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This paper critically examines the contemporary relationship between design and decolonization, with a focus on reevaluating our expectations of design as a profession and exploring potential pathways forward. The discussion centers on the stagnant state of design discourse, and the intricate power dynamics within design practices. It underscores the significance of recognizing that designers do not uniformly occupy identical positions, highlighting the asymmetrical power dynamics inherent in design nearshoring and the prioritization of Northern interests. Furthermore, it questions the reliance on exclusive designerly methods for systemic change, the pursuit of the common good, and the realization of the pluriverse. We claim that design, in its current form, often reinforces capitalist and colonial structures rather than dismantling them. The paper criticizes design’s complicity in perpetuating colonial differences while claiming to address them, recognizing the fundamental role of design for the realization of the modern project and as a key enabler of capitalist modes of production and consumption. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this paper scrutinizes the dissonance between design’s self-professed ethical values and the pursuit of capitalistic gains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What society experiences today as morally questionable design—from gendered toys for children to public benches that prevent sleeping—can be considered the aftermath of an underdeveloped foundation for systematic ethical reflection in design methodologies. Although designing is an inherently moral activity, research on how to recognize and handle ethical questions and moral dilemmas in early (conceptual) design activities is scarce. In this article, we use an interdisciplinary lens to analyze and respond to the challenges of bridging moral psychology, ethics of technology, and design methodologies. For this, we introduce the concept of moral engagement in design, which is inspired by Moral Disengagement Theory. Finally, we propose five preliminary considerations for enacting moral engagement in design practices. These considerations form an interdisciplinary bridge to help us reflect on the moral dimensions of methodological choices in conceptual design practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper critically examines the contemporary relationship between design and decolonization, with a focus on reevaluating our expectations of design as a profession and exploring potential pathways forward. The discussion centers on the stagnant state of design discourse, and the intricate power dynamics within design practices. It underscores the significance of recognizing that designers do not uniformly occupy identical positions, highlighting the asymmetrical power dynamics inherent in design nearshoring and the prioritization of Northern interests. Furthermore, it questions the reliance on exclusive designerly methods for systemic change, the pursuit of the common good, and the realization of the pluriverse. We claim that design, in its current form, often reinforces capitalist and colonial structures rather than dismantling them. The paper criticizes design’s complicity in perpetuating colonial differences while claiming to address them, recognizing the fundamental role of design for the realization of the modern project and as a key enabler of capitalist modes of production and consumption. Through an interdisciplinary lens, this paper scrutinizes the dissonance between design’s self-professed ethical values and the pursuit of capitalistic gains.

With the emergence of quantum technologies such as quantum computing, quantum communications, and quantum sensing, new potential has emerged for smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0. These technologies, however, present ethical concerns that must be addressed in order to ensure they are developed and used responsibly. This article outlines some of the ethical challenges that quantum technologies may raise for Industry 4.0 and presents the value sensitive design methodology as a strategy for ethics-by-design of quantum computing in Industry 4.0. This research further investigates the potential ethical difficulties that may come from the use of quantum technologies in Industry 4.0, such as concerns about privacy, security, accountability, and the influence of these technologies on workers and society as a whole. The article argues, based on current literature, that these issues necessitate a proactive and comprehensive approach to ethics-by-design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The regulations viewed as a system of recognised and agreed values must take into consideration the complexity of the relationship between humankind and the environment. This presents an ethical problem with regards to the collective moral conduct during the design of the project and the definition of adequate methodologies to support this dimension. The participatory formulae pursue this possibility but with solutions that are partially ineffective due to the asymmetry between the knowledge of the expert and of the non-expert, and the different resources available to institutional and non-institutional actors. The analysis of the regulations and a case study identifies certain critical issues and possible solutions to resolve them, which involve the role of the design architect in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining students' privacy in higher education, an integral aspect of learning design and technology integration, is not only a matter of policy and law but also a matter of design ethics. Similar to faculty educators, learning designers in higher education play a vital role in maintaining students' privacy by designing learning experiences that rely on online technology integration. Like other professional designers, they need to care for the humans they design for by not producing designs that infringe on their privacy, thus, not causing harm. Recognizing that widely used instructional design models are silent on the topic and do not address ethical considerations such as privacy, we focus this paper on how design ethics can be leveraged by learning designers in higher education in a practical manner, illustrated through authentic examples. We highlight where the ethical responsibility of learning designers comes into the foreground when maintaining students' privacy and well‐being, especially in online settings. We outline an existing ethical decision‐making framework and show how learning designers can use it as a call to action to protect the students they design for, strengthening their ethical