Design Morality
What is design morality? I continually hear about design principles which seem to run amuck with self prophecying morality. But ethics I would argue are seperate from design. Something can be technically design sound but be morally wrong, whatever that means. Dark patterns are considered bad design, but they're not, are they. A design should only be measured by the metrics of its success. By the problem it is solving, if the problem is the company wants to make more money by keeking the customer on the page then the dark pattern solves that problem. Perhaps its a narrow sighted view and perhaps its more damaging in the long term but if it does succeed in its inital goal then that is good design.
There's always lots of talk about how design should be used to find the problem to dig deep and ask the real questions, to find the real answers and create innovative and new solutions. But thats not what happens most of the time is it. No instead you get yet another app.
The difference is that while the dark pattern may be morally wrong and poorly designed it is by some metric successful, otherwise it wouldn't be something that we talk about. I'm not advocating the use of dark patterns, its the hypocrisy of talking about opposing dark patterns when what you're designing is only a thinly veiled pixel of a difference.
Not only are strong and clear design priciples important but so are solid and logical design morals. Its not easy, I think most people avoid discussing morals because it exposes how far they've had to concede their own beliefs or how little they've considered the distinction. This makes it so important for open and clear dialouge about where your morals lie and where the morals of your company or your work lie. Because you the one that carries out your companies vision and so you should have say in your work and the morals in which you are doing your work.