Recently, I had the great pleasure of talking with Mike Monteiro, co-founder of Mule Design and author of the best-selling books Ruined by Design and Design is a Job.
Recently, I had the great pleasure of talking with Mike Monteiro, co-founder of Mule Design and author of the best-selling books Ruined by Design and Design is a Job.
His fantastic audiobooks (which he actually narrated) lit a fire under me to explore how we can create an ethical practice when it comes to content design and UX writing.
Talking to Mike was a fantastic experience that helped me realize that, even though I added a chapter about ethical user experience to our UX Writing Academy, there are still more actions we can take if we want to have a positive impact on the people around the world who use our products.
Listen to this episode right now if you want to learn about:
🎤 Mike’s take on whether or not design should be a licensed profession
🎤 How to say “no” to your boss
🎤 Whether income sharing agreements are ethical or not
🎤 Why you should be the one asking all of the annoying questions
🎤 How to create a diverse design team
I was thrilled to talk to Mike and I can’t wait for you to check it out!
Check out free UX Writing course: https://course.uxwritinghub.com/free_course
Follow Mike: https://twitter.com/monteiro
Yuval Keshtcher 0:00
designed as
Unknown Speaker 0:00
a tool of capitalism to sell people shit they don't need. This is gonna be a fun episode in.
Unknown Speaker 0:12
This is writers in tech, a podcast where today's top content strategists, UX writers and content designers share their well kept
Yuval Keshtcher 0:20
industry secrets. Hello and welcome to writers in tech podcast brought to you by the UX training hub, a blog for content designers, UX writers content strategies, and today I am extremely excited to have a very special guest. I've been reading his books for a while now following his work for a while. His name is Mike Montero. He's working at mule studio since 2002 roads ruined by design, which is my favorite book of 2019. And many, many more books for designers and about the job of being a designer. Mike, how are you?
Mike 0:54
I'm good. Thank you for having me. Yuval,
Yuval Keshtcher 0:56
thank you so much for joining us as a guest today. I'd love to hear how did you start working in design?
Unknown Speaker 1:02
Wow, boy, it was such a long time ago, I'm really old. I started working in design, I was going to art school, I was going to school for art, like an idiot. And at some point of this was during the 90s. And the stuff I was getting really excited about art wise, was people making street stuff like Robbie canal and grand fury. And folks like that, you know, they'd make posters, and they'd go out in the middle of the night. And they'd we'd paste them. And I wanted to learn how to do that. And all of these posters have text on it, like how do you do that? So I thought, oh, rub off letters, you used to rub off letters for things like that. I don't know if you remember those, but letraset made them you'd like draw a line and pencil on a piece of paper. And then he'd rub each letter off on the piece of paper individually. And eventually, some a friend of mine said no, you idiot, they have computers for that now. So that was my first introduction to laying something out on a computer. And eventually, I just well, that seemed like a lot of fun. So that's how I became a designer, I started taking some design classes just so I could use the computer lab at school.
Yuval Keshtcher 2:07
Amazing. My background is also in graphic design, and I did a transition to product design. But when I did the transition, there was like way more mature technologies, I guess, because
Unknown Speaker 2:16
we didn't have any of that crap. We didn't have any, like all we had was graphic design. When I was
Yuval Keshtcher 2:22
like there wasn't any web stuff to download it.
Unknown Speaker 2:25
Now there was no web. By the time I became a web designer, I don't know what we even called it back then there was no way teaching this stuff you learn by stealing other people's work by looking at their code. And just grabbing it and changing it a bit here and there.
Yuval Keshtcher 2:39
Right? You can say the same stuff of on any type of art, I
Unknown Speaker 2:41
assume, oh, this is an art design is a tool of capitalism to sell people shit they don't need. This is gonna be a fun episode.
Yuval Keshtcher 2:49
Well, I was expecting to talk about that kind of stuff. Because in your book, for example, you've talked about the fact that design should be licensed, we should consider maybe licensing this profession just like we licensing doctors and lawyers and stuff like that. And I agreed with that. And when I read it, I even asked one of our guests here on the podcast, which is an expert in a very famous method about creating, you know, addictive experiences, if we should license this profession. And to be honest, nobody has a clear answer. Even the leaders of this practice don't have a solid answer. So what's your take on that?
