With great power comes great responsibility: A quest to consciously do good.
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As designers, we all want to change the world and we have lots of power to do so. We design the digital, physical and organisational environments and even inform policy that shapes peoples’ behaviours. So how can we make sure what we’re doing is right? Sure we can knock back work in gambling or other areas that clearly have a negative impact on both individuals and society as a whole, but there are areas where this is not such a cut and dry argument. There are times where our design input could be used for positive or negative purposes, or simply have unintended consequences. In this presentation, I shared our bumpy journey of first realising the need for, then creating our own ethical frameworks and decision making tools. These will help us answer sticky questions when they arise, stay true to our humanistic values and feel confident in the knowledge that we’re consciously working to make the world a better place. On the last slide you'll find a call to action to join us in creating a design ethics community of practice.
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With great power comes great responsibility: A quest to consciously do good.
- 2. With great power comes great responsibility: A quest to consciously do good. Ash Donaldson @ashdonaldson
- 4. Facing our first ethical challenge. You’re a designer. Fix it! © Getty Images
- 7. Research “Do no harm” “Do good work” Designvs. People Objects
- 8. The need for a new ethics. BC Proxima 1972 Future 2016 Scale
- 9. “Actually we don’t allow the iPad in the home. We think it’s too dangerous for them in effect.” - Steve Jobs (2010)
- 10. Behaviour Design makes the need even more pressing. 2017 Control
- 12. We had to better communicate our stance.
- 13. Getting an outside perspective is critical. Our purpose at Tobias is to drive positive and lasting change – for communities, companies and future generations – by placing people at the heart of our design process.
- 14. Getting an outside perspective is critical. Open hearts and open minds. Endless curiosity. We fight for what’s right. We play on the edge.
- 15. Ethics have helped us flourish. Increasing our reputation. Attracting more meaningful work. Able to openly discuss and mitigate concerns. Attracting and retaining smart, passionate people.
- 16. Getting started: Smell test. How would I explain this decision to my children? How would I feel if this decision were reported on the news? Can I live with this decision? Will it keep me up at night? How would my mother feel about this decision?
- 17. Evolving ethics for our industry. “Do good” “Do no harm” “Do good work”
- 18. Design Ethics first step: Envisioning? What if people became addicted to your design? What if everyone used your design? How will a future generation use your design? How can your design be harnessed for wrongdoing? What if AI took your goal to the extreme?
- 19. How might we do good, together? join@howmightwedogood.com
- 20. AGDA Code of Ethics (1996) http://bit.ly/2ueOVhJ American Anthropological Association Statements on Ethics. (1986) http://bit.ly/2hi9Gb5 The details are not the details: How small things have a large impact. UX Australia (2016) http://bit.ly/2hichBR Ethics in the Anthropology of Business: Explorations in Theory, Practice, and Pedagogy. T. De Waal Malefyt & Morias R. J (2017) pp. 86-103 ‘Owning It: Evolving Ethics in Design and Design Research’ by Christine Miller http://amzn.to/2vcmqWr Irresistible: Why we can’t stop checking, scrolling, clicking and watching. A. Alter (2017) http://amzn.to/2f30l6b The Little Book of Design Research Ethics. IDEO (2015) http://bit.ly/2tYsNg9 Nest Founder: “I Wake Up In Cold Sweats Thinking, What Did We Bring To The World?” FastCo Design. Katharine Schwab (2017) http://bit.ly/2txTSDE NHMRC Health and Research Ethics http://bit.ly/2vHOSPI Technology and Responsibility: Reflections on the new tasks of ethics. Hans Jonas (1973). Social Research Vol. 49, No.1 (Spring 1973), pp. 31- 54 http://bit.ly/2tYnspm Tobias: Design to Thrive (2017) designtobias.com Using Behaviour Design to change the culture around alcohol. UX Australia (2014) http://bit.ly/2hib9y7 Vivid panel: Can Technology Make Us More Human? http://bit.ly/2ujsqsK Further reading.
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Yesterday, Sharon talked about the impact of design at different scales – and how we can shape our cities. That links beautifully with our responsibility as designers. Today I hope to convince you that ethics should be an integral part of your practice. I’ll tell you my story of struggling with ethical issues and discovering, through my team, that values and ethics are what make our practice flourish.
