[IxDA Discuss] Ethical Issues for Interaction Designers

[Robert Reimann]

A set of ethical guidelines allows designers to take an ethical stand.
You didn't "have" to design that home page you mentioned. You weighed the
ethics vs. the ethical imperative for you to put dinner on your family's
table,
and made a choice.

The point of a professional code of ethics is to give professionals a bit
more leverage
in making those kinds of ethical choices. Without a professional code of
ethics,
it is easy for a client to say "if you won't do it today, I'll find someone
who will
tomorrow". A professional code in theory makes this harder for the client to
say,
and more likely for them to listen to arguments that their strategy, while
productive in
the short run, will not build them the kind of customer relationships that
would
serve them best in the long run, and that other creative solutions exist.

As you say, however, there are applications that don't have that sort of
wiggle room:
gambling applications and military applications come immediately to mind. A
former
colleague of mine is now an interaction designer for battlefield
intelligence applications,
which for me is enough of a gray area that I would not seek that kind of
work. While
at Cooper, we took on a client who created software for tracking and
directing the
orbits of satellites... they could be weather satellites or spy satellites;
the software was
application agnostic-- so we took the business. The client later came back
wanting us
to design a module for tracking and directing cruise missles... and we
refused the
business. The point is that you're right, there are many subtle shades to
consider,
but I feel that a standard of ethics is a tool for informing such decisions
more than it
is for proscribing an absolute response.

And what about gambling? Would a code of ethics make it more difficult for
such clients
to procure their seductive and misleading designs? Hard to know, but it
would at least
allow us as ethical professionals to take a public stand on such issues,
which could in the
long run have a positive effect.

Some people, including some who are regarded as spokepersons for our field,
believe that
it is wrong to have any designer's code of ethics, and that the client is
always right, regardless
of what they ask us to do. I believe it is the responsibility of designers
as advocates of the
users (and others affected by the design) to point out to clients when their
choices are not
good for either their customers or their business in the long run. I believe
that among other
things this can lead to greater respect both for customers and for designers
as professionals.

Personally I draw the line at not designing products that will intentionally
directly harm
or help harm people (I would include gambling applications: predatory
financial harm).
"Do no (intentional) harm" is a basic ethical idea I'm almost always
comfortable sticking by.
Not surprisingly therefore, my favorite design projects have been medical
applications...
at the other end of the spectrum. My choice.

Robert.

On 7/31/07, Christopher Fahey <chris.fahey at behaviordesign.com> wrote:
>
> Thomas J. Froehlich wrote:
> > What kinds of ethical issues arise in IxD or IA practice...?
>
> What a coincidence, given my last post RE: gambling user experience
> design.
>
>
> Dan Saffer wrote:
> > I suggest that the ethical baseline for interaction designers
> > should be that the behaviors we engender through the products
> > and services we create treat both the actor and the receiver
> > of the action with dignity and respect.
> >
> > It is surprisingly easy to do otherwise.
>
> Not just easy, but sometimes it's a fundamental requirement.
>
> Your ethical proscriptions are great, but we should recognize and
> examine the fact that there are plenty of top-notch user experience
> designs out there whose fundamental design constraint is to treat the
> user with utter contempt and disrespect. Not just gambling, but
> scammers, spammers, and pornographers. The challenges they face in their
> practice and craft are entirely parallel with ours, minus the moral
> compass.
>
> What's interesting is that this disrespect crosses over into the
> legitimate business sphere. Once, working for a former employer
> designing a web site for a financial institution, I noticed that the
> client stakeholders were unanimous in instructing us to make the
> legally-mandated friendly-language legal notices as hard to find and
> read as we possibly could, basically to try to hide them as much as
> possible without breaking the law. Suffice to say that we stayed within
> the letter of the law.
>
> I've also had to design a home page that forced users to enter their
> email address just to give the product a test drive, and I knew full
> well that the company planned to then send the user marketing emails
> nearly daily until the user either figured out how to unsubscribe or
> signed up for the product/program. I was told, in no uncertain terms,
> that removing the signup form from the home page, thus letting users
> check out the service without giving personal information, would have a
> huge negative impact on their bottom line. Apparently the relentless
> spamming actually worked in converting a large number of prospects into
> paying customers, prospects who the client was convinced would not have
> signed up if they simply were allowed to try the product out in their
> initial experience with the site. What's more, simply having a large
> number of registered prospect emails was helpful for the company's VC
> efforts. We kept the form. Was I showing dignity and respect for their
> users? I don't think so.
>
> In terms of UX Ethics, is there a gray area between, say, designing a
> web site to trick people into entering email addresses for spamming and
> harvesting and something more benign like, say, designing a corporate
> site navigation scheme where the customer service form is deliberately a
> little bit hard to find? Or a gray area between designing hot-stock-tip
> spam and desiging a short full-screen interstitial ad for a content web
> site? That gray area is worth exploring, because so much of what we
> think are ethical absolutes start to get a little blurry.
>
> -Cf
>
> Christopher Fahey
> ____________________________
> Behavior
> http://www.behaviordesign.com
> me: http://www.graphpaper.com
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-- 
Robert Reimann
President, IxDA

Manager, User Experience
Bose Corporation
Framingham, MA