Ensuring high-quality software requires considering the social climate within which the applications will be deployed and used. This can be done by designing quality goals and objectives that are consistent with changing social and ethical landscapes. Using principles of technological determinism, this article presents three cases that illustrate why it is becoming even more important to integrate these concerns into software design and quality assurance. With these examples in mind, this article explains how to consider technological determinism in software design and quality assurance practices to achieve this enhanced sensitivity on a practical level.