Design Ethics
“Design creates culture. Culture shapes values. Values determine the future.” Robert L. Peters, Graphic Designer
Ethics in Web and Software Design
A good designer cares about the user experience. Every design decision is a decision made on behalf of our users. If the product has the user's interests in mind, the users will enjoy using it - which will grow the business in an honest way. Ethical design is design with the intent to do good.
But it's more complicated than that.
It's easy to say, "make good choices" or "don't cause harm or a poor experience". However, without clearly established definitions of what good is, how do we judge whether something is good, and why we want to do good in the first place, we have effectively granted ourselves a license to do anything we want.
Is the advertisement the Chinese shoe company used on Instagram, that placed a strand hair on their advertisement to get users to tab/swipe it, unethical or smart?
An ethical framework
In the article, Using Ethics In Web Design, Morten Rand-Hendriksen outlines four piers to use as an ethical framework when working in the digital realm.
Consequentialism (utilitarianism)
An act that benefits the majority is considered good even if the minority suffers as a result. The end justifies the means.
- Will the majority of our users benefit from this new feature?
- Can this bug be ignored since it only impacts a small percentage of users?
There are pitfalls in only making decisions based on consequentialism. For example, developers have been using utilitarianism as an excuse for not building an accessible website for decades. Furthermore, many ignore users of older browsers, inexpensive technologies, or users that have a slow network connection.
Bottom Line: Attempt to maximize utility for the majority and provide remedies for those disadvantaged.
Deontology (obligation ethics)
An act is deemed "good" if followed the rules, even if the consequence is a bad one.
What practices or standards am I following?
A clear example of deontology in web development is web standards. However, deontology falls short when new situations for which there are no rules occur or edge cases are encountered.
Bottom Line: Follow existing rules, best practices, and guidelines. When no rule exists, use the other ethical piers to create new ones.
Virtue ethics
The actor (you) is acting or behaving in a virtuous way.
What type of professional do I want to be?
What are the virtues of a web developer? Rand-Hendriksen listed the following:
- Knowledge: Know the craft and keep your skills current and up to date.
- Care: Uphold the duty of care to the client, the end-user, the content, and yourself.
- Equity: Be fair, and ensure every end-user can access the same content.
- Truthfulness: Be honest with clients, content, end-users, and yourself.
- Courage: Take intelligent risks, push norms and boundaries, move the craft forward.
- Collaboration: Share knowledge and help lift the skills of your peers.
- Openness: Be transparent, and value the opinions of others and yourself.
- Access: Make everything you create accessible to anyone who may encounter it.
- Resilience: Push forward and learn new things. Own your mistakes and learn from them.
Bottom Line: With every act, consider what person it turns you into and align every act with the virtues you aspire to hold.
Capability approach (user-centered design)
Actions are made to support the end-user's experience and long-term outcomes.
What capabilities do we want to grant our users? Thinking carefully about what capabilities each of our design decisions grant and enable, and choosing only those decisions that produce and increase the well-being of the end-user is a key component in a well-formed ethical design process.
Bottom Line: Measure success by the user-experience.
Extra Stuff
Articles
Article: 10 Principles for Ethical UX Designs
Article: Ethics, UX, and our role in all this
Article: Reform Social Media, Part V: Ethical Design in Social Media
Documentaries
Last I checked, these were available on Netflix