Unknown Speaker 3:24
Look at history, just look at history? The answer is very clear. all professions have an origin story. And the origin story tends to be kind of wild. I did a talk at Facebook once a few years ago. And one of the posters that I saw hanging up inside Facebook, which Facebook made for their employees said that Orville Orville Wright didn't have a license. Do you know who Orville Wright is? No. Orville Wright is him and his brother invented the airplane.
Yuval Keshtcher 3:55
Oh, yeah. the Wright brothers
Unknown Speaker 3:56
gather. Right. But at least you know, that's the that's the common story that we all learn growing up. But you know, it's everything we learned growing up is actually a lie. Who knows? Anyway, the story is that the Orville and Wilbur Wright invented the airplane. And Orville was the guy who went up in the airplane. And Wilbur stayed on the ground who sad, sad Wilbur. And Facebook was trying to make a point that you don't need to be licensed to do these things, to do great things. The part of the story that they're not telling is that when Orville went up into the sky, he was the only airplane in the sky. And the only person that Orville could hurt was Orval unless he happened to land on Wilbur, at which point they would both get hurt. And you don't need a license when you're the only airplane in the sky. But eventually, airplanes take off. That was a bad pun. Eventually. There are many more airplanes in the sky. And they start doing weird things like crashing into each other and falling out of the sky and killing people on the ground. And you realize oh shit, we got to do something about this. So You start licensing the people who fly these planes. And you even invent all sorts of other industries like like air traffic controllers, to make sure that, you know, planes are where they're supposed to be. And we know where all of them are. This is just this is just what happens when an industry matures. You can say the same thing about automobiles. At some point, there are enough automobiles on the road, that you need to invent traffic signals. And then you need to license the people driving the automobiles, so they don't keep hitting each other, which they do, they still do. But you think, well, maybe they do it less. When I became a web designer, there weren't a lot of web designers, we were all just kind of like trying our shit out. And if we did something wrong, you know, we left, maybe we left a paragraph open, or we forgot to close a header tag. That was fun. That was like, you know, early 90s shit. Now, now the stuff that we do. Now, there's lots of planes in the sky. Now we've got like, you know, the shit that we're building is like, you know, in health care, and, you know, people's finances. And, you know, the the amazing bullshit that we've done with social media. And I think we're at the point in this industry, where like every other nascent industry, somebody comes along, and says, holy shit, we need to make sure these people know what they're doing. And, you know, is it hard? Yes. But it's very mean, this is what happens with every nascent industry in the world, you eventually get dangerous enough, that you get regulated. And over the last 30 years, the one thing that we've been able to prove, is that we can't regulate ourselves. So we have done some nasty, nasty, horrible shit. So we can't continue to do that shit. And then argue when somebody comes along and says, hey, maybe we should license these fools. Now, I'm not saying that, you know, if you want to build a website for, you know, your buddy's hedgehog farm, you need to design licensed to do that. go nuts. I'm saying that, by the time you're getting a job at Facebook, designing privacy settings, you should be licensed for that ship, because you're affecting billions of people. I agree, I think it's inevitable.
Yuval Keshtcher 7:23
But on the other side, you have the interest of those big companies,
Unknown Speaker 7:27
fuck the big companies. I am not here to protect big companies. Big I'm here to protect people, designers work in the service of people. We don't work for companies, companies may pay us. But we work in the interest of people. And the minute that we start making decisions in the interests of companies, we're screwed. companies do not have a right to exist. People do.
