4 Practical Ways to Get Started in Design Ethics
How to design more ethical experiences + free Consequence Scanning PDF
Reading time: 10 minutes
Design is about working with people for people. The aim of the game is to tailor experiences to improve people’s lives, right? Isn’t it therefore important to step back sometimes and be aware of what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and who we’re doing it for?
On that note, let’s ask ourselves some critical questions…
How does ethics and user experience (UX) design coexist? Have you had experiences as a user where you suspected a company was engaging in unethical practices?
Let’s use an example:
You browse your favourite social media app every day, of which you have been a loyal user for several years. Over time, your usage has increased, and you realise that the app interferes with your daily offline life. You just can’t resist doom scrolling even though you know it isn’t offering any constructive value, and you’re getting neck pain from staring at your phone for so long. Then you read an article stating that frequent usage of that social media app has increased depression, anxiety, and even suicide rates in adolescent users. If users feel compelled to use this app, its designers will surely do a good job. Or have they?
Do users need to use this social media app for hours daily? And if it has been linked to mental health problems, where are the indicators to warn users of potential harm? Is the organisation taking strides to make its product less harmful?
Cigarette packets contain clear warnings and even films that show graphic content. But warnings in social media products are, for the most part, subtle at best. A side dish if you will to the plat du jour that is digital addiction. These big questions make UX design ethics a ‘hot potato’ in 2022.
Here are some ways we can be more ethical designers and protect users:
Be self-aware and reflect on your design practice.
Understand dark patterns and advocate against them.
Consider older users in your designs.
Practice “consequence scanning.”
1) Be self-aware, and reflect on your design practice.
Self-awareness in any professional field (or area of life) is handy. It addresses a fundamental flaw in the human condition - that we exist in our own universe and all too often struggles to see beyond our own horizons.
Shelly Duval and Robert Wicklund state in their 1972 book A theory of objective self-awareness that:
“The process of comparing one’s actions with standards allows us to modify our behaviour, experiencing pride and dissatisfaction. Self-awareness therefore, becomes a means of self-control.”
Engaging in this process allows us to maintain integrity and remember that user-centered design isn’t really about wireframing and sitemaps. Those are merely tools that help us achieve our bigger picture goal of creating a better future for people. Indeed, most of us possess moral ideals, but it’s easy to forget them when faced with other less abstract phenomena such as paying the rent or trying to get a promotion.
Keeping our moral ideals in mind and checking in with ourselves can be helpful in design, and over the course of your career, you might just save a few lives, seriously.
So step back from Figma for a moment and think about what you’re doing and why. Remember, as a designer, you have the power to change the world, for better or for worse. The choice lies with you and where you focus your energy.
To quote The World Economic Forum’s Head of Machine Learning and AI, Kay Firth-Butterfield:
“I think, intrinsically, it’s important for designers to understand that what they are doing could really benefit human beings and the planet but mistakes are going to be bad.”
2) Understand dark patterns, and advocate against them.
In case you’re wondering what dark patterns are, here’s a great article on the topic by Arushi Jaiswal.
Providing a “better ads experience” is a deceptive way of saying “we want to sell your personal data, not just use it ourselves.”
A nice definition is ‘a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things that they might not want to do, such as buying overpriced insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills."
Speaking out against dark patterns to your design team requires courage and bravery. Indeed, so many mass-adopted digital products contain dark patterns that we can only assume designers are keeping their mouths shut because of naivety and/or fear. ‘What if I lose my job?’ ‘Nobody will listen to me.’ ‘Maybe it’s not a dark pattern?’ ‘Someone has probably red-flagged this already.’
These questions and themes can haunt designers, who, like the rest of their colleagues, are often under massive pressure to deliver and embody their organisation’s unconditional desire for that multifaceted, bittersweet paradox called success.
3) Consider older users in your designs.
The world population is aging rapidly. According to World Population Prospects 2019 (United Nations, 2019), by 2050, 1 in 6 people will be over the age of 65, up from 1 in 11 in 2019. All societies in the world are in the midst of this longevity revolution - but some are in their early stages while some are more advanced.
Older users often aren’t as comfortable or familiar with technology as their younger counterparts and more often are experiencing physiological and/or cognitive changes. These differences need to be understood and accounted for in the design process.
Some ways we can promote accessibility for older users:
Enable adjustment of interface size, especially text
Research shows that one in every three people 40 years or older in the U.S. will need glasses to read smaller print. Let’s make sure this massive population of users is properly represented.
Supplement icons and symbols with text to ensure comprehension
Older users may be less familiar with icons and symbols than their younger counterparts. Supplement them with textual explanations to ensure nothing is missed, and nobody gets forgotten!
Include high error tolerance
We’ve all been there, you’re filling out a long form in a rush and making a typo, but there is no clear indication of where the typo is. For older users, this can make forms and other interactions impossible to navigate. Error tolerance simply means that a product reacts to a user’s errors. This can be promoted by including clear confirmations before a user takes a decisive action (e.g., deleting something) and by clearly allowing users to undo their last action.
4) Practice “consequence scanning.”
This great agile technique fits nicely within an iterative development cycle. Simply, it encourages organisations and individuals to think about the potential impact of their product or service on people and society, before rolling it out.
As described by its creator doteveryone, consequence scanning is intended to be:
“...an innovation tool that also provides an opportunity to mitigate or address potential harms or disasters before they happen.”
[Photos from Consequence Scanning Making Waves at Fringe by Design Festival, Scotland]
A consequence scanning event should occur at a product's initial conception, roadmap planning, and feature creation.
In this event, you and your team will answer these questions about the product:
What are the intended and unintended consequences of this product or feature?
What are the positive consequences we want to focus on?
What are the consequences we want to mitigate?
Get the Consequence Scanning Manual
Here’s the manual from DotEveryone, if you want to learn more about this handy ethical framework.
