Ethics in UX
As a designer, I often think about what colours I should use and their psychological effect, what shape or typeface. As someone who worked a lot with advertising, my mind is always set to ask: what could sell better? How can I easily send the right message?
If you asked me what Ethics in UX means, I would give you answers related to Accessibility or the importance of Inclusion. This was the case until two weeks ago when I had been challenged by Sonja Rattay, Industry Leader at Hyper Island, to dig dipper into this topic. I started by reading suggested literature like:
The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design.
The term dark patterns is used to define instances where designers use their knowledge of human behavior (e.g., psychology) and the desires of end users to implement deceptive functionality that is not in the user’s best interest.
Read more here
Here are a few examples:
Roach Motel
— a design that makes it easy to get into a situation, but hard to get out. (darkpatterns.org)
Not sure what that is? Try to delete your Amazon account. This is an example I read about, so I tried to find one as well, by checking different accounts.
Envato:
The manipulative use of aesthetics is so deeply ingrained, that the appearance of consumer products is naturalised and taken for granted, obscuring the difficult questions one could raise concerning the human, social, and environmental consequences of their production.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02580136.2016.1172750
Aesthetic manipulation
I can count on my fingers how many times I read terms or spend time actually to select how my data is being used. I thought I don´t care about my data that much, but I started to observe the design for Data Preferences on every website I was visiting for the sake of research.
Since I am currently pregnant, I was searching for names for my baby on nameberry.com. It is not the first time I am visiting this website, but it was the first time I went to “Manage my preferences”. What caught my attention here was tricky is to observe Vendors preferences. I opened it, and I was surprised by the long scroll through the list until I got to the end. Immediately I realised that all that long list of vendors would get the information about me that I am about to become a mom. Even so, I don´t know if this is what bothers me the most. I may have just past over this vital information, which makes me distrust the website. I feel annoyed by their dishonesty, then anything else.
Bright Side:
Another example is Bright Side, where both On/Off selections are gray. The user can be tricked into believing that the selections are Off, when in fact they are On.
Reflection 1:
I can’t say that I wasn’t aware of these practices. But somehow, I didn’t realise the negative impact harm they could make. I would think of them as business models. While reflecting on this, I concluded that many business owners hire designers, which they trust for their skills. The designer’s decisions might affect not only the users but also the business by creating distrust. If the designers
The role of a UX designer is to be educated and educate further those who hire him.
Privacy Zuckering
Read more here.
One of the patterns that got my attention was “privacy zuchering” — which was named Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. This refers to the practice of being tricked into publicly sharing more information about yourself than you intended to.Inside Facebook
I have been using Facebook for years, and despite every criticise the company gets, I can´t ignore its benefits. I get to keep in touch with my family, who lives in a different country, with my friends who are spread around Europe, I get answers to all kind of issues related to kids, from my group of moms and I also get to follow newspapers and people I can trust, for news. When I was younger, I would lose contact with someone, even if they would move into another neighbourhood. The phone bills were not very forgiving, either. I could go on forever about why I like using Facebook. For this reason, I decided to invite someone who used to work as a UX Designer at Facebook and ask him his view (I will call him John, to protect his identity).
John remembered how he was working already for a couple of years as a UX Designer when he felt he needs to top up his skills. He thought that working at Facebook could help him become a top designer, and he was not wrong about that. John mentioned how being surrounded by the best of the best was a valuable experience. He had only nice words about the company’s environment, and he used words of appreciation regarding the was Mark Zuckerberg was leading. Regarding Ethics, they would often sign petitions if they considered something is wrong, and Zuckerberg would pay attention to them. However, Facebook is not a democracy, and the CEO would have the final word.
“Build things that will be used by people. What is good for people is good for business.”
For John, it was obvious that Facebook is not a non-profit. To be able to hire the best designers, the business needs a high income. And one of the things that makes Facebook so successful is the increased usability, where UX Designers have a significant contribution. If the designers would fail to do their job, this could mean a loss in profit for the company, which could eventually lead to losing their job.
Reflection 2: my future self as a UX Designer
I can’t help but wonder, what would I do? On the one hand, I want to become a top designer, and if I had the chance to work in a big company like Facebook, Amazon, etc., I would be just hypocritical to deny that thought’s thrill.
On the other hand, the world is changing, and even if we are not there yet, I hope that soon ‘being a top designer’ will take a new meaning: someone who is successful at applying the best practices when it comes to Ethics, among other skills. For this reason, I choose further this path. I want to continue joining the discussions around Ethics, document good examples, question and do research, talk to people.
“Design is what mediates our interaction with the internet. It´s the language we read in. It´s not too much to ask that that language be comprehensible and honest.” Evan Puschak
Ethics Matters
On 23 February, I joined Ethics Matters, a webinar with over 400 participants, which gave me more insights. I also joined the community to continue my learning process and get inspired by like-minded people. Here are a few things that I learned about ethics:
- The harm of the “ugly ux design” can cause physical, emotional and social harm.
- Ethics is normative
- Ethics formulates a vision
- Ethics is objective
- Ethics is systematic
- Ethics requires: analytical clarification, argumentative justification and understanding of our moral intuitions and convictions
What I want to explore further:
- learn to identify principles which are unethical (e.g manipulation)
- how to convince clients to invest into Ethical Design
- create an ethic chart to follow
