By Janus Boye
“The world is in need of better design, and Kozma’s book shows us how to get there.”
Robert Kozma has a fifty-year career behind him serving as grade school math teacher, a research scientist and professor and a design and innovation consultant
Last year Robert Kozma published "Make the World a Better Place: Design with Passion, Purpose, and Values" and on the book cover, you can find the above testimonial from Mark Guzdial, Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan.
The book has been well received and presents an insightful and hands-on discussion of design as a profoundly human activity and challenges us all to use design to transform the world for the better. The book explains how and why the design industry lost its way, and how to reignite the idealism that once made it a force for good.
Robert Kozma is a San Francisco-based author, researcher, and consultant with over 40 years of experience in technology, education, and social development. As an emeritus principal scientist at SRI International, he has collaborated with ministries of education, national agencies, multinational organizations, and high tech companies on how to use information and communication technology to transform education and support economic and social development.
Make the World a Better Place describes a set of moral principles based on our shared humanity, that can be used to create “good” designs: designs that reduce harm, increase well-being, advance knowledge, promote equality, address injustice, and build supportive, compassionate relationships and communities.
In a recent member's call we did a Q&A with Robert, learned more about the book and dived in to discover how we, as designers, can genuinely make a difference in the world. Our conversation started with a few examples.
How design has failed us
As Robert argues in the beginning of the book:
My copy of “Make the world a better place”. Its 384 pages are filled with a combination of theory, history, practice and examples. Reads like an academic textbook and you’ll quickly discover the depth and why it took the author three years to write it
“To create better designs, those that make the world a better place, we must first understand why design has failed us so often and so spectacularly.”
He groups the design failures into four categories:
Designs and users fail: Sometimes design can be well conceived and executed, but time and natural processes take their toll. Parts fail, bridges crumble, airplane wings crack. Often, failures are due to user error - the design is fine but used in ways not intended by the designer (as in Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster)
The design process fails us: The demands of design processes require compromises. Compromises implies a risk of failure and maximising or minimising any single variable - speed, weight, cost, profit - increases the likelihood that others will suffer
Designers fail us: Sadly, as Robert says, designers fail us in many ways through commission and omission. Sometimes designers knowingly or unknowingly, make the negative impact of their design someone else’s problem. The opioid crisis is an example here. On the other hand, designers often fail us by omission. The designs they create are not immoral or harmful, but they don’t solve an important need and they crowd out the possibility of more important and more helpful designs. This is also sometimes known as ‘design for the 1%’ or the high-end stores on New Yorks’ Madison Avenue
Systems fail us: Typically, in our culture, the designs that are valued are the ones that make the most money. Here Robert weaves in the famous “Friedman Doctrine”, which argues that the social responsibility of business is to increase its profits. Robert, in short, claims that design has lost its moral compass.
The book unfolds the widely publicised case study of the Boeing 737 MAX 8. Boeing is one of the largest global aerospace manufacturers and the largest exporter in the US by dollar value. Faced with a competitive challenge towards Airbus, Boeing decided to re-engineer the company’s best selling 737, rather than build an all-new plane, at a cost savings of nearly $10 billion. The 737 MAX was grounded after two fatal crashes: Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018 and Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019. A total of 346 people died. Robert shared how a component (called MCAS), initially designed to avoid crashes and save lives, became one that caused the crashes.
Seven moral principles for good design
So what is good design really? Robert takes us on a historical and philosophical journey connecting the dots between the English-Scottish Enlightenment (mid 18th century) and Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC). In short and as he writes - it all connects to happiness, the highest good. To quote:
To draw on Tolkien’s image, you can think of happiness as the one ring that rules them all
Robert lists seven interconnected principles, that you use to guide your designs to make the world a better place:
Principle 1: First, do no harm
Principle 2: Actively reduce harm
Principle 3: Increase happiness and well-being
Principle 4: Advance people’s knowledge, reasoning and agency
Principle 5: Promote equality
Principle 6: Address injustice
Principle 7: Build compassionate, supportive relationships and community
Robert carefully explains each principle and also clearly states that you don’t need to be a philosopher, ethicist or member of the clergy to make these decisions for good. In his view, these are universal moral principles that designers can draw on to make decisions.
How technology shapes design
In a fascinating section titled “Technology, Activity, and Culture”, Robert shares how he started his academic career in technology because he was excited about its promise. As he writes:
“While the technology sector generated things and a lot of wealth over the past thirty years, I’ve been disappointed in the extent that these powerful resources were used to make people’s live and the world better”
In the section he covers how technologies fit into design and asks whether they are currently making the world a better place or a worse one? He sets the stage by sharing a few New York Times articles including these:
Reading these and more, you easily get the impression that technology is an all-pervasive, sometimes sinister force that is controlling our lives, economy and society.
As he mentioned in the call, as an industry we do sometimes have a tendency to only look at the good things that come with technology. Whether it’s social media, where it’s taken us almost two decades to realise the negative impact, or the current wave of AI tools like ChatGPT.
In an interesting part of the section, Robert talks about social media, harm and community. He shares how social media does indeed build community, but also how studies show that a majority of teens said that they were subjected to some type of cyberbullying. Another study found more social media use was associated with risky behaviours among adolescents, such as substance use or risky sexual behaviour.
Throughout the book, Robert asks some thought provoking questions:
How can designers use social media to create supportive communities?
If there is harm, what should be done to reduce it?
What role can technology play in that?
To summarise: The benefits of technology don’t come to us automatically. Designers have a choice.
Learn more about good design
Some 80 pages of the book also goes in depth with our five design traditions, starting at the scientific tradition rooted in the scientific revolution and going all the way up to the social movement tradition with a Black Lives Matter case study.
We’ll naturally continue the conversation in our peer groups and conferences. Here’s also few related posts to continue your learning journey:
Finally, you can also lean back and enjoy the entire recording below.