Yuval Keshtcher 7:53
Okay, so I remember the book, you said something about, like all of these boot camps out those UX design, places where you can do to just learn how to be a designer, those guys are not talking about ethics almost at all. And you know, being the users gatekeepers and big companies that you've mentioned, just hire them and just tell them what to do, and so on, and so on. So what I did is to add some kind of like a chapter about ethical design in our program. In addition to that, how can we promote ethical design? Like I feel like it's like, since you started talking about in 2019, as more people talked about it beforehand, but we had the social dilemma, the social dilemma movie on Netflix, which was pretty great. And I see that the discussion around, like being ethical in your design is a bit more mainstream, that it used to be like three years ago. So how do you think in your opinion, opinion, we can promote our industry, or like to be licensed, or at least, to go towards the ethical direction? So we are not going to fuck with people's life in that way?
Unknown Speaker 8:53
Well, I think we need to understand that that's part of the job. You're either working ethically, or you're working unethically. I mean, and and let me back up a little bit to what you said. The issue here is, you know, what boot camps and, you know, classes like that are teaching, I actually don't have any problem with places like that. Because, I mean, this is this is convoluted and complex, the big expensive Ivy League golf, so the issue isn't boot camps and places like that. I actually think there's a lot of good that those places do because they give people a less expensive barrier to entry into the field, which is important. You know, it's not like Ivy League schools are teaching design ethics, either. Nobody's teaching it. Design, education is abysmal. I was talking to a professor at a local school here with a possibility of going in and teaching an ethics class. And they said, Well, we can get you in to teach graduate students. I don't want to teach graduate students I want to teach like incoming freshmen because freshmen are first year students because that curriculum was decided like 20 years ago. The people who decide that curriculum, they don't like change, they're not going to let anybody come in and change anything. So we're talking about one a nascent field that's growing very, very quickly as nascent fields do. And the people who were educating to work in this nascent field are stuck in these programs that don't want to change and won't change, where, you know, the people who decide the curriculum are holding on to power in any way they can. And they're shortchanging these kids, at least the educational situation here in the US is abysmal. And, you know, kids go into like an amazing amount of debt in order to get these degrees. And they're not learning what I think is a cornerstone of the profession of cornerstone of any profession, to be honest, and they're not learning it. And then they graduate from school, and they owe like, I don't know, like 100 grand or more for these degrees, some of them, and then you end up having to work at places that help you pay down that debt. So you end up working in a place like Facebook, who pay you like twice as much as anybody else. And you're like, you're 22 and 100 grand in debt. So you're like, yeah, I'll do that. So you get, you know, these kids who have recently graduated and gotten an incomplete education, working at, you know, the biggest Corporation in the world. And they don't know how to say no to these assholes, they don't know how to argue for the job. And that's where we are where we are now. It's all by design, man,
Yuval Keshtcher 11:32
the system is actually designed that way that, especially in the US, by the way, will be in debt when they finished college. So it will be like that. But I don't know, I think we can redesign that system to this is what I'm trying to do when it comes to education, by the way that that's the agenda, in my opinion behind all of those boot camps.
Unknown Speaker 11:49
I mean, I like the boot camps, because it gives people an inexpensive way to get the skills.
Yuval Keshtcher 11:55
Exactly. And you have also does is says you know, the income share counted. I don't know if it's good or bad, because it might be good for people that don't have the cash right now. But it might be like this devil agreement that you don't want to participate like two years from now. So I'm not sure if I like it. I don't
Unknown Speaker 12:09
know what that is,
Yuval Keshtcher 12:10
I say is an income share agreement, you have like a few companies, especially in the US, that's working in that model, things like those boot camps that cost like maybe $20,000. And people then don't have the cash right now you have different companies like that lambda school is the biggest day like, Y Combinator backed and
Unknown Speaker 12:27
style with X, Y Combinator back that shit. Because the people who run Y Combinator are the devil.
