OK, so that homepage redesign has seen a 30% increase in conversion. Been lauded with praise on Twitter for it’s subtle CSS animation and responsive content choreography. It’s even been featured on a few design galleries.

But what was the result of this work? How did it affect the world?

As designers, we so often obsessed with details we often miss the real outcome of our work. We tend to forget what that ‘submit’ button actually means for people in the real world while we’re tweaking the padding 1px at a time. The truth is, the vast majority of amazing work going on in digital does very little for society.

Do we really need another way to organise our photos? Do we really need another way to create beautiful lists? Or worse… another elegantly simple way to get a pay day loan?

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.”

This quote by Banksy rings too close to home for me. And perhaps you too.

Dementia, Physical Disability, Isolation, Education, Learning Disability, Climate change, Depression, Human rights, Democracy, Unemployment, Stroke, Poverty… these are all issues where digital could help.

It’s not as if we are oblivious to this fact. Pro-bono work for non-profits and Hack-a-thons for social issues are common and popular. But a one day event designing an app to help people with dementia is not realistically going to solve a problem which requires some serious on-going user research and testing. Don’t these efforts seem a little embarrassing compared with the time and effort going into even the most basic start-ups?

One day we celebrate that the hack-a-thon for charity, then the next we preach to our clients about how great design takes time and iteration. Don’t these problems deserve as much attention, time and talent as our regular work?

I’m not a socialist. Working on social causes doesn’t have to be pro-bono or something done in you’re spare time. Funders like The Nominet Trust regularly fund tech start ups with a social cause. Many charities working on the biggest issues of our time have the budgets to spend on projects, which truely make a difference to their cause.

Dan Pallota’s TED talk really changed my view of charity. We need to stop thinking about charities as somehow lesser organisations who don’t want expert services. The reality is that some charities turn over tens of millions and rival some of the best private companies in modern working. Charities like Charity:Water continually demonstrate a level of innovation on parallel with any successful private sector company.

I don’t mean to down-play commercial design work. The design innovations being achieved through populist commercial ventures have revolutionised how we think about digital products and have provided a fertile training ground for a generation of awesome designers. Not to mention provided cruicial investment in technology.

But as a designer, how good would it feel to know that the A/B study, which increased conversion by 25%, was funding 12 more operations for children in Africa rather than selling a few more pairs of trainers?

How great would it feel to know that subtle page transition was helping someone with a learning disability more easily grasp an issue like voting rather than making a vodka marketing page ‘pop!’?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if your deep knowledge of design psychology was used not to nudge people into buying an extra ticket but into donating an extra £1 to beat cancer?

As designers we are ultimately responsible for what we put into the world. Mike Monterio’s talk ‘How designers destroyed the world’ really put this into perspective for me and highlighted how much power we have. We are the gatekeepers to good communication and we can choose the kind of work we use our skills for.

As digital innovators we crave new headline grabbing ‘game-changers’, but effective social change work isn’t always innovative or best served 100% digitally. To solve these problems we need to work with and within charities, governments and specialist organisations already working in these areas to find opportunities for digital intervention and inspire a modern digital culture.

Working within these organisations isn’t easy. Tiny budgets, small staff capacity and the constant interrogation of every pound spent don’t make for the ideal place to practice modern agile design & development. But it can be done and makes it all the more rewarding when it works.

Migam in Poland are transforming communication for deaf people. Brain in Hand is allowing people with Autism cope with everyday situations. Our own SafetyNets app is helping sex workers stay safe.

These are all projects making a real positive impact on the world. We need more design talent to make more things like this a reality.

We’re looking to build a team of world class like-minded people to work on projects like these on a daily basis. Reason Digital is a social enterprise working with charities and pro-social orgs on projects doing a little good in the world.

If any of this post resonates you at all, take a look at our latest design vacancy and see if you are a good fit.