The Social Dilemma — A Designer’s Perspective

Design and ethics — mutually exclusive?

In a world that is constantly torn between black, white and grey — ethics, which is already an undefinable term, gets all the more difficult to pinpoint.

What is moral, and what is immoral may be disputed. But there will rarely be anyone who would debate in favour of something that is glaringly and blatantly unethical — like treating people like products for profit.

What is ethical design?

Former Design Ethicist at Google, Tristan Harris, dubbed as the closest thing the Silicon Valley has to a conscience — is asking the Tech Industry to bring “ethical design” to its products. This ethical design, he explains, would be a model that would dial down on manipulation and addiction. In other words, a design that doesn’t take over the lives of the people by sucking them in. Developing algorithms that make users scroll for hours, even when they know they shouldn’t — is manipulation at its finest.

An example of unethical design, for me, would be the steps to delete an Amazon Prime account. It has been purposely designed to make it almost impossible for the user to quit. Although the design may appear to be genius, it is unethical to corner someone in a direction that the designers have decided for them.

A classmate once came up with a design that would make it slightly inconvenient for the user to sign out — which, given the field that I’m in (UX Design), got my friends into a huge debate and it lead to half of us being capitalist slaves and the other half into self righteous activists, both equally logical. But at the end of the day, no one agreed with the other side. Which got me thinking about how half the world would want to maximize profits and the other half would be scapegoats for them and just how easy it would it be to keep this going. The fact that most people do not understand the extent of their dependence on social media is where the problem lies, in my opinion.

Why go ethical?

The documentary, The Social Dilemma showcases that the web designers understood the impact and consequences of their actions, and chose to go ahead with their design anyway: rendering the users as clueless lab rats. We have moved on from a tool based technology design, to an addiction and manipulation based technology design. The addictive designs are encompassing to such an extent, that the designers who knew how the manipulative tactics work, couldn’t stop themselves from falling prey to its addictive moves.

The decisions made by a few designers have the ability to impact millions of people around the world. There exists, an overwhelming moral responsibility to make sure that a design is aimed at providing a greater user experience, than just financial gains.

Designing persuasive technology, that seeks to modify the user’s behaviour, is a good business move, but ultimately, a bad design — a black spot on the designer’s conscious.

The need for awareness

It is of absolute importance to make people aware of the impacts of internet dependency. While it has its many perks, people should be aware of just how much their privacy is at stake among other things like — addiction.

Its not only the moral responsibility of the people who build these platforms but also of everyone who becomes aware of it.

The power of people who are aware of the existence of an atrocity is underestimated but its not something that can’t be possible.

Can ethics and design coexist?

Design and ethics don’t have to be mutually exclusive events. The difference between a good design and a bad design is the user experience. A design that opens up a cacophony of grievances for the people, could be an intelligent way to earn money, but could never be a good design.

As future designers, we may often feel tempted to choose profits over principles; we might be tempted to think along the lines of “if I don’t, someone else will”. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that designers have changed the world in the past, and continue to do so — it’s our decision to change it for the better or worse.

I’m doing my bit here, promising my future self of never indulging in creating such designs that control the human race.