Ethical design

Introduction
One of the advantages that I realized in the field of digital product design is that the output of my actions enters the lives of the majority of people and is supposed to make part of their lives easier and more enjoyable. Design affects people, our environment, our professions and hobbies, our friendships and our families. In my opinion, as much as design can improve human life, increase productivity and reduce harm, it can also be destructive and endanger the health of the soul and body.

It may seem that observing ethics in design is evident, but when it comes to action, we face many unknowns, confusions and sensitivities.

• How to distinguish between good and bad when we have to make a decision?
• How can we pay attention to the user, society and humanity as well as to the employer and business?
• What is ethical design and why is it important?

I will explain them all in this article.

Definition of ethics
Ethics is the plural of “nature” and means temperament, mood, nature and that which is consistent with human nature. Ethics are ethical principles that tell us what to do and what not to do when making decisions. In fact, ethics directs our behavior.

Ethics directs us to think beyond our own benefits and consider the benefits of others.

Ethical design
Ethical design means making conscious design decisions that do not harm anyone. In fact, in ethical design, we are responsible for our actions for society and humanity. These days, in technology, business, politics and cultures, moral issues are replaced by issues which are “normal” . That is, because it is normal everywhere, so there is no problem.

• Design ethics show designers how to work with colleagues, stakeholders, clients, and users
• Design ethics determines what features should be in products and services and what features should not
• Design ethics helps to evaluate the ethical value of designed products and services

Epicurus, Greek philosopher: The best life is that which maximizes pleasure and minimizes pain. Today, the utilitarian approach teaches that the best action is one that produces the greatest benefit and least harm to all involved.

Ethical principles are abandoned for various reasons. Competitive priorities, lack of knowledge, organization culture and lack of people willing to support and defend ethics. But here the role of the designer is highlighted, as Mr. Mirbagheri said in this article, the designer plays the role of “mother” for the product and is responsible for the education and manners of the child; A mother brings up her child in such a way that he does not harm others and humanity is important to him. One of the responsibilities of a designer in an organization is to create and enrich the design perspective, and knowing and understanding the topic of “ethics in design” makes this culture to be created and developed in the right way.

Designers and organizations need to cultivate “ethical thinking” in addition to cultivating “design thinking” when facing complicated issues.

Ethical-Centered Designer
Ethical-centered designers think about design problems and solutions on larger scales than other designers. They don’t just ask whether these design actions are legal, efficient, or economical, but also consider how their decisions affect others. They also take responsibility for their choices and, in fact, they know that they are “agents of change”.
Ethical design is a skill. This means that it can be learned and improved. A designer can move from not understanding to mastering this skill.

Mike Monteiro in his book “Ruined by Design”, tells how designers have destroyed the world and what we can do to fix this, and then explains the role of a designer in ethical design:

“Working ethically is a skill, and it’s a skill that needs to be taught and then developed. It’s not easy to tell the CEO of a company that a product they’ve asked you to design is unethical. It takes guts. You need to know What questions to ask. You need to know how to conduct the test of product impact. You need to know how to provide an argument well and you need to see yourself as a stakeholder in the product. You need to see yourself as a goalkeeper, and frankly, it needs designers who are aware of the backgrounds and experiences that have been damaged by corporate products. It takes a long time.”

The pyramid “Ethical Hierarchy of Needs”
Many principles of ethical design revolve around respect for human rights, human effort and experience; The pyramid of “Ethical Hierarchy of Needs” proposed by Aral Balkan and Laura Kalbaugh divides this issue into three general levels, where reaching each level depends on the lower level.

Respect for human rights
In the first layer, ethical design respects for human rights, human security, and civil liberties. It is created based on the cooperation of humans, reduces inequalities, and is designed for everyone regardless of gender, color, and race, and does not harm the environment.

Respect for human effort
In the second layer, ethical design respects for human effort. It not only meets the needs of people, but also it meets them easily and fast, and it is also reliable. It’s not selfish and understands that people’s attention may be distracted in this limited time of life, and it also pays attention to the fact that different people have different abilities.

Respect for the human experience
And in the last layer, the design respects the human experience to live; to the beauty and enjoyment of working with technology. It brings happiness and smiles of satisfaction to people and makes life more enjoyable for them.

Aral Balkan: The problem is not technology, but the problem is attitudes towards capitalism .

