Doing Good Business? Design Leaders’ Perspectives on Ethics in Design

Design is not neutral but involves ethical aspects, from addressing power dynamics to enabling broader accessibility and inclusion. In industry settings, design leaders can play an essential role in promoting ethical design by, for instance, setting visions, developing and advocating values, and providing guidance for design. Through co-design workshops with ten design leaders working in Sweden, we investigated how these professionals envision the cultivation-that is, the development, promotion, and dissemination-of ethically responsible design. Our study outlines what the participants regard as the main problems that stifle ethical design and designing, and how to practically address them. The findings highlight that design leaders consider the lack of awareness about the ethical dimensions of design to be one of the main problems. Additionally, they point to various strategies for addressing the problems, such as communicating compelling reasons for prioritizing ethics, creating inclusive and welcoming spaces for collaborative problem-solving and learning about ethics, and folding ethics into current practices. This could involve, for instance, adding the dimension of ethics to 'design critique' sessions, or re-evaluating portfolio reviews to prioritize diversity in recruitment. We conclude by discussing design leaders' potential for furthering ethically responsible design, and provide a practical tool, a design brief, to support this endeavor.