[IxDA Discuss] Ethical Issues for Interaction Designers

[Robert Reimann]

I would argue somewhat differently that they are the seeds for a theoretical
framework. The top level descriptors (ethical, purposeful, pragmatic, and
elegant)
are certainly broad, which is why the second-level explanations exist. The
wording
of these is fairly carefully crafted to cover what we saw as the problem
space.
There are in fact third levels for these as well, some of which are
described in AF3.

I think the core of our realization was that if you look across what most
people
consider to be good design practice and artifact, you find these elements:
design
should on balance help, not harm (this includes all levels of context, from
personal
to social to environmental). Design should take those using it (and those
affected by it), and their requirements, into account. Design should also
help achieve the
goals of those who requested it in the first place. And Design should, for
lack of a better
term, feel "designed": the act of design should add value to the outcome in
the
form of benefits we typically associate with good design: simplicity,
understandability,
artfulness, and what I'd call "affectiveness" (stimulating appropriate
emotion in the
context of use ).

 You may note that this structure has a certain implied consequentialist
flavor... i.e., that
one must judge the goodness of a design by anticipating or extrapolating its
consequences.
One could argue (I do) that this is an appropriate way to judge designs, and
it is common practice
to use scenarios to craft and test designs, which in essence helps shape the
consequences
of a design, at least at the personal level. Also, I think it is relatively
common for designers
(of a UX/IxD bent anyway) to cast themselves in the role of an ideal
"informed observer" who
dispassionately weighs the consequences of a design as they craft their
solution. One could
I think easily argue that UCD and thus UXD is very much informed by the
tenets of
consequentialism: that it is imperative for designers to become as informed
as possible about
the contexts of a potential design, so that best outcomes are possible.

I agree that this list alone isn't entirely actionable... it was developed
primarily to
get exactly this kind of discussion started; that is, understanding exactly
what "good design"
really means. But I would not agree that it is completely ad hoc, nor is it
arbitrary.

Robert.

-- 
Robert Reimann
President, IxDA

Manager, User Experience
Bose Corporation
Framingham, MA


On 8/2/07, Olly Wright <olly.wright at mediacatalyst.com> wrote:
>
> On 2 Aug 2007, at 03:42, Robert Reimann wrote:
>
> > *Ethical* [*considerate, helpful*]
> > - Do no harm
> > - Improve human situations
> >
> > *Purposeful *[*useful, usable*]*
> > *- Help users achieve their goals and aspirations
> > - Accommodate user contexts and capacities
> >
> > *Pragmatic* [*viable, feasible*]
> > - Help commissioning organizations achieve their goals
> > - Accommodate business and technical requirements
> >
> > *Elegant* [*efficient, artful, affective*]
> > - Represent the simplest, complete solution
> > - Possess internal (self-revealing, understandable) coherence
> > - Appropriately accommodate and stimulate cognition and emotion
>
> For me, the problem with this kind of approach is you end up with a
> list that is on a certain level arbitrary and feels incomplete. Aka
> "ad hoc".
>
> They are justifiable primarily in a circular way (eg, We should do
> Elegant design for the sake of being Elegant, and Pragmatic design
> for the sake of being Pragmatic). Then we take these as axioms and so
> pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps towards ethics. We have no
> way of knowing if we have a complete list, or of testing our
> assumptions beyound intuition. Or really in the end justifying our
> position beyond saying "don't you see, it's just obvious?".
>
> Another way of seeing this is to ask the question: Should we be
> looking for...
>
> 1. A set of common sense guidelines that the majority intuitively
> feel are adequate / correct
>
> 2. A theory or theoretical framework that is testable / open to
> psychological / scientific / mathematical / observational / logical
> analysis. From this we can derive ethical imperatives through
> deduction and inference.
>
> I suggest that we're looking for the second type. The examples given
> above are in my mind of the first type
>
> Olly Wright
>
>