It's time to come out and say it: I think design sucks
Yes, I said it. Finally, for all to read: I think design sucks. And here's a part of the reason why. It's something I wrote about a year ago and have sat on ever since. It's a summation of thoughts from the last five years that I've struggled to know how—or whether—to share.
https://twitter.com/leeloowrites/status/1470467266198319106?s=20
Lisa is braver than I have been, but here it goes:
Designers have lost their way. As a field we've sold out, if you will. And the table™ is right at the center of it.
A designer who is practicing their craft with true empathetic fitness and wielding their privilege appropriately is not, and cannot be, an ally to modern business practices.
A human-centered, user-centered humanity-centered designer will always be at odds with an organization that centers profit, no matter how many coats of mission-based varnish you might put on the profit motive.
But many designers have been so desperate to “win a seat at the table,” that we (the field in general, in fact, with a few notable defectors and a sizable number of currently-disorganized individuals) began to prioritize “speaking the language of business.”
While it’s hard to call someone a traitor when their allegiances have always been a bit muddy, designers have largely betrayed their potential as powerful advocates against systems of oppression. In order to get a seat at the table, we have reinforced the legitimacy of the table and the room that table sits in. To get in, we swore loyalty to the business, proving the value of design in measurable, quantifiable, Taylorist terms. To maintain our comfortable seats, we look away and cash those sweet checks. We have ascended into towers of "behavioral" and "human centered" design, from which we issue edicts on how things should work, using our superior aesthetics and tastes as a justification for our elevated positions.
Designers are the missionaries of modern colonial capitalist empire, a force of conversion through "good works" and beautiful, civilized, refined things. Never mind the conquistadors of finance behind us!
It doesn't have to be this way. And that is part of why I think design sucks.
As always, I write from a provocative position. There are many designers actively doing the work to correct this, but so many of us (the field at large) have to catch up.
Seeds, currents, and orbits (?)
🧑🎓 HmntyCntrd on Twitter (pay for access to the #CriticalUX recordings)
💯 my list on Twitter of some of the voices pushing the field forward
🤯 and of course:
Toxicity in Digital Design: A Status Report | by Lisa Angela | Medium
Whew. It’s been a year.
Please send me the projects and voices that are challenging the status quo of design as a willing tool of oppression and harm.