Yuval Keshtcher 12:34
So there's a discussion around lambda school if it's like the devil or not, because you have those icy agreements. And then you say that no matter what, as long as you get paid at least 50k annually, after this program, you will have to bring about a portion of your salary for like two years. So basically, intentionally put you in debt. so few people say that it can help you with your education. Few people say that it's like this Devil's agreement, that's just going to hook you in fuck with your life,
Unknown Speaker 13:02
this is the first time hearing of those, but based on that description, this sounds like shit. Because any system that makes you beholden to a company is unethical by design. I've been talking to designers forever. And, you know, the first point that I wanted to make to people is that you're responsible for the work that you do in the world. If it's made with your hands, you're responsible for it. And I honestly thought, Okay, well, this would be an easy point to make. And then we can move on from there. Because who doesn't think that they're responsible for what they produce. And that turned out to be such a difficult point to make to people. And maybe I was making it badly, maybe as a shady messenger. But there's so many designers out there who have this mindset of what can I do, I do what I'm told, and that's the job. And but here's the thing, we as human beings deal with people in other professions all day long, the leeway that we're asking for our own behavior isn't leeway that we would accept for any other professional that we interact with? I see how livid we get, you know, if you go to a bakery, and you know, the, you know, there's a little bit of mold on the bread. Like, we get livid, livid, how dare they, how dare they sell moldy bread to me, and yet, you know, we want to be like some of the highest paid people in the world. And we want to go to Facebook, and you know, get our big paycheck. And we want to do unethical work. And then when people call us on it, it's like, I need to I need to earn a living, but we're not willing to accept that excuse from any other professional that we interact with. Like maybe the baker had to get rid of that, that day old bread, you know, in order to turn a profit for the day before, are we would we would we accept that excuse from them? You know, if we go to a doctor, and a doctor prescribes us a bunch of pills that we don't need to take back Because they made a deal with a pharmaceutical, and then we found out Holy shit, I've been prescribed pills I don't actually need and now, you know, I'm a junkie, we would be livid, we would be fucking livid. We go to our desk, we sit down, and we design dark patterns to trick people. And when we get called on that, we're like, wait a minute, I get to earn a living, you can't ask for an excuse that you're not willing to grant others. And you shouldn't, you shouldn't grant those excuses to others. But you need to behave, as well as you're expecting other people to behave towards you,
Yuval Keshtcher 15:32
as designers, content designers, product designers, what we can do right now. Okay, I'm going to junior right now listening to this podcast right now. One company, you know, maybe it's like those mobile gaming stuff, the freemium stuff that just get people hooked, and the gambling stuff, so they offered me so much money, I'm so young, I need the money. This is one and also you have the opportunity to work with the most talented people with the best,
Unknown Speaker 15:58
they're not the most talented people are not working. They're the shittiest people are working there. And you know, the people were in dire straits or working there. And the people who were in the most debt are working there. And honestly, they're not all bad people. But all of these people are victims of capitalism. And all these people have been screwed by the system. And they're just perpetuating this bad system by joining a place like that. And I, dude, I understand you people have bills to pay, people have rent to pay, people need to put food on their table, I get all of that. But do not tell me that you do not have a choice. You may not have a good choice, your choices may be limited. But once you take a job like this, that is the kind of designer you are, that is the kind of work that you are putting in the world. And I can't sit here and tell you that I've never taken a job that I'm not proud of. Because I mean, we've all had to eat. But Jesus Christ, you can't stay there that long. Don't make bullshit excuses for yourself. When people start talking to me about ethics, the conversation always goes to so is this situation, okay? Is that situation, okay? Kind of like karma priest, Grant absolution, I cannot I cannot grant anybody's absolution.
Yuval Keshtcher 17:11
Right. But you are a designer getting, you know, movement that more designers should talk about basically. And as a designer, people, you know, you're presenting a problem. So people are asking for the solution. You know, that's very design oriented approach to you.
Unknown Speaker 17:28
Well, let me tell you, there's nothing stupider than asking one white man for a solution to anything, this solution is to listen to other people and and to make sure that we're listening to the right people, and make sure that we're not excluding people who we've been excluding forever, and to do a lot more listening and to make sure that solutions aren't, you know, handed down by Gerald MC white boy, but rather come from, you know, a healthfully diverse team of people who are arguing solutions together.
Yuval Keshtcher 17:56
I agree. So we can say that creating some kind of diverse team of designers would help us to design better system for everyone.
Unknown Speaker 18:05
It always has, it always has.
