What if everyone did what I’m about to do?

The societal impact of technology cannot be overstated and has again come into the public focus through disastrous events. Social media, specifically, foremost Facebook and Twitter, have been the focus of scrutiny for the last years. Beyond the tech circles, where their algorithmic injustice has been debated for a decade or more, these discussions are mainstream. With documentaries like “the social dilemma”, the talking points are very much on everyone’s mind.

While fighting existing problems is essential, we also need to grapple with the questions around avoiding them in the future. At least avoid the massive scale and negative impact they had to reach before being addressed. As often stated, the people working on these products are rarely ill-intentioned. They follow the best design and technology practices to work towards the business objectives they are told to pursue.

If we are honest — ethical and moral considerations, besides those which might be explicitly included in a brief, rarely find due time in most processes today. Projects are notoriously short on time (“We need this yesterday!”), understaffed and focused on outcomes specified in the brief. Whether the team is an in-house design team or an external agency, our existing processes rarely make time for extended ethical explorations.

As I have argued before, we will need to expand the Design Thinking process, lenses, mindsets, and toolkit for designing in the 21st century. And the “Responsibility” lens, in which we need to seriously consider the impact of the work on people and society, is crucial here.

Knowing what we know now — there can be no ignoring it. We cannot plead ignorance of the potential consequences of our work.

The struggle, of course, is that there is no black and white in ethics. Moral considerations exist on a grayscale, with little being obviously negative and pretty much nothing unanimously positive. Perfect answers do not exist here; pretty much every choice is a trade-off. This is very uncomfortable, specifically for technologists, who are used to a certain determinism in their work. Algorithms can be tweaked for ever-better performance. Designs can be optimized for conversion rates, screen times, or other target variables. There is no such clear line for ethics.

Not considering these aspects, however, is not to be free of responsibility for them. Just because one does not consciously deliberate over the trade-offs before making a choice does not mean a choice was not made. The key, then, is in the struggle. It lies in struggling well with these issues, asking more and better questions, and broadening who these questions are discussed with. This is not a part of the process that should be streamlined, but rather one with a high variance — a divergent exploration from many perspectives to gain different moral views.

Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash

What if everyone did what I’m about to do?

Questions are uniquely powerful in inspiring our moral imagination. The simple question, “What if everyone did what I’m about to do?” asks us to extrapolate the impact of our decision onto a larger scale, look into a potential future and take an observer’s perspective on implications.

One thing I love about this question, in particular, is that it has been with many of us since childhood. When I was little, a large empty building was close to our home — visibly in disrepair. One afternoon, I would pick up a stone and throw it at one of the windows for no good reason. Having seen that action, my dad asked me: “What if everyone did what you just did?”. It gives an interesting perspective, even at a young age. I have heard that phrase multiple times from parents and teachers. And it is a useful one.

There are many great questions like this one, which inspire our moral imagination. It is often the most simple ones that have the most profound impact in terms of realizations. Like: “What if your decision was featured on the front page of tomorrow’s newspaper?” — it is easy to be self-satisfied in small eco chambers, but would we feel comfortable with public scrutiny? How sure are we that this is a moral decision?

Beyond being armed with questions, we also need more space for actual conversations. It is not enough to contemplate these things in silence and be happy with the outcome. Pleasing our sense of morality is relatively easy, and so is finding agreement with our teammates — that is why we need to take these conversations outside of the building.

Having discussions about potential implications with unaffiliated and/or potentially afflicted third parties who have a different view of the world reveals the difficulty of the terrain we are treading. There are many trade-offs, which we need to make ourselves aware of, many consequences we could not think through on our own.

If we cannot make perfect choices, then the best we can do is to properly discover as much about the choices we need to make as possible.

Ask more questions, have more conversations.

As designers and entrepreneurs, we continuously challenge ourselves to get out of the building. Our processes today are already human-centric, just not ethics-centric. Today we focus on the potential user or customer and often reduce our inquiry to what can become a business-viable problem to solve. Our processes guide us to find those problems and solve them in feasible ways and can be operated profitably. Yet, at which point are we considering society and the planet? When and how are we discussing the responsibility that comes with creation?

The answer is simple — today, we most often do not. Deadlines are looming, resources are scarce, and we are drowning in meetings. Very few of us still have the space of mind to consider the impact of our creations. But if we are to design for the 21st century and beyond, knowing what we know today, this cannot continue. Our awareness of the issues that creation entails cannot go back into the box. We need to change the way we work, demand, and make the time to think more broadly and live up to our responsibility.

We will never be perfect, but at least we have to try. We need to struggle well with these complex questions if we are to make progress. And sometimes, all it takes to get started is a simple question.

If you have any thoughts, responses, or questions to add, I would love to hear from you in the comments below, or feel free to reach out to me directly here on LinkedIn. Thank you for reading.