Design creates reality, and we are not ready.
By: Ide Lab
Tags: Ethics, Designer, Digital Design, Design

by Victoria Gómez-Barredo García

A few years ago, like many others, I began to hear about ethical design in the digital environment and reflect on designers’ responsibility for the effects of what we design. Since then, I have gradually deepened my understanding of design as an element that shapes and creates reality. As a result, I keep thinking that designers need to expand their capabilities if they want to be responsible and committed to the society they are somehow designing.

I’ll start from the beginning: design can make things happen. As an example: in one of the projects I am involved in, we are trying to get ordinary people to participate in the power grid to generate more stability and, in turn, have a better impact on the planet. User-centred design is the basis for achieving the commitment we are looking to get. It allows us to move from an abstract or strategic concept -from technological capabilities- to a reality experienced by people.

A priori, the objective is in itself laudable. I believe that almost any design professional would be happy to say that they are involved in a project to achieve the energy transition to a sustainable and efficient grid. However, in recent times, we seem to have realised that nowadays, it is not enough for the objective of our work to be honourable. We must also stop to think about what we are going to cause in achieving it.

I remember, for example, the first time I had to work with concepts from behavioural economics. Suddenly, we were no longer just talking about knowing the user to generate satisfying experiences. We were thinking about using psychology to frame communications to control users' perceptions and tilt them where we wanted them to go. Think of the responsibility that falls on our shoulders when dealing with people’s psychology to change perceptions to achieve business objectives. These techniques should make designers consider questions like: what changes can this alteration of perception bring to our society? Does the aim of my service justify the use of manipulation techniques?

In behavioural economics, the important thing is more about how the technique is used rather than the method itself. It was just an example that helps me explain that there are many accepted practices in digital design that need to be revisited. I am talking about rethinking practices not just because of their form, as we said about behavioural economics, but for their effect on people. An example may be the case of Instagram likes and how it generated low self-esteem in adolescents. We should ask ourselves the question:

What kind of reality are we building?

The effect of digital products in day-to-day life is a problem that some have been enunciating for a long time. We can see how it is spreading popularly thanks to conscious designers who try to raise awareness among the population. For example, I’m thinking of the well-known Social Dilemma documentary that premiered on Netflix a little over a year ago. Many of the people behind that documentary, such as Tristan Harris, have been years trying to make us aware of the extent to which we are negatively altering society with our experience designs and our obsession with capturing and retaining the user.

I ask myself: are we design professionals capable of confronting the question, “what kind of reality are we building?”

A priori, my answer is no. I believe that we do not understand the relevance of what we do. Moreover, I think we would not be fully capable of facing it even if we understood it. We can, for example, conclude that social networks negatively affect adolescents. Still, we are not entirely capable of designing social networks that enhance the socialisation that adolescents need in a way that helps them to grow in their period of maturation.

I use the example of social media because it is perhaps the easiest to see. Although we could think of many other moments where we can identify the problem, it is more complicated for us as designers to think of solutions that work and have a positive impact. I remember, for example, a very nice project in which I was able to participate a couple of years ago. The project wanted to create a gamification system to improve the life of a group of people with a specific need. The product focus on helping these people allowed us to think about gamification differently. We started from a question perhaps unusual for a designer:

What if we could, with this gamification system, activate the intrinsic motivations of these people instead of extrinsic or immediate as it is usually done?

It was a lovely challenge trying to develop a system that would awaken these people’s genuine sense of growth. We also wanted them to understand what they were doing and why they were doing it (rather than just offering numerical or economic rewards). However, it was not an easy challenge; it required a deeper understanding of human beings, what moves them, what builds them up and what destroys them.

The need to understand the human being leads us to ask ourselves what new skills we need to develop as design professionals of the 21st century. In my opinion, those capabilities are closer to the humanities than to technology, such as psychology, philosophy or anthropology. Perhaps we cannot know everything or have the depth in these subjects that other professionals have. Still, we can introduce them into our processes. Maybe the key is to learn to collaborate with profiles we have not so far, to introduce professionals of philosophy, anthropology or many others in our digital design processes. Include them and ask ourselves together: what kind of reality are we creating?

Because we will not master all the techniques, but we can ask ourselves questions and look in those places that can answer us.