Responsibility in design
As a designer you are not an inventor. You are a messenger.
As a designer you bear a great responsibility. You create an ecosystem where people develop their new habits, where they learn, express themselves, find love or invest money. You simply can not lie to them.
Design is a mission
We like to think that our work matters, when it does we are fulfilled. But did you ever wonder who it matters to? Who actually benefits from results of your work? Better UX, you say, equals more satisfied users. Sure, no doubts.
But why user should stay longer on a site or convert into paid account easier with this flashy orange button? Are there any reasons other than yours or your client’s financial goals? What makes the product you’ve designed better than the others? What makes it even relevant to anyone besides you?
We often wonder how users use the app or what is the context of use but we do not question the basic reason like why people use smartphones at all. They just do. And of course they desperately need your new app.
Being humble should be the number one principle of a good designer. Recently I read an interview with Halina Bortonowska — polish philosopher, theologian and journalist, about honest and trustworthy journalism. She said something which I believe can be easily adapted to design:
Design is a duty and it’s made through you, not by you.
This statement puts design not as a product’s feature but as a goal that should be pursued. There is a certain amount of improvement which is required by the people and this is your mission as a designer to deliver it to them. That being said, designer is more of a tool rather than the hand holding it.
It may sound depressing and harsh but in the moment when you start thinking that way you will realize that your job shouldn’t be based on posting trendy shots with glittering gradients on Dribbble but on providing people with real value for their needs and true problem solving for their frustrations.
Having a safe and secure shelter that can be called home is one of the basic needs and this is your duty to design it well.
People deserve to live in a safe and clean environment so it’s your job to make sure that the products you design do not harm it.
People need to love and be loved, eat healthy food, exercise, take care of their relatives. And we all should stop thinking about new possibilities to substitute older analog activities with a newer fancier apps or devices to get them more addicted and tech-overwhelmed in the name of progress and profit. In that case we shouldn’t be doing user-centered or even human-centered design. It should be called humanity centered design.
Position with wisdom not power
As a designer you are an expert. You know how to use several designing software, you have a great eye to details and colors, you are a master of typography and composition. Maybe you even have a psychological or sociological background. And this is why you have to use your knowledge to sculpt the world in the right shape.
Most people do not have enough time, resources or self-awareness to look at themselves in a bigger picture. But you have it all. They rely on you.
While working on UX we often discuss about psychological aspects of peoples’ behaviors, after all we design the experience so something uncountable and widely undefined. And psychology has thoroughly examined all the ways people think and do stuff and formed tons of laws, rules and thesis describing that. It’s a field form which you can pick valuable insights and put them into your work.
But you have to do it with wisdom, not with power.
Let’s take reciprocity as an example. As Nielsen Norman Group defines it, reciprocity principle is one of the basic laws of social psychology: it says that in many social situations we pay back what we received from others.
It is a rule commonly used in online product design but in many cases it’s implemented naïvely and thoughtlessly in a way that could be described as a cheap manipulation. If client wants more conversions maybe we should propose a free trial or write an ebook, than users will feel obligation to pay back the favor they received. Simple as that. In this scenario, whose interests are we cheering for? Does not that remind you of some sort of trap or at least a little bait?
Knowledge is power but using it in a wrong way doesn’t make you powerful.
What is this?
So what responsibility really is? What someone have to do to be able to look at the mirror and say to yourself “I am a good person and a good designer”? Can you be taught how to be responsible?
I believe that responsibility is something you have to constantly remind yourself about. You do not own it forever and certainly it is not a character trait you can describe yourself at the party. It is your actions that confirm whether you are a responsible and empathetic designer. It’s your work that is a testimony of what a human being you are.
You have to evaluate your work, always double check yourself, always ask questions that nobody wants to ask. And you have to have guts to say no sometimes or doubt the commonly used standards.
In the end, you make peoples’ lives better and that’s the privilege.
