[IxDA Discuss] Ethical Issues for Interaction Designers

[Frederick van Amstel]

> > What kinds of ethical issues arise in
> > IxD or IA  practice, ethical issues that are more or less distinctive
> > for IxDs or IAs?

The most important ethical issue of Interaction Design for me is that
it shapes human action, and in consequence, our moral considerations
over those action.

I would point to two papers. One that Toni Robertson analyses
inadequate social protocols enforcements over collaborative apps:

http://research.it.uts.edu.au/idwop/downloads/RobertsonEthics&IT.pdf

And one of mine inspired by Robertson and last chapter of Saffer's
book. I'm sorry for the poor english, but I tried to approach Ethics
in Interaction Design via Activity Theory and Pos-Phenomenology
accounts of mediation with some touch of Foucault's distributed power
concept:

http://tinyurl.com/2s79ow

Here follows an excerpt commenting Saffer's considerations:

Saffer gives emphasis to the designer's responsibility for ethical
choices because in the design process he outlines, users don't
participate in design decisions. He recognizes that "users will always
find ways to use products and services for purposes they weren't
designed for" (p.224), but the designer could be responsible for
"potential negative consequences of their designs on those who aren't
users or who are forced users", like the people who were arrested in a
World War II concentration camp and had been tattooed with a number
generated by a system provided by IBM. Designers of those systems
could, as German lower echelon militarists did, justify their action
in terms of unavoidable accomplishment of superior orders. Even though
they considered immoral what they were asked to do, they had little or
no choice; they not only had to comply with the Nazi ethics, but also
internalize it as their own ethics or else they would be punished or
undergo even worse sanctions. Nazi leaders were acting over their
agency, that's why the leaders were condemned at Nuremberg and not so
the lower echelon.

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.{ Frederick van Amstel }. Curitiba ´´ PR
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