A guide to achieving ethical design

Research
In the research process, share the purpose of the interview with people, avoid biases and let the research results guide you and not the other way around; Be sensitive in keeping information and give it only to essential people and also be careful not to invade people’s privacy; People’s time should be important to you and plan in such a way that their time is not wasted and consider a gift and thank them for their time.

Usability

Learnability: How easy is it to learn to use the product?
Memorability: How easy is it to remember how to reuse the product?
Efficiency: How quickly can users complete tasks?
Errors: How many errors do users make and how serious are they?
Satisfaction: How pleasant is the use of the product?

Imagine users spend 5 minutes transferring money using card to card technology, which can be done in 10 seconds :)

Accessibility and inclusivity

Think about which of your target users will be intentionally or unintentionally left out. People with physical disabilities are usually excluded. Do you think the design of a site is always optimized for people with visual impairment? According to the WHO, we have at least 1 billion blind or partially sighted people in the world! For example, many sites have sections that cannot be read by the blind through a screen reader; Images without alternative text (Alt Text) and links or buttons without descriptions are for screen readers.

We should be aware that we should not expose users to unreasonable physical, mental or emotional stress, and if our product is exposed to the use of the elderly, disabled people and children, we must pay attention to their special needs and conditions.

Generally, we shouldn’t discriminate against users based on gender, race, ethnicity, culture, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, physical disability, social and economic status, unless our persona is created based on this, and for example, our product is supposed to solve a pain point that is for one specific gender.

Privacy

Privacy?! Alexa listens to our conversations, Google monitors our clicks, and Facebook monitors our private messages. If we collect users’ personal information, first of all, we should keep in mind that it should be for the benefit of the users and to tell them very clearly that this data is going to be collected. Finally, if we get their permission for a specific job, we should not use them for 10 other purposes :)
Why do we collect other information when all that is needed for initial use of an application is the user’s contact number?

In our writings, reports, educational or other materials, we are not allowed to notify the public the information we obtain about individuals or give it to organizations that provide targeted advertising.

Transparency and Persuasion

God save me from unethical patterns that abuse users for making more profit; For example, design techniques used in products to persuade users to do things they probably wouldn’t have done otherwise. The use of dark patterns with different reasons and justifications is one of the most used techniques in most cases for the benefit of business and is the opposite of ethical design. For instance, Instagram application, in order to reduce the number of “user account deletions” makes it difficult and complicated to access this section; or some online stores put an item in the user’s shopping cart by default, or some subscription cancellation processes have many steps and even they need a long phone call. A process that could be done with a few clicks. Or the welcome ringtones are renewed by default and we have to take some actions to cancel it.

For ethical design, it is necessary to provide transparency so that users can make choices consciously, we should not deliberately mislead the user in his choices. In addition, the actions that designers take by using “cognitive biases” to change the behavior of users are generally unethical. Normally, the user will not take the action we want except by “abusing these biases”. To what extent should we influence the behavior and thoughts of our users? Are we aware that we are making a habit and turning it into a culture or even an addiction? Why should they devote the golden time of their lives to our product and for example produce content that is of no benefit to the individual? Why should it keep visiting our product and take users’ focus away from dozens of other valuable actions it can do? Because others are doing it, so is it the right approach?

The images below show some of these actions:

• The image on the left is the download page of the ad blocking application, which has ads itself!
• The middle image is the unsubscribe page of an application; The only button we see is the payment button for renewal
• The image on the right, which tells the user to either buy a subscription or watch ads if this program is published under the title of “free”.

User participation

Finally, the product is designed for its target users. It is logical for users to be present in the design decisions and in the different steps that are taken because the designed product becomes a part of their lives. The logic of human-centered design or HCD, was developed by Mr. Don Norman, and its centrality supports the active involvement of users and a clear understanding of the needs of the user, which also helps to create a product with good usability. In general, in ethical design, products that are designed to serve a specific population must meaningfully include that population throughout the design process.

Concentration

We should know that every product or service we design is only a small part of the world of each user and people need to rest, hang out with friends, spend time with family, study, etc. as well. These products should be available when the user needs them, otherwise they should not disturb the user’s focus. Netflix and YouTube immerse us in a world of interesting videos with the automatic playback function; Or Sean Parker, the former head of Facebook, says that he designed the platform to achieve this success by exploiting human behavior modification techniques using the “social approval feedback loop” bias. Dopamine produced as a result of likes or comments encourages the user to post again or keep visiting and get informed about his new likes.

