The topic of ethics has been talked about for years, and while “technoethics” (the study of moral, legal and social issues involving technology) dates back to the 1970s, it primarily involves technologists, scientists, and philosophers. But why aren’t designers involved in these conversations? Why isn’t this a topic that’s regularly discussed in the workplace or design community?
Over the course of 7 weeks, our team (Alex Honeywell, Amanda Poh and Maheen Sohail) researched, developed, and tested with various designers. As previous interns from Facebook, Microsoft, and AKQA, our team was able to leverage our background of both tech and agency. In addition, we engaged with design students and senior designers to learn about the role ethics play in their design process.
Here are 3 problem areas that we’ve identified:
1. A Lack of Resources
Part of the problem is that ethics are not being taught in design schools. We scanned through the curriculums of design schools such as Parsons, Carnegie Mellon, SIAT and found that young designers are rarely taught how to ethically critique their design decisions. Because of this, young designers are entering the industry with few resources on ethical design and little to no experience when it comes to approaching ethical concerns within their team.
2. The Follow Through
The topic of ethics is only ever intentionally considered during user research. Referred to as relational ethics, this informs qualitative research such as ethnographic studies. It’s helped researchers build respectful connections with the people they study. Thing is, ethics in design extends throughout the entire design process — not just during research, but also in our design decisions.
3. From Craft to Morals
We’re too focused on designing experiences without intentionally considering our human rights. Design shouldn’t be driven by a passion for craft, it should be driven by morals.
“Most of the discussions in design forums and online channels revolve around design tools and prototyping. Why are we not discussing broader topics such as ethics, diversity and social impact in design?” — Fabricio Teixeira, UX Designer at R/GA, (2017)
Let’s talk about one company that’s managed to make it’s way into headlines almost every other week: Uber. After details were leaked of its program “Greyball”, Uber came under fire for having created a secret tool to identify and evade law enforcement officials investigating the company.
“Every Uber employee who touched Greyball […] failed an ethics test. They were either told exactly what the tool would be used for, or they didn’t do their due diligence in finding out.” –Mike Monteiro, Co-founder and design director of Mule Design, (2017)
For those who worked on the program, it should have been flagged immediately as being unethical to design a system that deceives public authorities. But sometimes, these ethical questions live on a much finer scale through our design decisions.
In 2017, the New York Times took a closer look into Uber’s psychological tactics and the relationship with their drivers. Instead of providing drivers with positive work incentives, Uber surfaces messages manipulating its drivers into working longer hours to increase driver engagement.
“Of course, many companies try to nudge consumers into buying their products and services using psychological tricks. But extending these efforts to the work force is potentially transformative.” — Noam Scheiber, New York Times, (2017)
Through these design decisions, Uber is not only deteriorating their driver’s trust — they’re taking away their sense of autonomy, ultimately decreasing their quality in life.
Which leads us to challenge designers and ask: are we being considerate of human values? Isn’t it time that we start being held accountable for the ethical implications of our design decisions?
On the other hand, there are companies that have leveraged these human values to create a positive impact. Take a look at Airbnb. Founded on the idea of ‘building trust between people who have never met’, Airbnb decided to challenge the concept of ‘stranger danger’, a bias we all grew up with. In 2016, a joint study between Stanford and Airbnb showed that “the more different somebody is, the less we trust them.” By testing and iterating on this idea of how to build trust, they were able to find that “high reputation beats high similarity” — users with more than 10 reviews reduced the need for similarity. From this reframing, Airbnb has been able to leverage their service for both the everyday traveller and those in immediate need of shelter during a time of crisis or natural disaster.
Creative technologist, Aral Balkan, believes that designing a great experience that is ethically aligned involves designing technology that respects human rights, human effort and human experiences. But as designers, we’re failing to design for human rights. Aral Balkan writes that because our entire lives are now stored within the technologies we use, the human rights that apply to us (i.e. privacy, trust, respect, autonomy) must also extend to these objects.
In order to do so, it’s important for designers to take a step back and question the existing design patterns we’ve grown accustomed to. In the case of Netflix, autoplaying videos might seem like a great way to increase product engagement–after all, think of the countless hours we spend on end watching our favourite shows. As designers, we need to take a step back and think about what we’re asking of our users. By encouraging behaviours like binge-watching, is this deteriorating the overall health of a user?
The attention economy serves as a great example of how we are no longer mindful of our user’s time. An important voice on this issue is Ex-Google Design Ethicist, Tristan Harris. His company ‘Time Well Spent’ focuses on designing with the user’s time in mind. With his platform, he speaks of different ways we can reclaim our attention and take back control. Time Well Spent currently focuses on web and mobile, but as new technologies like Virtual Reality become widespread, it’s important that we start critiquing their ethical concerns early in development.
The work of leaders like Tristan Harris and Aran Balkan serve as models for ethical design thinking because they use human values to consciously drive their decision making. We need more designers to talk about the importance of human values, and start designing for them.
In response, we’d like to introduce, Ethical Design Thinking.
Check out our methodology in part 2 of our article.
This methodology is just the first step in beginning to design ethically. As designers, we must consciously take part in more discussions with ethicists and experts from various fields such as sociology, psychology and behavioural science. We need to do our own research into existing ethical concerns within the industries and mediums we are designing for. It’s important that we involve our entire team in these discussions so that our ethical considerations don’t get lost in the process.
Ethical Design Thinking was created by Alex Honeywell, Amanda Poh, and Maheen Sohail as part of a senior design course taught by Russell Taylor and Stevie TA Nguyen at Simon Fraser University .
