“Before you are a designer, you are a human being. Like every other human being on the planet, you are part of the social contract. We share a planet. By choosing to be a designer you are choosing to impact the people who come in contact with your work, you can either help or hurt them with your actions. The effect of what you put into the fabric of society should always be a key consideration in your work.Every human being on this planet is obligated to do our best to leave this planet in better shape than we found it. Designers don't get to opt out. When you do work that depends on a need for income disparity or class distinctions to succeed you are failing your job as a citizen, and therefore as a designer.”
“Design is a discipline of action. You are responsible for what you put into the world. It has your name on it. And while it is certainly impossible to predict how any of your work may be used, it shouldn’t be a surprise when work that is meant to hurt someone fulfills its mission. We cannot be surprised when a gun we designed kills someone. We cannot be surprised when a database we designed to catalog immigrants gets those immigrants deported. When we knowingly produce work that is intended to harm, we are abdicating our responsibility. When we ignorantly produce work that harms others because we didn’t consider the full ramifications of that work, we are doubly guilty. The work you bring into the world is your legacy. It will outlive you. And it will speak for you.”
“No code of ethics should protect your work from criticism, be it from clients, the public, or other designers. Instead, you should encourage criticism in order to create better work in the future. If your work is so fragile that it can’t withstand criticism it shouldn’t exist. The time to kick the tires on your work comes before those tires hit the road. And be open to that criticism coming from anywhere. The role of criticism, when given appropriately, is to evaluate and improve work. Criticism is a gift. It makes good work better. It keeps bad work from seeing the light of day. Criticism should be asked for and welcomed at every step of the design process. You can’t fix a cake once it’s been baked. But you can increase the chances your project is successful by getting feedback early and often. It’s your responsibility to ask for criticism.”
“Design is the intentional solution to a problem within a set of constraints. To know whether you are properly solving those problems you need to meet the people who are having them. And if you are part of a team, your team should strive to reflect those people. The more a team can reflect the audience it is solving for, the more thoroughly it can solve those problems. That team can come at a problem from different points-of-view, from different backgrounds, from different sets of needs and experiences. A team with a single point of view will never understand the constraints they need to design for as well as a team with multiple points of view. What about empathy? Empathy is a pretty word for exclusion. If you want to know how women would use something you're designing get a woman on the team that's designing it.”
1. Monteiro, M. (2017) A designer’s code of ethics, Medium.Available here.
2. Balding, C. and Holm, J. (2021) Fall off, get back on, Keep Going. London: Wren & Rook. Available here.