Environmental Sustainability

Think more deeply and behave more ethically and consider the impact of our work on the environment, resources and climate of the world. Think about energy consumption, the internet and the impact of waves on the environment.

Let’s think about the answers of these questions

• We are tasked with improving a poor CTA in an app. We design a solution and the CTA conversion rate improves dramatically according to the test. Do you think that simply checking the data and observing the improvement rate will give us enough information to determine the ethicality of this design?
• A brand design team is hired to revise a company’s main slogan that is presented to customers. After research and various ideas, the design team proposes a new slogan and vision, and the stakeholders of the company are excited. Does the excitement of stakeholders guarantee that this new slogan and promise to customers is ethical?
• The design team of a company working on a SaaS was tasked with delivering an innovative feature on the platform. This feature had some attributes that raised some concerns among the team, but after investigations, everything was completely legal. Do you think that the legality of the features guarantees that they are also ethically right?
• The members of a small company who work in the field of website design have common religious beliefs. They genuinely try to do the right thing, and sometimes consider their religious beliefs when faced with difficult design decisions. Does decision-making based on religious beliefs guarantee a design based on ethics?

Consequences of Unethical Design

1. Physical harm to users and customers as a human being
   Wrist tendinitis, cervical herniated disc, accident based on distraction, mobile phone falling from hand and breaking it due to poor user experience while working with one hand etc.
2. Emotional damages to users and customers as a human being
   Addiction to products, lack of focus in relation to important life tasks, staying away from friends and family, promoting fake cultures such as perfectionism in lifestyle, etc.
3. Intentional or unintentional exclusion of users as human beings
   37% of the world’s population, which is about 3 billion people, do not have an online lifestyle yet.
4. Inequality in providing the values ​​of a product to all users as a human being
   Elderly people or people who are less familiar with new user interface technology and methods have problems with the size of fonts, understanding icons, enough patience to perform actions, speed of clicking, etc.

How to make our design more ethical
Of course, convincing business stakeholders and employers is difficult; Especially for less experienced designers or designers who have not yet built a strong relationship based on trust with their managers. Ethical design is not against commercial profit and it is designers who keep a balance by providing solutions. Using logic, an alternative solution for unethical actions, building trust for managers, influencing the organization, and using interaction and discussion techniques can help us advance ethics in design. Of course, in certain situations and when unethical actions cross a red line, is the time to be frank and we must say very clearly, “This is an unethical action and it hurts users (humans), and I will not do this.” This applies to the time of crossing the red line, and in other cases, try to move forward and create a culture with the policies and solutions that have been mentioned.

Another solution is holding meetings under the title of “dark reality”, which was proposed by Socrates. This technique focuses on challenging questions and makes us discover the weaknesses and dark spots of our actions regarding ethics:

• How long is your product lifespan?
• What will happen if the users of our product become millions?
• What are the long-term effects of our actions on society, economy and environment?
• Who benefits from our design? Who will suffer? Who will not be considered intentionally or unintentionally?
• How can this product and actions be misused?

Print the ethical design pyramid in the size of a poster and hang it in the organization’s environment or in a smaller size that can be placed on every designer’s desk.

Ethics in design and organization maturity in user experience

Considering ethics in design and things that must be observed in this regard is also related to the maturity of an organization in dealing with user experience (UX Maturity) and in fact, the more an organization has an ethical approach in product development, the more it helps mature in User experience.

And Finally?
Change cannot happen overnight and managers, investors, governments, etc., are effective in ethical attitudes other than designers; But bring ourselves to society, humanity and even ourselves! and by taking small steps, we can achieve long-term changes and know that there is a lack of time and budget in many cases; These limitations can be reduced by starting on time and having the right expectations.

On one hand, companies and managers can define ethical design as a requirement for designers, and one person is responsible for monitoring compliance with this requirement, because this approach adds value to products, and on the other hand, designers can make this part of their features and red lines.

To play a role in creating and forming the culture in the organization, we need “power” and this power is obtained as a result of “influence” regardless of the organizational hierarchy.

Finally, we must come to a clear understanding of ethical design; otherwise, we will be tempted to use ethics to confirm what we already believe and create justifications that favor our design decisions, even though It is considered unethical originally.

Writer: Mostafa Farahmand

Sources: Ind.ie, Top tal, 99Designs, NNG
Read more: Ethics for Design, The Role of Ethics in Design