design capacity. Practitioner notesWhat is already known about this topic Existing codes of ethical standards from well‐known learning design organizations call upon learning designers to protect students' privacy without clear guidance on how to do so.Design ethics within learning design is often discussed in abstract ways with principles that are difficult to apply.Most, if not all, design models that learning design professionals have learned are either silent on design ethics and/or do not consider ethics as a valid dimension, thus, making design ethics mostly excluded from learning design graduate programs.Practical means for engaging in ethical design practice are scarce in the field.What this paper adds A call for learning designers in higher education to maintain and protect students' privacy and well‐being, strengthening their ethical design capacity.A demonstration of how to use a practical ethical decision‐making framework as a designerly tool in designing for learning to maintain and protect students' privacy and well‐being.Authentic examples—in the form of vignettes—of ethical dilemmas/issues that learning designers in higher education could face, focused on students' privacy.Methods—using a practical ethical decision‐making framework—for learning design professionals in higher education, grounded in the philosophy of designers as the guarantors of designs, to be employed to detect situations where students' privacy and best interests are at risk.A demonstration of how learning designers could make stellar design decisions in service to the students they design for and not to the priorities of other design stakeholders.Implications for practice and/or policy Higher education programs/institutions that prepare/employ learning designers ought to treat the topics of the designer's responsibility and design ethics more explicitly and practically as one of the means to maintain and protect students' privacy, in addition to law and policies.Learning designers in higher education ought to hold a powerful position in their professional practice to maintain and protect students' privacy and well‐being, as an important aspect of their ethical design responsibilities.Learning designers in higher education ought to adopt a design thinking mindset in order to protect students' privacy by (1) challenging ideas and assumptions regarding technology integration in general and (2) detecting what is known in User Experience (UX) design as "dark patterns" in online course design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: The aging of the population is a historical stage that many countries must experience, and the current design and development of elderly health care products can no longer meet the increasing demands of the elderly. OBJECTIVE: The impact of ethical design of elderly health care products on socio-economic development is explored to provide a theoretical basis for the development direction of elderly health care products. METHODS: In this study, a questionnaire survey is conducted on 268 middle-aged people to record the subjects' willingness to purchase elderly health care products and their reasons, concerns, satisfaction, and future demands. RESULTS: Among the subjects, 181 people have purchased elderly health care products, accounting for 67.36%; the subjects are more concerned about the quality and safety of elderly health care products, accounting for 92.56% and 91.85% respectively, followed by operability (68.46%); the problems encountered by the elderly using elderly health care products are mainly operational problems, accounting for 65.37%; and high safety (86.13%) and good quality (79.55%) are the subjects' main demands for future development of elderly health care products. 73.61% of the 30–40 year old subjects said that the intelligent aged care products were very good; 65.89% of the 41–50 year old subjects said that the intelligent aged care products were very good; 52.67% of the 51–60 subjects thought that intelligent elderly care products were very good; and 47.82% of the subjects whose age were over 60 expressed their willingness to try intelligent elderly care products. CONCLUSIONS: Good quality and high safety are the main demands for the future development of elderly health care products. The elderly health care products manufactured based on the people-oriented design ethics concept can greatly meet the aspirations of the elderly to pursue a happy later life, and promote the vigorous development of the elderly industrial economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media companies commonly design their platforms in a way that renders them addictive. Some governments have declared internet addiction a major public health concern, and the World Health Organization has characterized excessive internet use as a growing problem. Our article shows why scholars, policy makers, and the managers of social media companies should treat social media addiction as a serious moral problem. While the benefits of social media are not negligible, we argue that social media addiction raises unique ethical concerns not raised by other, more familiar addictive products, such as alcohol and cigarettes. In particular, we argue that addicting users to social media is impermissible because it unjustifiably harms users in a way that is both demeaning and objectionably exploitative. Importantly, the attention-economy business model of social media companies strongly incentivizes them to perpetrate this wrongdoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ignited by the transformative impact of technoscience, diverse alternative design practices have emerged, each distinct from prevailing norms. Within this heterogeneous landscape, a common theme emerges: an inclination toward ethical considerations, closely tied to or stemming from these novel approaches and practices, warranting thorough investigation. This article adopts a dual strategy. First, it introduces technoscience as the catalyst behind this transition, framing the contextual backdrop. Second, based on Jürgen Habermas’s knowledge-interest theory and its tripartite structure, this article focuses on those emerging design practices which deal with ethical and social design, a category that has become especially significant since 2000. The subsequent analysis explores the significant ethical turn within diverse disciplines and these emerging design practices, illustrated across domains. This transformation unfolds in ontological, epistemological, and methodological dimensions, signifying a renewal of design ethics. The article establishes a fundamental framework to comprehend a field without rigid boundaries, facilitating future critique and ongoing design research progress.

