Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Roger Zhu

On Thursday, a group of high school students visited our office and shared a lunch with the whole company. By the end of the lunch, one of the students asked: “What’s the coolest job here?” It was an awkward silence for a few seconds. Then one of my coworkers shouted: “designers are pretty cool, they can design software and data.”

As a designer, I feel a sense of unease on that lunch table.
I feel a little naked in front of my coworkers, all brilliant, all best in their own trade: engineer, education, product manager, sales, client support, and marketing. A rush of mixed thoughts came into my mind and I can’t quite untangle them. Part of me feels insecurity, “design is much more than window dressing!”; some were frustration “you have no idea how difficult to get a good design move across the finish line”; part of me feel a sense of proud “Just own it”.

Now, after some time here is my reflection:
The design is a dangerous profession.
Designer have a unique talent to make beautiful objects. The constant need to make, design and produce made us drunk and we ignore the choices we are making. (I get grumpy when I don’t get to design stuff)
Worse, design education is always 20–30 years behind with what’s happening in the real world. It’s not helping the next generation of designers.

Industrial designer’s sin in the world of the atom

Before the Christmas of 2011, I’ve received a gift package from my boss at Bosch Power Tool. The gift was one of the power tools I designed, and it was launched into the US market. I shared a moment of celebration with my classmates and one of my professor, Andy Law.

After a few weeks, I visited a salvation army (second-hand store) and saw some old power tools on the shelf. I thought “my design will end up there someday”. They look beat up, depressed on the shelf. I shared the story with Professor Andy Law, and he said: “imagine your design in a second-hand store, how cool is that!”

It’s the nature process for a product: production line to shop, to the second-hand store, and end up in a landfill. Designers are using our unique talent, to make things look more attractive, to feed the consumer’s desire. In this process, we use a lot of energy, pollute the air when making them. We may use harmful materials for the workers, and those materials never degrade in nature. It’s a sin.

Victor Papanek opened his book, design for the real world:
“There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them… Today, industrial design has put murder on a mass production basis. By designing criminally unsafe automobiles that kill or maim nearly one million people around the world each year, by creating whole new species of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and process that pollute the air we breathe, designers have become a dangerous breed. And the skills needed in these activities are taught carefully to young people.”

It’s a harsh critique and much needed at the time of his writing (1963). We, collectively as a society are enjoying the benefit of the industrial revolution and consumer culture. We are eager to bring a car to every household, without thinking too much about its environmental impact. At the same time, his critique worth examination:

First, the industrial revolution and consumer culture is a good thing. And I am happy that designer gets to be the catalyst in this process. I know we definitely fucked up the planet along the way, but at the same time, it enabled the world we see today. Today, we are using the same iPhone Obama use, drinking the same coke Warren Buffet loved dear, and driving the same car Elon Musk drive (well, almost all of us). It’s a good news for designers. We no longer are the slave employed by royal and elites to make shiny objects to elevate their status. We get an opportunity to design for the masses and reach a much bigger part of humanity.

Second, Papanek didn’t give the industrial designer a fair trial. He is judging the designers of the past using a lens of the present (Presentism). Imagine thousands of years ago, in hunter and gather society. There are “designers” employed their own intelligence to design a better knife to kill his neighbor tribe. He will not be charged by his criminal behavior but celebrated by his tribe on the effective design he brings to the world. 4500 years ago, there are designers standing next to Nile river, observing the landscape, and draw up the pyramids as we see today. She is awarded by the pharaoh(king) instead of bringing to international court and justice as the origin of slavery and massive suffering of the people who build the pyramid.

Even in the modern days, we make mistakes as well. Two of the most celebrated designer Charles and Ray Eames used fiberglass as the innovative material to construct post-war American living room. A few years later, we found the workers making these beautiful pieces of furniture while inhaled the fiberglass dust and lead to lung cancer. Did Charles and Ray Eames try to murder workers? No.

At the time of Papanek’s writing, the society is realizing the social and environmental impact industrial revolution bring, and the designers are catching up. His sharp critique is definitely needed but he used a double standard to view designers.

Using Fiber Glass to Design Chairs

Things have changed a lot since 1963. When this new generation of designers goes to school, Papanek becomes the “required study”. (Thank you, Professor Charlie Cannon, for introducing Papanek to me). sustainability is the topic being taught, studied and debated in school. I want to say the designers in our generation are well equipped to tackle on the sustainability issue. In the world of solving global warming and achieving sustainability, we once again, become the agent of change.

Product designer’s sin in the world of bytes

Today, many industrial designers transformed themselves to become the product designer. Instead of design a calendar in the world of the atom, we design the calendar in the form of an app. And I am one of them as well.

In the beginning, I find a sense of relief. Because I no longer need to worry about seeing my design on the salvation army shelf or in the landfill. All the designs live in the form of code, when the product are phased out, our engineer type in a few lines of code, and that’s it. I don’t need to worry about they harming the environment or killing the polar bears.

But recently, I’ve found the design I am making responsible for something very different. It’s for people’s decision making.

The more I work in the world of Bytes, I find there are still all the moral and ethics questions following me. And in a way, they are even more difficult to solve. Think about Facebook’s fake news, how to design that? Why do black people having hard time book apartments on Airbnb? How to design and solve that? and how to design data and information to help teachers in school make better decisions?

What’s troubled me more is the education of this generation of designers. We focus on vocational education, we debate about if we should learn how to code rather than if we should learn ethics and decision theory. Programs like general assembly (vocational school) are great, they help people transform their profession, yet design school like RISD don’t know what to teach our students.

I will share my raw thoughts in my next post.
Stay tuned.

A designer’s ethics in the World of Atom was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A designer’s ethics in the World of Atom

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