Epilogue: Designing for Good

What responsibility do interaction designers have for what they design? Some designers think that the products and services they create are morally neutral, that users themselves and society should determine how a product should be used, not the designer. But what if the user's task is to injure someone? Or if the system being designed helps people do harm?

The book IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black relates the story of a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, who, in August 1943, arrived at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz as a prisoner. There, the Nazis assigned him a five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673. This number was later tattooed on his forearm. This number, and thousands like it, were part of a custom punch card system designed by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. (In the IBM system, the Auschwitz camp code was 001.) The Hollerith system tracked prisoners and their availability for work, their punch card numbers following them from labor assignment to labor assignment until most of them were put to death.

The Holocaust was extremely well designed.

When we think of good design, we usually mean products and services that help users complete their tasks in an efficient, effective, aesthetically pleasing manner. That's what the characteristics of good interaction design in Chapter 3 were all about. But there is another definition of "good" that should be considered when designing: the moral, the just, the life affirmingthe good that protects human dignity.

Interaction designers should design for this sort of good as well.