This article aims at raising awareness and dialogue about ethical dimensions of human-technology design of socio-technical systems in general, the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) designer responsibility towards users, stakeholders and society in particular, as well as the raise of the dark side of design and the responses of the HCI community to it. This article identifies four dimensions in human-technology interaction design ethics and proposes a universal golden rule for human-technology interaction design. To sum up these different aspects of ethical design and the responsibilities of a designer, this position article concludes with a proposed universal golden rule for designing human-technology interactions: Design as easy to use, honest, sustainable, and safe human-technology interactions as you would want others to design for you.

The aim of this paper is to study the implications and ethical variables of User-Centered Design (UCD) methods in the design of mobile applications. We carried out a review of the literature on ethics in User-Centered Design within the field of mobile applications. We studied three disciplines that are applied in the design of mobile applications and that include UCD in their definition: Human–Computer Interaction, User Experience, and Design for Behavior Change. The analysis has allowed us, firstly, to identify different ethical approaches to applying UCD, and secondly, to propose a new tool for analyzing the ethical implications of UCD taking into account two variables: alignment with the user's interests and will, and the type of influence the design generates. This paper shows that UCD methods are not always used for the benefit of the user, and asserts the ethical responsibility of design processes involving how users interact with mobile technologies as well as the importance of media education so that citizens become technologically responsible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The word “literacy” has come to be used to describe a wide range of competencies, including design literacy – a term that, despite its presence in design discourse, is still characterised by a certain fuzziness. In this paper, we explore this highly discursive theoretical field in order to gain a more nuanced and expanded understanding of the topic. In doing so, we argue that these divergent positions are also due to the ambiguity of the term “design”. We understand design as the perpetual de- and reconstruction of the world, as a way of worldmaking, both physically and conceptually. Thus, design literacy can be understood as a way to perceive traces of design and its processes, to perceive the world as contingent: a circular cognitive process of recognising that something – if not everything – in our cultural pluriverse is designed, understanding how it was designed and that it can potentially become the subject of design again and again. In our paper, we emphasise the contingency of design – and the ethical level that can arise from understanding the possibility of a different design. Ultimately, our aim with this paper is to emphasise that design literacy is a crucial competence for encouraging pluralistic perspectives and initiating transition processes, as it helps to acknowledge the temporary necessity but long-term non-necessity of things (which particularly includes the transitory nature of one’s own creations).

This thematic issue of four papers focuses on the importance of a socio-technical perspective in research and practice. A socio-technical perspective sees an organization as a combination of two components – a social and a technical one. The real pattern of behavior in the organization is determined by how well these parts fit each other. While analyzing system problems of getting things done, adequate consideration should be given to technology as well as informal and formal interactions of people with the technology as well as with other people using the technology. The papers in this issue present the sociotechnical perspective as a lens enabling researchers and practitioners to simplify the digital complexity in the socio-technical context.

