Ethics in Design | Supriya Kulkarni

Founder of The Ethics Company and Pink Tea Company | Supriya Kulkarni

Based in Jakarta, Supriya is a business and tech enthusiast, working on brand transformation, human-centred design, and ethics. Featured among the 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics 2022, and a Finalist at DEI in Voice, Women in Voice Awards 2021, Supriya has researched on voice industry, and the impacts of digital voice assistants. Having done branding and strategic design projects, she has an advertising background and strives to evolve continuously.

Some equate ethics with morality, or with compliance and regulations; others believe it is just ‘nice to have’ while a few feel it sounds ‘accusatory’.

Ethics could be described as a set of systems, beliefs and behaviours that is followed at different levels: personal, professional, organizational, or industry. It is largely about how we make decisions, a translation of our beliefs into choices and actions.

While everyone has their own definition and interpretation of ethics in design, I like to believe that it is ‘responsible and informed decision-making’ about how products, services or experiences are created. Ethics has always had an important role in design, but now it has become critical to integrate ethical decision-making into our work processes.

Why Ethical Design?

The role and scope of design are evolving rapidly. Emerging technologies are redefining how and what we create, and how users experience it. Our designs incorporate multiple disciplines (like interaction, industrial, environmental, etc.), delivering these as individualized, interconnected physical and digital experiences.

We also often deal with sensitive user information- biometric data, location history, spending patterns, mental attitudes, behaviours, etc. Our users could be local or globalany location, geography, time zone, culture, with different social attitudes or mindsets. What we create, and how we create it, now has the ability to influence, impact and affect not just thousands, but millions. As the complexity of our design increases, so does the possibility of ethical issues arising. Considering all that could go wrong, responsible and informed decision-making is crucial.

Spotting ethical issues

The first step to ethical design actually begins by learning to spot potential issues. These can arise during our work process, reflect in the products we create, or result in unethical outcomes, negatively impacting users, non-users, communities or society. Let us look at some examples:

A few years ago there was a video of a ‘racist’ soap dispenser on social media- the dispenser recognized and dispensed soap for fair skin, not for darker skin. Then there was a credit card launched by a big tech company, which gave female applicants lower credit limits as compared to males, because of the biased algorithm which made these decisions. Products like these lead to outcomes of unfairness, injustice or inequity.

Many websites and apps extract more than necessary data from users by making them accept terms and conditions under a blanket ‘I Agree’; some use tactics from behavioural psychology to hook users for increased engagement, while others make it deliberately difficult to unsubscribe from their services - all these take away choice, control and autonomy from users.

Some social platforms which are meant to bring people together end up making them feel more isolated, while certain apps can make vulnerable and undiscerning users experience bodyimage issues, depression, stress or anxiety.

Very importantly, by ‘design’, I refer to the entire process of strategy, design, development, deployment and management, and the term ‘designer’ includes every individual involved in the process of decisionmaking, whatever their actual role may be.

Types of impact

Most of these issues and their outcomes are unintentional consequences of uninformed business strategies, processes or design decisions, they are not necessarily deliberate attempts to cause harm. However, they cause negative impacts at multiple levels, be it financial, emotional, mental, social or physical harm to people’s well-being, erosion of trust in services or products, increased legal risks for companies, and damage to brand or business reputations.

So, anticipating how our design could potentially create these negative impacts, and proactively building safeguards against them is a crucial aspect of ethical design. Very importantly, by ‘design’, I refer to the entire process of strategy, design, development, deployment and management, and the term ‘designer’ includes every individual involved in the process of decision-making, whatever their actual role may be.

Ethical design considerations

For ethical and responsible outcomes, consider these points in your design practice.

01. Ethical design begins with the right mindset, approach and intention.

02. Ensure inclusion and transparency throughout the process.

03. Collect, store and use people’s information fairly, with rightful consent.

04. Designs can reflect the biases of creators, so consciously guard against this by incorporating diverse perspectives and involving actual users during the process.

05. Shift focus from user-centred to being human-centred. Consider nonusers, excluded people, as well as the environment.

06. Make sure using your design will not cause financial, emotional, mental, social or physical harm.

07. Consider if your design could lead to outcomes of inaccessibility, unfairness, discrimination or inequity to individuals or segments of society.

08. Try to use transparent, fair and explainable tech systems for ethical outcomes.

09. Avoid designing in ways that manipulate or nudge users into taking actions they do not want to.

10. Take accountability and ownership for the decisions and outcomes of your design.

11. Lastly, measure the success of your design based on its impact on users and society.

Designs can reflect the biases of creators, so consciously guard against this by incorporating diverse perspectives and involving actual users during the process.

Final takeaways

While ethics in design is an extensive topic, these are some quick takeaways: develop more awareness about ethical issues and their resulting impacts, ensure consistent application of ethical considerations in all stages of work, use ethical design as an advantage to create a positive impact on human well-being, increase user trust, and uphold the reputation of brands and businesses.