the power of defaults
my reasons for studying design were related to both aesthetics and ethics — I wanted to create and preserve my idea of beautiful, and arguably, what we find beautiful carries pointers to what we think of as valuable and good. There's a compelling idea one learns in design school that good design is invisible — a form that gets out of the way, is committed to function. Call me a consequentialist, but I do believe outcomes supersede intentions. This makes it the prerogative of a designer, then, to choose wisely the outcome they're serving, and what world might be born out of it.
It's wild to think about the power we wield. Designers get to define default states — the reason one country has a disproportionately larger number of organ donors than another, is because it was the default choice to be one, while another country had people 'opt-in'. Therein lies the responsibility of design — at the intersection of behavioural science and information architecture — influencing individual decisions, that turn into data points, and eventually the very fabric of policy that saves lives.
The catch is, you don't need to identify as a designer to be one. Everything is designed. All man-made objects and systems are a result of intention and a series of conscious or unconscious decisions. Design is simply the practice of turning those non-self-conscious choices into conscious ones. Questioning what was previously assumed to be obvious, and refining outputs to more closely align with intentions.
Which brings me back to why designers need ethical clarity on their purpose. Being in service of the person interacting with your product is as important as building a world you deem better. The person accidentally opting in for organ donation may be oblivious to their preference on the matter, but a world with more organ donors is ultimately a good one, isn't it?
An even better world, though, is one where each person is empowered with the freedom to make an informed decision about the fate of their organs after their death. The process of realising such a world may be more complicated than just the compliance of a box on a form, but meaningful change takes time, and if there's one thing you learn at design school — anything worth doing is worth doing well.