- That first moment I held my son, Archer, in my arms, a fundamental shift happened. The locus of my being and my concern jumped from somewhere between my eyes, to the centre of this little person I held in my arms. No longer was I concerned so much with my own self interests. Everything was now about my son – his health, welfare, growth, and development. I cared more intensely for the future that he would grow up in – the one that we, as designers, are currently shaping. It’s amazing how much you learn from kids. Whilst my wife was pregnant with Archer, I had signed up to teach primary ethics at the local school. I had to attend training through the St James Ethics Centre and each week I’d prepare my materials for a class of year 5 children. They say you teach, but you don’t really. Not in the sense of the word I was used to. During our training they were very clear that I wasn’t allowed to lecture, guide or inject my own opinion. My job was simply to pose a moral question to a room of kids and facilitate their civil discussion and debate. These scenarios started simply but became more involved over time. It was great to watch the kids – without the guidance of adults or any moral teachings - figure out their own values. To observe as they thoughtfully discussed, reflected and formed their own opinions of right and wrong in tricky circumstances. Something that I hadn’t spent enough time doing myself. It was around the same time – nearly 4 years ago – that I had been speaking with Simon Tobias. We’d been taking long walks on the beach, discussing the state of play in the UX Industry and the promise of the burgeoning field of Behaviour Design. We decided to join forces in establishing an Australian branch of his successful UK agency – Tobias & Tobias – but differentiated by a focus on Behaviour Design.
- All was going well until a potential new client had proposed we design what was typically a ‘grubby product’ – a form of easy access credit that often results in people falling into a credit hole off the back of an impulse purchase. They were a big client that would help us grow, but I didn’t want to do work like that. Simon and I debated it until, one day on the ferry, he said in exasperation “You’re a Designer. Fix it!” And then I understood him. We’d been talking at cross purposes. He was right. My job, my responsibility as a Designer is to uncover real problems and design solutions to them. Financial institutions are an essential part of our society’s infrastructure and the products and services they provide can either be of great harm or great assistance – it just depends on how they’re designed. I ended up going in, shaping the research, uncovering some critical opportunities and devising a product that would be profitable for the bank, whilst helping specific types of merchants and their customers in their time of need – instead of just leveraging people for short-term profit. It was a win-win-win.
- If you look back at my previous UX Australia talks you’ll notice that they all lead up to one about ethics. When we worked with Hello Sunday Morning, we were researching with an at-risk population: people with alcohol dependence. From my Human Factors training I was aware of the types of sensitivities and mitigation factors I thought I’d need for my research, but I was still unprepared for some of the challenges I faced. There are some critical responsibilities you face as a researcher . Thankfully it’s a mature field and these responsibilities are well documented and discussed. Responsibilities to: The welfare of the participants in research. Protecting their identity. Being transparent about the purpose of the research. Having a plan for when people find themselves in distress. And this includes the researcher. In at-risk communities, the mental and physical welfare of everyone involved is at stake. The public if you’re going to be publishing the research - in accurately and openly revealing your findings – not selectively editing or consciously biasing results to match ideologies or pre-determined conclusions. The sponsors to be honest about the capabilities and limitations of the researchers and the extent to which the outputs can be trusted The data in putting boundaries around how it’s handled and what it can be used for – both now and in the future. The great thing about talking to you – the UX community – about these types of projects, is it has helped us not only share our flawed stories and reflect critically on our practice, but in the process, also attract a great team. Our first PhD candidate hire was Michael Palmyre. He’s an Anthropologist. The thing you should know about Anthropology is, because of its chequered past, it now has ethics at its very foundation. And Mike was vocal about it. But so was Max, Kristina, Eunice and most of our team. They just needed a forum to discuss it. We added an #ethics Slack channel to post ideas, discuss and debate ethical issues. Of course, these discussions challenged all of us, but they also helped us understand where we stood on certain issues and critically reflect on why.
