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The Impact of Your Work Is Felt Far Beyond the Screen
Owning design responsibility and reaping its tremendous rewards.
Your designs extend far beyond the confines of pixels and code. It’s an endeavor that touches lives, empowers people, molds teams, reshapes organizations and alters your personal development.
Users and customers feel the most immediate impact of your work. Each button placement, color choice, and interaction you devise holds the power to either simplify or complicate a person’s day. Your small and seemingly unimportant decisions find their way into the lives of real people. It’s easy to forget, amidst deadlines and project goals, that a human is on the other side of the screen. Perhaps it’s a busy mom trying to order groceries online while tending to a toddler. Or a student in a remote village, accessing educational content on a donated tablet.
Your design choices can make these tasks either a source of relief or frustration. Your work can solve problems or create new ones. Your designs can unlock people’s potential.
This is the weight of design responsibility.
Why should you care? Because design provides the opportunity to practice empathy on a grand scale. Every choice you make as a designer has the potential to either alleviate or exacerbate someone’s challenges. This is a professional responsibility and a reflection of our humanity. Caring about the impact of your work means recognizing that design is not simply a job — it’s a means of making the world more navigable, more enjoyable, and simply better for everyone.
“Styles come and go. Good design is a language, not a style.” — Massimo Vignelli
Consider the butterfly effect of your design decisions. A single change in a user interface can have far-reaching consequences, affecting the person using it, accessibility of the design, and inclusivity of the product.
Why should this matter to you?
Because as the creative practitioner, you hold the power to breathe positive changes into designs that ripple throughout society. Your work can help bridge the digital divide, make technology accessible…
