Design Systems for Ethical Design — Part 3
Part 3 of 4: Why you should care
In this four-part series, I challenge design systems professionals to take on one of the most pressing issuesin technology today — creating more ethical design.
Just landed here? Start with Part 1: We’ve lost the plot
Part 2: Dark patterns
Part 3: Why you should care
Part 4: What you can do
When I speak to Design Systems practitioners about ethical design, many of them have the same initial reaction, “Interesting, but what does this have to do with us? We just build the components and the teams do what they want with them.”
Good question! Here are 6 reasons why you should care about enabling and creating more ethical design:
1. Your fingerprints are on it
Ruined by Design is a hell of a book that dives deep into the design communities’ culpability in creating the mess we’re in and our responsibility in cleaning it up. I really like this quote from Mike:
I realize you didn’t build these monsters on your own, but regardless of how many people’s parts your monster is made from, the fingerprints will always be your own.
- Mike Monteiro
Yes, there are a lot of people and teams involved in creating these dark patterns, and a lot of business justification. But that doesn’t make it right and our fingerprints are still on the final result.
2. Doing nothing is not neutral
To paraphrase the late reverend Desmond Tutu, “doing nothing is not a neutral act.”
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
- Desmond Tutu
Ignorance may be bliss, but it doesn’t absolve you from responsibility. And because Design Systems are made for scale, by ignoring the ethics you may actually be amplifying harm by making it easier to implement.
3. Lack of intention is not absolution
I recently had a conversation with a colleague about a user registration and signup flow that employed some misleading design tactics. These were not blatant dark patterns so let’s call them “gray patterns”. Research showed that the flow often misled users into signing up for things they didn’t fully understand.
The response from my colleague was, “I don’t think that was the intention of the design.” They were probably right, but think back to Part 2 and the complex feelings Aza Raskin has about infinite scroll. Just because your original intent wasn’t to mislead users, that doesn’t absolve you from the responsibility of correcting it once you realize it’s happening. Once the revenue and the good-looking metrics start rolling in, this gets harder to accept and correct.
4. Unethical design can be illegal
In addition to the personal responsibility, there’s also legal responsibility. The FTC and GDPR (Europe’s data protection laws) are beginning to focus more attention on dark patterns.
I referenced the FTC’s September 2022 report in Part 2, but GDPR also published guidelines on dark patterns in March. Both reports are worth a look.
The bottom line? As Samuel Levin at the FTC says, some of these patterns are against the law.
[T]ricking consumers into signing up for subscription programs or trapping them when they try to cancel is against the law.
- Samuel Levin, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection
5. It can be bad for the bottom line (like, really bad)
Here’s another reason that might resonate with your C-suite; unethical design can be bad for the bottom line.
Facebook’s business, along with many others, was highly dependent on surreptitiously following you around the Internet and harvesting your data. When Apple decided to expose this tracking and allow its users to opt out, they jumped at the chance. A whopping 96% of iOS users opted out of tracking when it was made transparent to them and they were given a choice. That’s a strong “NO” to unethical practices from users!
Facebook said Apple’s change was unfair and would cost them $10b in revenue a year. The stock is now down over 80%. The company is no longer called Facebook and is now called Meta.
6. This is a systemic issue
Here’s the biggest reason you should care. This is a systemic issue! This is Design Systems’ sweet spot!
The above chart from the Center for Humane Technology shows the 12 leverage points to intervene in a system. Here, the system is one of deception for profit, delivered through manipulative or misleading UI.
As you move from left to right on the chart, the effort and scale required to affect these levers goes up significantly. From localized on the left to global and cultural on the right.
- Platform Changes *
- Internal Governance *
- External Regulation
- Business Model
- Economic Goal
- Culture & Paradigm
Design Systems are in an ideal position to have meaningful impact on the two left-most levers, Platform Changes and Internal Governance.
In Part 4: What you can do, I’ll discuss some specific actions you can take to create more ethical design systems.
Appendix
You can find all of my resources and references for this series here.