- As we outgrew our first office, and moved into our next, we took the time to reflect on what the promise was of joining and where the reality lay. We discussed the type of work we were doing and what we’d love to be doing. We uncovered our common values and roughly articulated them in a strategy document. We practiced the human-centred design method on ourselves. As Designers, we all have good intentions. As I said – everyone was jumping in and contributing to the Slack channel and to the debates we had offline. But you’re not remembered for your intentions. You’re remembered by your actions. Intentions are vague things. They’re unarticulated feelings. We have an optimism bias that tells us “I’m a good person,” and can then rationalise “therefore what I do is good.” It helps people in not-so-ethical situations do the cognitive backflips required to think they’re not hurting anyone – because they hadn’t set any boundaries ahead of time. Linguistics and cognitive psych tells us that concepts don't exist until we have the language to talk about them. Values don't exist until you have the language, to be able to acknowledge, articulate and act on them. To set your own boundaries that you will not cross. In this business, there’s a fine line between the goals of an organisation and the welfare of its customers. If that line is not articulated, it doesn’t exist. The outputs of our workshop allowed us to at least have that shared language about our values – which was a worthy start to our journey. We’re: Radical - We’re daring, passionate, innovative and progressive. Purposeful - We keep the bigger picture in mind, focus on meaningful change and we make the world a better place. Understanding - Our empathy is the foundation of our good ethics. Our approach is the foundation of our professional integrity. Impactful - Our knowledge, intelligence, approach, hard work and pragmatism create effective, quality solutions. Having our values articulated allowed us to not only set meaningful goals and boundaries for ourselves, but to have something to refer to when we felt uneasy about a situation or decision – to see if it met with what we knew our values to be. If it didn’t, it was our responsibility to challenge it.
- As we grew we delved more into the ethics of the research we were doing. As I mentioned, Ethics is at the core of Anthropology. Since the field was known as ‘The Handmaiden of Colonialism’ it has since been led by the guiding principle of “Do no harm.” But there was something missing, so I started considering the ethics of design. Many design associations, like AGDA, take a stand on ethics with guiding principles. But whereas research ethics like the American Anthropological Association’s Statements on Ethics are about protecting the welfare of research participants, design ethics are more about protecting the professionalism of the practitioners and their relationship with clients. Research is about people, whereas design is about objects. If Anthropology’s leading principle is “Do no harm”, design’s is “Do good work.” – which is fair goal, considering the definition of ethics is “the moral principles that govern a person's behaviour or the conducting of an activity” but it sells short the impact design has on people. Design can be thought of as the ‘Handmaiden of industry.’ And it has a hell of a lot to answer for.
- That got me considering the foundations of ethics. If you look at the earlier teachings of the Greeks, ethics was about the proxima – affecting people you know, or are in physical proximity of. Proxima in fact means ’your neighbours.’ It was a concept limited in reach by the technology of the time. Scrolls were only new on the scene, so you couldn’t be widely published and travel was rudimentary, limiting the reach people commonly had. Fast forward to 1972, - a few days before I was born - Hans Jonas published a paper about the need for a new ethics in technology – because what we design can last beyond us, affecting future generations. Then there seems to be a bit of a gap until Christine Miller wrote ‘Owning it: Evolving ethics in design and design research’ in 2016. You see, design is no longer just proximal or temporal – it’s infinitely scalable and immediately available. But what’s the harm in that? The French cultural theorist Paul Virilio best known for his philosophical musings on technology has a famous quote that starts “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck.” Basically, there are consequences to everything we release into the world. In the service of Behaviour Design, I often like to promote Lewin’s behaviour equation – that Behaviour is a function of a person and their environment. We design the environment, so we are responsible for the resulting behaviours of people interacting with our products, services and spaces.
- Unfortunately, in this time of technological hyperfrenzy, people often think about ethics when it’s too late – like Tony Fadell, CEO of Nest and co-creator of the iPod and iPhone. He recently told a London Design Museum audience that he wakes up “in a cold sweat” worried about what he helped unleash on the world. Central to his concerns? His own children are now addicted to screens. It’s a behavioural addiction which the evidence is starting to demonstrate, is just as potent as a substance addiction – only much more accessible. Now compare Tony’s regret to Steve Jobs’ foresight. The CEO of Apple famously would not let his kids have iPhones or iPads. Two years after the launch of the iPad when he was asked what his kids thought of the device, he answered “Actually we don’t allow the iPad in the home. We think it’s too dangerous for them in effect.” He knew that what he was designing had the potential to harm. To be addictive. What can we say about his ethics?
