been baked.

If you want to know how women would use something you’re designing, get a woman on your design team. They’re not extinct. We don’t need to study them. We can hire them!

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

We are gatekeepers. Nothing should be making it through the gate without our labor and our counsel. We are responsible for the effects of our work once it makes it out into the world. What passes through that gate carries our seal of approval. It carries our name. We are the defense against monsters. Sure, everyone remembers Frankenstein’s monster, but they call it by his maker’s name. The worst of what we create will outlive us.