"Good" design

“I write a bunch of form labels on the whiteboard, in a nonsensical order, along with a bunch of randomly sized input boxes. I include first name, last name, address, gender, city, state, email address, etc. Then I tell the interviewee that we’re designing a form to sign up for an email newsletter and to arrange them in the right order. Only people who ask me why I need the users’ gender, or physical address, or really, anything but their email address get a second interview. I won’t hire a designer who doesn’t ask why, and I won’t hire a designer whose desire to arrange boxes is more important than their desire to protect users’ data.”

― Mike Monteiro, Ruined by Design

I've been thinking a lot about the importance of usability lately. Mike Monteiro's quote, though, is a helpful reminder of what underscores usability: ethics.

There can be no good design without ethics.