- This year we went to Habit Summit and heard Nir Eyal open the conference with a keynote entitled ‘Cashing in on the promise and peril of persuasive technology’ – warning of the impact of Behaviour Design, but proposing that as a species we adapt and adopt to new technologies - providing scant anecdotal evidence that satisfied him (but nobody else) that kids weren’t as affected by the tech. Throughout the conference he went on proudly about implementing and ruthlessly optimising habit loops that hook people purely for profit and provided tips and models to replicate his success – but of course had a story of doing some pro-bono work a few years back that morally cleansed him of his sins. The problem is, habits, when purposely designed as a hook, routine and variable reward are dangerous. They can lead to obsession, compulsion or addiction. This goes for all the latest trends in increasing engagement or precisely affecting behaviour – from gamification of systems to applying compliance pyschology and neuroeconomics to advertising. From behavioural economics and nudges from the Government to hook routines and habit loops from app designers. Behaviour Design carries with it the burden of responsibility for controlling someone else’s behaviour. And without methodically applying some ethical techniques, it can be hard to discern what might have negative consequences and how. I said before that there’s a fine line between the goals of an organisation and the welfare of its customers. There’s also a fine line between persuading someone to do something in their own best interest, and coercing them to do something in your best interest. Of course, it’s easy to pick on something like a poker machine as it’s designed specifically to trigger every sense and hook us into efficiently and effectively handing over money than we have, but what about simple apps? A direct correlate might be Candy Crush Saga. It’s designed using exactly the same hook routine as a poker machine and was quite effective. Before it was acquired by Blizzard, the developer, King’s last published annual revenue in 2014 was $2.26 billion. But it never received the scrutiny of real gambling. It was just an iPhone game after all. But that’s an easy one. It doesn’t take a great imagination to see the direct correlation with a poker machine. But what about a casual free-to-play role-playing gamer - like Kim Kardashian: Hollywood? It’s designed in much the same way as a poker machine. In it’s very first quarter it made $43.4 million. People became addicted. They lost money. They lost jobs. And it’s legal and unregulated. Even for kids. Let’s go to the opposite end of the spectrum. What about something designed to help people - like a fitness tracker. That’s just helping people get fit, right? Well, some people. The gamification built into fitness trackers has been a sudden blow to mental health services. It has propelled the rapid growth of a niche industry treating people with exercise addictions. Some people become obsessed with not breaking a streak due to sunk cost. The longer the streak, the stronger the compulsion not to break it – even when injured.
- What these apps and devices need is a bit more forethought of their usage. They need a stop routine built in to help people maintain a healthy routine with their usage. And I’m not talking about something like Sportbet’s “I have a gambling problem” button that requires an addict to first: admit they have a problem and then: voluntarily stop betting. Some might argue that that’s just handwaving to let some people sleep better at night and have a good PR story around responsible gambling – but it won’t really affect their bottom line. No, I’m talking about an algorithm that detects unhealthy patterns and breaks them. Anyone my age will remember the dual-screen handheld games like Donkey Kong. As kids, we played whenever we could. We gained the skills. We shared secrets and techniques. We learned to cliock it. And then we went back to our normal life. It had a natural stop routine. A conclusion. Do you know what the most effective treatment for people with an exercise addiction based on an unbroken streak is? Simply break the streak. Reset it to zero. But do the designers at FitBit, Shine or Apple think of these things? I doubt it. We definitely need a new ethics for what we as designers do.
- As we continue to grow, I’m feeling the pressing need to better communicate our stance and start formalising some of our tools and protocols. As a team, we’re all aware of our values, but what happens when we bring on a new team member, or engage a contractor or vendor, or even take on a new client. The best thing to do is establish your ethics, values and approach up front. Back in 2015, IDEO produced a ‘Little Book’ on Design Ethics– for their team AND their clients. It served to introduce new staff to the IDEO way. It created a common language and helped on-board new staff seamlessly, but more importantly, it set expectations and answered tricky questions for clients before they were raised. The types of tricky questions and situations that we’ve faced repeatedly. As many hae said at this conference so far, if you leave something unstated, people make assumptions. This little book outlined IDEO’s ethics and values that they would not compromise. This is something we’ll certainly be drawing on for inspiration in producing a similar tool. So the robust discussions evolved and continued. We purchased books and read, discussed and debated more. We joined the Ethics Centre to start looking for guidance on how we could develop our own framework. It was well worth it as they not only provide guidance on ethics and have tons of resources, they also hold regular fantastic events and debates.
- It’s great to know and live your values, but when you want to communicate them to others simply and concisely, as IDEO have – it’s best to have an outside perspective. We wanted to rebrand, to beter reflect where we’d evolved as an organisation. We had a wonderful brand design firm, Designer Rice, come in and apply a human-centred design process on us for the design of our new brand. You might have noticed we’re no longer Tobias & Tobias, but simply “to bias” - to keep with the heritage of the organisation and better reflect our behaviour design competency. We went out and spoke with clients – did some research and handed over the results. Designer Rice then came in and spoke to us, watched us, probed us. Eventually, they captured our purpose beautifully: .
