Ethical Design
Your responsibility as a designer is to recognize and question the impact of your creations. Here are some basics!
Ethics
Featured method
Developed by Mariesa K Dale as a beta method, Yin-Yang aims to bring awareness to the design team and thoughts of possible outcomes of the product, which you may not have reflected upon in the beginning.
Yin-Yang 1 (Beta)
Ideate
01:00
Design team
Post-its, pens & paper/whiteboard
Level 2
Yin-yang is an ideating method to help your design team answer to possible ethical dilemmas that your product may generate.
Where do I start?
The focus of a UX-designer revolves around the human experience. We are putting ourselves in other people’s shoes in order to create something that is useful to them. At the same time, make our customers happy. There might not be that much focus on the aftermath of our creation. How will it affect people and their close environment? Or even globally? Therefore, it is important to involve ethical thinking in every aspect of the design process. You and your team should aim to question the morality of what you are creating and the possible outcomes of your design from the empathy stage to after the product is launched. As UX-designer Hila Yonatan writes in her article “Ethics in User Experience Design”:
“Why should we care at all? Well, if we are the ones who plan the processes and make the decisions, these are topics that ought to be addressed from a professional standpoint. No one would like to be labelled as the creator of an app that makes its users feel uncomfortable to interact with.“
Introducing ind.ie's Manifesto
Ind.ie is a non-profit that is currently based in Sweden and aim for social justice in the digital age. They have brought forward a ethical design manifesto which is built upon basic human rights. It is our duty as designers to take responsibility for what we design and think before we launch artifacts that is nor ethical or accessible. You should aim to create things that “respects and protects your civil liberties, reduces inequality, and benefits democracy” (ind.ie 2017). It should not be arrogant and demanding, instead it should be thoughtful and accessible to all. Last but not least it just be a delight to use it, intuitive and empowering.
Respect
3. Human Experience
Delightful
2. Human Effort
Functional, convenient & reliable
1. Human Rights
Decentralised, private, open, interoperable, accessible, secure & sustainable
Ethical design methods
Presented here is some methods that aims to bring a ethical mindset to your team.
Yin-Yang 2 (Beta)
01:00
Design team
Post-its, pens, paper/whiteboard Ying-Yang 1 documentation
Level 2
Yin-yang 2 is an ideating method which follows up and sorts good/malicious patterns that your team has identified in Yin-Yang 1.
Yin-Yang 1 (Beta)
01:00
Design team
Post-its, pens & paper/whiteboard
Level 2
Yin-yang is an ideating method to help your design team answer to possible ethical dilemmas that your product may generate.
Resources
There are a lot of useful resources regarding ethics in design. Here are some of them.
Ethics for Designers
Microsoft has developed an extensive guide for that works to promote a digital world that, in their own words “enables and draws on the full range of human diversity”. It includes a lot of useful resources, including a toolkit, booklets, and video.
Ethics for Design
The Home Office of the UK Government have created dos and don’ts of designing posters addressing accessibility. The posters are particularly made for making services accessible in government. However, they are very useful guidelines and can be applied throughout the web. The posters are also available on their GitHub page in several languages.
< DESIGN ETHICALLY >
Katherine M. Zhou has developed a ethical toolkit including methods to include in your process. In her own words “It is time for designers to pave the way for ethical decision-making in tech.