Tragic Design

Preface

BAD DESIGN DECISIONS CAN HARM. However, the designers making these decisions aren’t always aware of the responsibilities that come with their profession.

In medical school, the first fundamental principle that students are taught is Primum non nocere, or in plain English, “First, do no harm.” This immediately reinforces the concept that physicians have a lot of power over a person’s life. In contrast, the first thing we were taught in design school was how to draw well in 3D perspective. Our teachers were obsessed with timeless and beautiful designs. We would strive for polished design and were greatly concerned by aesthetic qualities. Accordingly, we were rewarded for following trends and using appealing color palettes. Very rarely were we reminded that we have responsibilities and that what we design has a real impact on people’s lives.

If we were lucky, we had a single three-hour-long class on user experience...and the teacher probably called this a “Human–Computer Interaction” class. For example, in four years at university, neither Cynthia nor Jonathan was required to observe a single user interacting with a product they had designed!

After school, new designers carefully select the best projects they’ve realized and put them into a portfolio. The rest, the bad and potentially dangerous projects, are dumped in an “archive” folder with the hope that no one will ever find it. If you’re like us, you are so ashamed by some of these solutions that you might even rename this ...