While ethics has been part of design research for decades, few studies have explored how designers engage with ethics in practice. Based on interviews with 11 practitioners in design consultancies, this paper explores how ethics is understood and dealt with in commercial practice. Based on an analysis of the interviews, we present six themes that capture how practitioners articulate the concept of ethics, how they distinguish between personal and organisational ethics, and how this relates to serving clients with potentially conflicting agendas. Moreover, the study demonstrates that practitioners do not typically use methods or procedures for dealing with ethics, but rely on ongoing and sometimes ad hoc dialogue. Based on these results, we suggest promising avenues for future work relating to concepts for articulating how ethics is dealt with in the design process and how design activities give rise to different levels of ethical concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increase in the spread of conversational agents urgently requires to tackle the ethical issues linked to their design. In fact, developers frequently include in their products cues that trigger social biases in order to maximize the performance and the quality of human-machine interactions. The present paper discusses whether and to what extent it is ethically sound to intentionally trigger gender biases through the design of virtually embodied conversational agents. After outlining the complex dynamics involving social biases, social robots, and design, we evaluate the ethics of integrating gender cues in conversational agents, analysing four different approaches to the problem. Finally, we suggest which approach in our opinion might have the best chances to reduce the negative effects of biases and discriminatory visions of gender dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on the findings of a study by design graduates on their belief and intention on ethical issues in the creative design industry. The study was conducted at two universities (University A and University B) in Malaysia, which included 120 undergraduates in design. A survey was conducted in which a questionnaire was distributed among respondents to determine their degree of agreement with respect to each argument in the questionnaire. The results of the data showed that the belief and intention of design graduates towards design ethics is poor, with the exception of the respondents of University A who have strong belief towards social, environmental and sustainability issues. These results indicate that a well-structured model of design ethics education and effective teaching mechanism for design ethics education should be in place. These would have an impact on students’ belief and intention towards design ethics. As such, the research results serve as a cornerstone from which the current practice of teaching and learning of design ethics education can be more critically examined, so that more changes can be made to the existing curriculum that can help to develop designers with ethical characteristics.

This is an interdisciplinary article providing an account of a phenomenon that is quite widespread but has been thus far mostly neglected by scholars: the overuse of digital technologies. Digital overuse (DO) can be defined as a usage of digital technologies that subjects perceive as dissatisfactory and non-meaningful a posteriori. DO has often been implicitly conceived as one of the main obstacle to so-called digital well-being. The article is structured in two parts. The first provides a definition of the phenomenon and a brief review of the explanations provided by various disciplines, in particular psychology and the evolutionary and behavioural sciences. Specifically, the article distinguishes between the endogenous and exogenous factors underlying digital overuse, that is between causes that seem to be intrinsic to digital technologies, and design techniques intentionally aimed at nudging users towards this behaviour. The second part is devoted to a discussion of the ethical concerns surrounding the phenomenon of the overuse of digital technologies, and how it may be possible to reduce such overuse among users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper upholds the premise that dignity is a fundamental principle of human-centered design. I argue that consideration of dignity is particularly important in service design, as service concerns the collective participation of people with diverse backgrounds and needs. Service often starts with situations in which strangers meet for the first time and must collaborate to co-produce a service, which can sometimes lead to conflicts. This paper explores four perspectives of dignity that are grounded in utilitarian, humanistic, individual, and collective bases: dignity as merit, autonomy, universal rights, and interpersonal care. Key philosophical interpretations, social backgrounds, and historical shifts related to the concept of dignity are introduced, with design examples that reflect each of its dimensions. I then present research questions based on each concept of dignity and propose a research agenda to utilize the pluralistic framework of dignity in service design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we present a snapshot of the theories, intentions, practices and outcomes produced by a teaching and learning collaboration. This is located geographically and culturally at the University of Warwick, and temporally across the period 2020-2021 marked by the global pandemic. The case study illustrates how a designerly, flexible, open, collaborative approach to learning design allowed for effective adaptation to changing circumstances. This was more effective through being formulated as an ethical approach to Design Thinking, shared by teachers, students, the host department, and collaborators (including two VR companies, a physical theatre company, and a design researcher from South Africa). By developing a humanitarian, ethical, and philosophically grounded Design Thinking, and using it for founding principles, the teaching team were able to adapt and learn, making the most of what was possible. We explore this method in depth, focussing upon how a reflective appreciation of modes of knowledge, and the use of visualisations helps us to cope with the complexity of