Design Blog
- Thoughts & Musings
We already know ethics is important.
The question is: how can you approach ethics when there are no guidelines or frameworks for it inside our companies, or nobody else is interested but you?
While the past post covered general ideas about ethics and the problems faced in our industry this article is focused on practical advice to work towards more ethical outcomes, whatever it is you do.
What we do as creatives is not neutral.
Ethics is a permanent questioning of what is desirable for the good of all and it is unthinkable that creatives do not take part of this. Our work is inherently filled with decisions that in one way or the other will affect another person's life and that is a huge responsibility.
Since design is part of a system, you are subject to external factors like the interests of clients and trends in the industry, and even though we have achieved a recognizable development that makes our lives easier in the last decades there are also questionable consequences, like what we are seeing with data surveillance or dark patterns.
Those strategies may work in relation to the financial goals of the client but it is not the right approach regarding the well-being of the user.
What is then, the right approach when it comes to ethics?
“Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life.”
If we analyze this quote, it kind of makes work a bad thing. Something to be avoided or changed by doing what you really love but still separate from the idea of work itself because they appear to be incompatible.
Or, on the other hand, it idealizes the thing you love with the idea that there is no work behind it, which is also not true.
Because actually, work is work, even if it is the thing you love.
But what does the act of work mean?