Yuval Keshtcher 18:07
Can you give me an example, like I know, like all of the bad examples, like, even like the health health care was designed by men. And that's why it is something you talk about in the book. But now like many women struggle to operate in that system. So can you give me an example of like when there was a diverse team, and the design was actually like, really great because of that.
Unknown Speaker 18:28
So I can give examples of when a team was not diverse, and bad shit happened, because there's a million of those. And I can't think of one specific example of, of course, to the thing. You're asking me right now. Because the human brain sucks when it's on the spot, I can say that. That's fine. Why do we have to justify people working a diverse group of people working together?
Yuval Keshtcher 18:54
It's not the situation.
Unknown Speaker 18:56
The minute that you ask that question, what you're saying is that decisions from white boys are the default, and that a diverse team is something that needs to be justified. So I mean, I could just as easily flip this around on you and say, Hey, can you give me an example of when a team of white boys came up with a good solution for something?
Yuval Keshtcher 19:19
I don't know, the Wright brothers.
Unknown Speaker 19:22
I mean, that's fair. I suppose he
Yuval Keshtcher 19:24
brought the aircraft to the universe. But yeah, I see your point. And by the way, like many companies these days and this is this is why it's important for me to talk about the business aspect of it. I know it's bullshit. But at the end of the day, when we're talking here on this podcast on the business aspects of it, hiring recruiters are all of a sudden, okay, we should have a diversity. So if that's how we're going to do, that's how we're going to do it.
Unknown Speaker 19:45
I think it's incredibly important for designers to understand the business aspect of where they're working. incredibly important. You need to know how the company that you're working at makes its money because otherwise like because that money is coming from some Somewhere, and you need to make a judgment call on whether you're okay with that company making its money, the end of the sentence that's missing. Usually when we talk about how you know, designers need to understand business, and be okay with it. It's not just a matter of understanding how your company makes money, because the minute that you're helping your company make that money or you're supporting that method, there are many ways in which helping a company make money is absolutely fine. And there are many ways in which it's not, I'm not against making money, I enjoy making money I enjoy working for, you know, businesses that actually help society out, I think we need to do more of that, I just think we need to be aware of where we're putting our labor, because the minute that we put our labor somewhere, we're responsible for the effects of that labor,
Yuval Keshtcher 20:46
I agree. And we have the option to make a change, if we will talk about this. Like, I feel like more and more people lately are talking about the ethical aspect of it in a society, we actually have the power to give more power to the companies that we appreciate the way that they're making money eventually. And it's going to be tough. So you have to be easy, because I don't know, people, juniors, want to work in like, fancy techie names and just go with any place that will give them experience. So that's a challenge. But they believe that the more boot camps and stuff like that, and even like design schools, like the one that offered you to do their ethics class, we'll talk about that. It would just put more people in, like mindful place about like, should we do it? Or Shouldn't we do it like that? Because we need to be the user's gatekeepers, as you said,
Unknown Speaker 21:33
going back to a question that you asked earlier about, what can we do in our situation? Ask a ton of questions, we need to be asking a ton of questions. Like, why are we building this? Why is this important? Why are we moving in this direction? Now? Who have we talked to about this? What kind of research have we done about this? Like, ask an annoying amount of questions? Because that's the job. And you know, if you're a student, if you're applying to a school somewhere, do you have an ethics class? Why don't you have an ethics class, ask that stuff. As a writer, I like to sell books. And one of my tricks,
Yuval Keshtcher 22:12
I like the audiobooks, by the way, I like the audio version
Unknown Speaker 22:14
