Title: On Weaponised Design
Context: Just when you thought it was safe to be a UX designer you find out you’re a menace to society.
Synopsis: The ramifications of the decisions we make as designers are often lost in a fog of requirements, prioritized outcomes, generalized user expectations, and business goals. We mean well, but sometimes we miss the trees for the forest and make decisions with significant outcomes for a subset of targeted users that had not been understood as we engaged in the design process. It is difficult to account for all potential outcomes when designing a problem’s solution, but failure to do so can have catastrophic (or at least deeply uncomfortable) outcomes for outliers. If the 80% are content while 20% suffer, have we successfully achieved our mission? Narrow and shallow pro forma needs identification is the quickest route to getting the job done. Deep and encompassing empathy is expensive in both time and effort. As the tools and platforms we help build take on even greater significance in people’s lives, the risk of avoiding this expense is tantamount to design malpractice. If we, as the voice of the user, don’t take responsibility, then who will?
Best Bit: “User experience is more than just aesthetics and interfaces. It is a form of cooperative authorship and bound deeply to the infrastructure; each platform and its designers work together to represent a piece of an individual’s digital self and self expression within a wider online community.”
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