We reached out to Vivianne Castillo, UX researcher and advocate for more humanity in tech, to get her opinion on the types of discussions we see in online design communities:

"Are these debates keeping our community in a constant state of prolonged adolescence that stunt our maturity or are they deepening the wealth of knowledge and expertise in our field?

With 2020 on the horizon, there comes a time when our community needs to ask ourselves difficult questions for the sake of challenging the orthodoxies around the perceived need for these endless and cyclical debates. Why would we want young designers to take part in these debates and how does that lead them towards maturity in their craft?

We can’t move on from these repetitive disagreements and debates until we understand how we got here and why we’ve stayed here for far too long. Contrary to ‘move fast and break things’ this is about slowing down and mending ourselves, our industry, and our understanding of what it means to contribute value to the rest of the professional design community."

Offset charity won't save our souls

Yep, design has ruined lots of things. We work for companies, and companies need to make money to reward their investors. In their drive for profits, companies often make decisions which cause social and economic problems in society.

To compensate for the harm perpetrated by the companies we work for, we designers get involved in offset charity initiatives, hoping it will make us feel better about ourselves. What if we were also able to make an impact at our own companies? What if we were able to influence, or even reverse, some of the harmful decisions made by our higher-ups?

Escaping big tech alone won't change the game

In 2019 we have seen designers leave big tech companies because they fundamentally disagreed with decisions made by company leadership. When Google bid for Project Maven, a contract with the US Government to incorporate AI into drones (which could be used for military purposes), many designers walked off the job in protest.

While announcing one’s departure from a tech company is a powerful way to raise awareness and hold organizations more accountable, these actions alone won’t change the game — and many of us are not in a position to make this move. Is there a way we can stay in our current companies and provoke change from the inside?