S12E7: Compassionate Design, Career Advice and Leaving 18F with Designer Ethan Marcotte

Ethan Marcotte is a web designer who may be best known for coining the term “responsive design” in 2010 – which turned out to be a prescient manifesto for the quest to design beautiful, accessible, and effective digital experiences everywhere. Ethan’s also a compassionate web designer and a prolific writer. His most recent book is “You Deserve A Tech Union,” a treatise on the rise of the labor movement in tech.

Ethan also recently spent nearly a year working for 18F, a governmental digital consulting office that helped federal agencies use technology to better serve the public. Ethan resigned in February, just one month before the office was shut down.

In this episode, Ethan describes the difficult choice to leave 18F – a story that  includes practical career advice on what do to do when a job contradicts your personal values. He also discusses the role of compassionate design in this moment, and what its future might be. And Ethan reflects on the state of “responsive design” 15 years later, why redesigning big systems requires patience and how AI is changing the value of our labor. 

On this season of DB|BD, we are Designing for the Unknown. Host Ellen McGirt asks visionary designers how they navigate uncertainty- whether it be technological disruption, global crises, or shifting cultural norms.

Ethan’s website.

Ethan’s essays “Moving on from 18F” and “Hallucinating”

Sylvia Harris: AIGA 2014 Medalist

Jessica Helfand’s beautiful tribute to Sylvia.