- They then articulated our values in a way that is easier for newcomers to grasp. It also gives us an even better foundation on which we can create our own ethics framework.
- As our practice grew, we faced and overcame similar challenges – and we talked about them. At meetups, at conferences – and people responded to that. We’re reaping the benefits of gaining a good reputation, seeking and winning purposeful work, and attracting and retaining smart, passionate people. My team have helped me discover that our values and ethics are what have made us flourish as a practice – and I want all of you to, too. I want us all to be proud of our work and the impact it has, but we need to start having this conversation more broadly. We need to start making ethics a core competency of the design community.
- So how do you get started? I’m starting to formalise some tools for our practice. There are guides around specific types of research ethics – including NHMRC’s health research ethics that we’ve been using as the basis for some in-hospital research we’re conducting. We’re also getting a formal ethics approval for some more at-risk research which has been a fantastic journey. Of course, there’s also IDEO’s Little Book for Design Research ethics – that we can build on. There are also plenty of tools out there for traditional ethics around decision making. With decision making, you can get as complex as a theoretical framework and there are several long and drawn out 10 and 12 step processes, but the quick and dirty smell test works just as well. If you feel a bit uneasy about a decision, you simply imagine the immediate impact of your decision and how it will be viewed by yourself and others. How would you explain it to your children or partner? How would you feel if your decision were reported in the news? Will it keep you up at night? How would you Mother feel about it?
- But then there’s that gap I mentioned in the ethics of human-centred design. Something that I want us all to address. I was recently invited to speak on a panel a Vivid with the title of “Can technology make us more human?” This really provoked some interesting thoughts. Do we want technology to amplify what it means to be human? Humans are social creatures by evolutionary decree. As a result, we look after our in-group, those we identify with – and we compete with, vilify and destroy out-groups. Is it any wonder that Microsoft’s AI chatbot became a racist asshole in less than a day? It simply amplified our humanness. What we should aspire to is technology that increases our humanism, instead. A subtle but important distinction. Humans suck by nature. Our ability to show compassion and caring to those like us doesn’t. More of us are working on machine learning and AI. We are the ones creating the seed and boundary conditions. Machine learning eventually takes things out of our hands. If we don’t understand our values and bake them in to seed and boundary conditions in even the simplest instruction sets, the more complex, self-replicating AI that results may be catastrophic. If research has the guiding principle of “Do no harm” and design has the guiding principle of “Do good work” I agree with Christine Miller in thinking that human-centred design – the blend of research and design, should have the guiding principle of “Do good.”
- My first attempts at thinking about the impact of our designs starts with using simple envisioning techniques. We already practice forms of envisioning for clients with some nifty little exercises to reduce risk to a project, like the pre-mortem. We often conduct a pre-mortem early in a project to make sure everyone speaks their mind about any elephants in the room that could quietly derail a project. We put a bunch of pillows and soccer ball under a sheet, so it looks like a dead body. Then we set the scene: This is your project. It was so disastrous, that you can’t even look other project members in the eyes at work anymore. It died a horrible death and nobody saw it coming. Or did they? Write down 4 or 5 reasons on individual Post-It notes, then come up and pin them on the body. It’s a great little technique to mitigate any of those silent but critical risks before they become a problem. We can create similar, simple exercises for figuring out possible future impacts of our designs. Starting with topics like addiction, adoption, future generations and nefarious purposes. Of course, these are just my initial musings.
- At Tobias, we’re only at the beginning of forming our own ethical framework. As an industry, wouldn’t it be good if we could come together create a design ethics community of practice? Together we can define some values for HCD, figure out some guiding principles and map out a manifesto that we can hold ourselves and our colleagues accountable to. This is an ongoing journey of reflection and refinement that we can all be part of. I’m certainly going to work on it – for the sake of my children and your children. Drop us an email at join@howmightwedogoodtogether and I’ll invite you to join our Slack channel. I’ll post these slides and tweet this call to action again later. Oh, and don’t miss Michael Palmyre’s talk on Value this afternoon. It builds on what I’m talking about by looking at how we can create real value. Together we can design a better world.