of Thank you, when I go into a bookstore, you know, and there's like a particular book that I'm looking for that a friend of mine is written and is trying to get some traction on. I'll ask them like, hey, do you carry this book? And because I know if enough people go in and ask for that book, they'll eventually they'll eventually start carrying it. So you know, if enough students start saying, hey, I'd really love to go to this school, but you don't have an ethics course. So that's important to me. If enough students asked for that, they might get an ethics course, if a recruiter reaches out to me about working at Facebook, and I say, No, I can't work there. Because you know, they're dismantling democracy and full of Nazis, you know, eventually, that recruiters going to go back to Facebook and say, Hey, you might have a Nazi problem that you want to take care of. I mean, people need to hear this shit. We're workers, I imagine that the people listening to your podcast are workers, they work for a living, right. And the greatest trick that capitalism has done is to convince workers that they're all temporarily embarrassed, millionaires, in the words of john Steinbeck, especially tech workers, they've convinced us that we're not actually workers, we're, you know, we're going to get some stock options real soon, where our company is going to go public real soon. So I should be worried about you know, things like, you know, hot, my stock earnings get taxed more than I should be worried about, you know, labor laws. And, you know, that was kind of true in the beginning of this industry, because, you know, it was like, quick, any nascent industry, there was a gold rush. And you know, a lot of people got rich, as an industry matures, the Gold Rush kind of dies. And you're left with, you know, people who work for a living, and people who benefit from their labor. And I think what we've seen in the last couple of years is there's, people have begun to realize that, hey, we are workers. And as workers, we need to leverage our power and unionize because otherwise, these companies that we work for are just going to bleed us dry. And anytime that they need to profit a little bit more, they'll just do some bloodletting on the worker floor. And nobody's looking out for us except us. If I tell my boss, hey, I can't do this. Because, you know, it's going to harm the people I work for, which are the people on the other side of the glass. And you know, right now that boss can just fire me, we need an organization in place that makes sure that that can't happen. We need to stand up for ourselves.
Yuval Keshtcher 24:42
I guess it would make sense to do it in equity for big tech companies. But for let's say that we work in a small or medium sized startup companies, five to 10 designers, so unionize would be the right thing to do. But do you think that you know the private sector would allow something like that to do the private sector doesn't
Unknown Speaker 24:57
have to allow anything thing. I'm speaking about the US here because I understand us labor laws. I don't claim to be very smart about that either. But your boss does not have to meet, every worker in the US has the right to organize. And I don't care how big your company is, I don't care if they're five people or 5000 people, you have the right to organize, you have the right to start a union. And I've noticed a few medium sized companies here in the US have unionized in the last couple of years. And it's been amazing to see, we're building lots of little socialists here now. And I'm excited,
Yuval Keshtcher 25:33
right? It's amazing to have the option to unionize even in like those big tech companies. Well, I
Unknown Speaker 25:38
would say it's not an option. It's not an option. It's you have to do it. You have to do it. It's a response, you have a responsibility to unionize.
Yuval Keshtcher 25:47
It's a very interesting point of view. And I love the fact that we've talked about it today. Oh, good. How do you think we should? And this is an open discussion. Right? But how do you think we should name this episode? union eyes You fools. Alright, let's do you got it. All right.
Unknown Speaker 26:03
That's it. That was that? That was easy.
Yuval Keshtcher 26:05
Yeah. Did you like it?
Unknown Speaker 26:06
Sure. No, I didn't enjoy it.
Yuval Keshtcher 26:09
I'm right now in Israel, which is an extremely complicated situation, as you know,
Unknown Speaker 26:14
it's not that complicated. Do you think so? I don't think we should get into this. But I'll say this. I hope you are safe. I hope you and your family are safe. I hope you and your family and your friends are say
Yuval Keshtcher 26:24
thank you so much, Mike. I appreciate it. It's been challenging lately, because we had to run two missiles shelters every day now for the past five days.
Unknown Speaker 26:32
That has got to be terrifying.
Yuval Keshtcher 26:34
That was terrifying. And yeah, you know, life. For now.
Unknown Speaker 26:38
I think you should vote your entire government out of office.
Yuval Keshtcher 26:41
tough one.
Unknown Speaker 26:42
I wish you and everybody else in the region. Peace and safety.
Yuval Keshtcher 26:46
Thank you so much, Mike. And it was a pleasure to have you and I really feel like I met with a person in this industry that I highly appreciate and talking to you in person was a great honor to me. So thank you so much. You all it was a pleasure to meet you.
Unknown Speaker 26:59
Thank you so much for having me on your program and good luck with everything
Yuval Keshtcher 27:04
good bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai