What harm could it do? highlighting Harm by Design

Designers often promote the power of design to “do good.” Books like David Berman’s Do Good Design, and documentaries like Netflix’s Abstract highlight all of the socially good, innovative, and creative work that design has influenced. While design has the potential to do good, it also has the potential to do harm. From the products we use every day to the systems that govern our lives, design plays a powerful role in shaping our world. But too often, design is used to reinforce harmful biases, perpetuate inequality, and even endanger lives. Both professionals and educators in the field of design have historically shied away from talking about the power design has to do harm. As a result, in professional practice, many designers lack awareness of the harmful impacts design can have, and do not have the knowledge, support, and infrastructure they need to practice “design for good.” Although professional organizations such as IDSA, AIGA, and the International Council of Design publish codes of ethics, they are not well-known nor enforceable, and standard professional workflows seldom involve evaluating the ethics of projects in relation to those codes of ethics. In this thesis, I have focused on identifying and acknowledging the many different kinds of harm even the “best” designs can do. I’ve designed a grid that encourages designers and design students to systematically think through the kinds of harm their design might potentially do. The “Harm by Design” grid can be used in multiple ways—as an analytical, collaborative, generative, critical, or evaluative tool—but its primary purpose is to help designers predict, reflect on, and reduce unintended harms.Desig