Ruined by design is the perfect book for anyone who is looking to challenge their knowledge about design, tech, and the ethical responsibilities of those of us who work within them.
I discovered Mike Monteiro’s writing on Medium earlier this year, and he has quickly become one of my favorite people to read and get outraged with. Ruined by design is the perfect book for anyone who is looking to challenge their knowledge about design, tech and “the industry” and question everything from how the system is set up to our own personal responsibility as designers.
Mike Monteiro’s Designer Code of Ethics has become a guide for how I do my work, my approach to design and my responsibility as a designer, how I see my work and this book explores the reasons behind this code of ethics in depth.
The book’s introduction presents the code of ethics in context. As a preamble to the first section, he goes into how, contrary to what popular opinion would say, the system and all its issues are not flaws. It’s all working exactly how we designed it to.
The world isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as it was designed to work. And we’re the ones who designed it. Which means we fucked up. 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. If we cannot ask “why,” we lose the ability to judge whether the work we’re doing is ethical. If we cannot say “no,” we lose the ability to stand and fight. We lose the ability to help shape the thing we’re responsible for.
Monteiro, Mike. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It.
In the second chapter of the book, Monteiro goes beyond identifying the things that are broken, which is a step we often get stuck on. This is broken… end of. I specifically appreciate that he proposes solutions on how to fix it. I won’t spoil in this post what he talks about, but I will share some of my favorite bits.
You can’t make up for the terrible things you do at your day job with ethics offsets. If you want to truly do good work, you’re better off applying your ethical framework to your day job. (…) Ethics cannot be a side hustle.
Monteiro, Mike. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It.
A lot of designers equate designing with the pushing of pixels. (So do the people who hire us.) We equate our power with the ability to move this tiniest of units into proper and pleasing placements. We still believe this to be our one true purpose. (…) We need to care much more about the effects of our work than the cleverness of our pixel positioning.
Monteiro, Mike. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It.
Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs. If something is unethical at fifteen dollars an hour, it is still unethical at a hundred and fifty dollars an hour.
Monteiro, Mike. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It.
The book wraps up with a call for unity. No one designer can do everything (or anything really) by themselves. We need organization, communities, regulations and codes we adhere to. This is bigger than any of us we must all address it.
I can’t solve it. You can’t solve it. If we band together, we have a chance. If we properly define who we include in that we, then we might just have a fighting chance.
Monteiro, Mike. Ruined by Design: How Designers Destroyed the World, and What We Can Do to Fix It.