With most of us getting our backpacks ready for the summer break, our design community has shared a list of 10 booksto read over the summer to learn about ethical design 📚. Ethical design is something our design community feels passionate about. We want to understand design ethics from various perspectives, including behavioral design, diversity, equity and inclusion, sustainability and fair use of data, AI and technology, and be part of a chance towards a better future for all. If you feel the same, here are our summer reading recommendations that will hopefully inspire you to take action too.
Hope you enjoy reading this fourth edition of Design Breakfast. Happy summer and get refreshed🌴!
by Mike Monteiro is a powerful reminder for all of us designers to seriously consider the impact of our design choices might have to the wider society and environment. A must read for everyone who wants to design in a responsible manner!
Recommended by Heli Ihamäki, Finland Head of Design
by David Grabber and David Wengrow rewrites the history of humanity and in the process works as an effective eye-opener to the power of canonised stories and the balance between specialism and pulling the threads together – topical themes for every designer.
Recommended by Jani Santanen, Principal Design Director
by Nir Eyal helps to understand the dynamics of why we got addicted to social media and apps. Worth reading for every designer who wants to avoid these sometimes harmful addictive effects.
by Tim Jackson challenges our prevailing assumptions that global economic growth is a necessity and plots potential paths towards a more sustainable economy, where both the humans and the environment can flourish
by Rebecca Henderson is another great read on the harmful environmental and societal effects of the current economic system and the possible actions we could take to move to a new, sustainable economic model.
by William McDonough and Michael Braungart is an all-time classic for circular economy. Worth reading for anyone interested in building a more sustainable economy.
Recommended by Anna Kholina, Lead Service Designer
by Caroline Criado Perez highlights many shortcomings in data related to women. What was perhaps most interesting for me as a designer working in tech industry were the chapters about technical devices and software designed from male user perspective only, but definitely worth reading overall.
Recommended by Niina Mäki, Senior Service Designer
by Annie Jean-Baptiste presents a powerful argument why inclusive design also makes sense from a business point of view and describes practical tools Google uses to bring DEI topics to the design and business conversations.
Recommended by Heli Ihamäki, Finland Head of Design
BONUS: If you got inspired by one of these books and also want to start a journey towards transformational systemic change, we’ve got one more recommendation for you.
Designing missions by Vinnova outlines a mission-oriented innovation approach, which attempts to produce transformational systemic change, by defining ambitious ‘North Stars’ to motivate change and building diverse fleets for navigating and sailing towards them.
This opportunity might be of your interest if you have a good understanding of users and usability and have experience in turning complex demands into simple and elegant digital services.
As a Digital Designer, you would be part of creating new solutions right from building concepts to prototyping interactions and defining visual language, and advocating the user needs throughout.