what we are doing together, before, during, and after the period of disruption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A variety of approaches have appeared in academic literature and in design practice representing “ethics-frst” methods. These approaches typically focus on clarifying the normative dimensions of design, or outlining strategies for explicitly incorporating values into design. While this body of literature has developed considerably over the last 20 years, two themes central to the endeavour of ethics and values in design (E+VID) have yet to be systematically discussed in relation to each other: (a) designer agency, and (b) the strength of normative claims informing the design process. To address this gap, we undertook a structured review of leading E+VID approaches and critiques, and classifed them according to their positions on normative strength, and views regarding designer agency. We identifed 18 distinct approaches and 13 critiques that met the inclusion criteria for our review. Included papers were distributed across the spectrum of views regarding normative strength, and we found that no approaches and only one critique represented a view characteristic of “low” designer agency. We suggest that the absence of “low” designer agency approaches results in the neglect of crucial infuences on design as targets of intervention by designers. We conclude with suggestions for future research that might illuminate strategies to achieve ethical design in information mature societies, and argue that without attending to the tensions raised by balancing normatively “strong” visions of the future with limitations imposed on designer agency in corporate-driven design settings, “meaningful” ethical design will continue to encounter challenges in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces the design principle of legibility as means to examine the epistemic and ethical conditions of sensing technologies. Emerging sensing technologies create new possibilities regarding what to measure, as well as how to analyze, interpret, and communicate said measurements. In doing so, they create ethical challenges for designers to navigate, specifically how the interpretation and communication of complex data affect moral values such as (user) autonomy. Contemporary sensing technologies require layers of mediation and exposition to render what they sense as intelligible and constructive to the end user, which is a value-laden design act. Legibility is positioned as both an evaluative lens and a design criterion, making it complimentary to existing frameworks such as value sensitive design. To concretize the notion of legibility, and understand how it could be utilized in both evaluative and anticipatory contexts, the case study of a vest embedded with sensors and an accompanying app for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers L. Kahn’s famous expression, his question addressed to his colleagues: “What does the window want to be?”. Kahn has a special status in architecture of the XXth century: he can be considered one of the most outstanding spokesmen for the century’s architectural self-consciousness, with all its striking visualization, toughness and inflexibility, as well as its hidden cunning, tendency towards manipulation and suggestion. The latter qualities are analyzed in the essay.

This article discusses the use of population monitoring within urban spaces by designers. It considers its use to define design strategies aiming at mitigating the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. Some governments have made use of identified citizens' data as well as stored population data collected through telephone companies. In search of new strategies to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic, data such as statistical surveys of the population have been collected and used for communication. As a result, new services are offering digital applications which can help contain the pandemic. Designers are amongst the categories of professionals involved in this new development. When monitoring a community, aspects such as data privacy and surveillance capitalism need to be considered. What will happen to the data collected once the pandemic is over is also a matter of concern. In this context, how and what aspects designers should consider in this scenario are questions that need to be addressed. This study attempts to answer these questions based upon the results of a systematic literature review on the topic. This literature review-based research has confirmed the importance of design strategies in the development of new applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses many of the issues deriving from both design activity itself and the introduction of technology into everyday life. Relevant authors like Papanek (1984), Thackara (2005) and Manzini (2006) warned about the risks of design activity, as well as the consequences of bringing products to the world. Papanek defined design as the second most harmful profession one can practice, while Thackara claims that design is the cause of many troubling situations in our world (Mink, 2016). Manzini advocates the imminent need for a paradigm shift towards both a more sustainable design and way of living. In Design for the Real World, Papanek pointed out that designers have a social and moral responsibility for the consequences of their innovations (Mink, 2016). For this reason, first we cannot ignore the advice, but also, we genuinely believe that designers should include ethical principles in their education. This paper seeks to address design ethics focusing on socio-technical systems and the new challenges introduced by both the Internet of things and artificial intelligence. The methodological framework combines the value sensitive design developed in human computer interaction (HCI) and computer ethics with a methodology based on need, requirements and performances developed in architecture. This approach is applied to the development of connected appliances, to conduct our reflections on an applied case study. Some guidelines are drawn at the end of this paper to guide designers in achieving a greater understanding of the ethical implications involved in the design process, establishing the responsibilities and limits of the designer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]