Ethics in Design

Conducting Ethical Research

Inclusivity

To make sure that my research was as inclusive as possible, I worked hard to recruit interview subjects from as many places as possible to make sure I had a diverse as group of subjects.

For example, to recruit renters, as well as interviewing more middle and upper-class renters near my office, I also waited outside the local food bank and developed relations with community services such as Legal Aid to recruit low income renters.

Confidentiality

Additionally, as many of my end-users, especially the renters, were parts of vulnerable population groups who were not always legally secure and could be at risk of reprisal attacks, it was crucial to that responses were kept confidential.

I made it clear to my participants that I would not link any identifying information to their responses. This allowed them to give more honest feedback.

Creating Ethical Personas

Subtle factors such as the composition of the profile picture or even the name used can have subliminal effect on our impressions of a persona. I have seen poorly chosen pictures turn team members against personas.

Thus, I made special effort to remove any bias from my personas and make them as representative of my end-users as possible. I researched and used the most common names in each demographic and validated all my data with secondary sources such as GIS datasets.

Designing Ethically

Transparency

In a system such as Rental Check where apartments were being ranked according to livability, transparency is incredibly important. Without sufficient transparency, trust in the system is eroded. Thus, my designs clearly demonstrated the algorithms I used to produce the rankings.

Additionally, the ranking scale used has enormous ethical implications. For example, I initially wanted to use a letter grade system for rankings; however, I soon realized that this approach could inadvertently penalize some landlords.

For example, grade inflation means that now a C or D has as much stigma as an F. And where I chose to draw the line between different letter grades could have dramatic consequences for landlords.

Creating Ghettos

Another ethical issue I tackled when designing was how my designs could affect the desirability and demographics of certain areas of the city.

The City of Jackson was already somewhat segregated along income brackets, and I was concerned that showing concentrations of poor housing stock could mean that the most vulnerable residents who did not have the resources to move to better areas could be trapped in the least desirable neighborhoods.

Landlords would then have no motivation to improve the housing standards as the vulnerable residents would not be in a position to push back against them.

This is an ethical issue that I still struggle to find a good solution to even today. By shining a light on the issue, it makes it easier to correct, but it also brings the issue to the foreground.

Conducting Ethical Research

Usability testing is an important part of the UX process, and as with any research it is important to remove as much bias from the findings as possible.

So, just like with my surveys, interviews, and contextual inquiries, I made sure to select participants from diverse backgrounds and kept their responses confidential.