Designs - Ethics Page 3000: The Ultimate Guide to Not Being a Dick
Warning: this page contains mature themes and strong opinions. Prolonged exposure may lead to existential dread and/or a strong urge to re-design your life.
Philosophy
Philosophy is like, um, really deep and stuff. It's like, you know, the study of "what does it all mean?" or something. Like, does the font matter? Does the color scheme matter? Does the fact that you're reading this on a 10-year-old laptop matter?
Here's a fun little thought experiment: imagine you're designing a website. You've got your bright colors, your fancy fonts, your "responsive" layout. But what if... what if the user's cat just happened to be sitting on the keyboard and pressed "F5"?
Would you still be a good designer if your website was just a bunch of gibberish cat pictures? Or would you just shrug and say "oh, it's not my problem, cat-pressing-F5 is just a design choice"?
Designer's Conscience
Designer's Conscience: the little voice in the back of your head that says "hey, maybe we shouldn't have used Comic Sans on this one, buddy". Or "maybe we shouldn't have put a picture of a cat on this button". Or "maybe we shouldn't have used Flash on the website of a local cat shelter".
But seriously, Designer's Conscience is like, the ultimate superpower. It's like, the ability to see into the future and predict exactly how many times you'll be yelled at by the client when they see the design you just presented.
Here's a fun little game: try to design something that will make your client's face turn red with rage. Go on, give it a shot!