1 Design and Ethics of Product Impact on User Behavior and Use Practices (original) (raw)
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Design and Ethics of Product Impact on User Behavior and Use Practices
Workshops Proceedings of the 5th International …, 2009
Smart technologies and progressive automation raise questions concerning the use of such technologies. The design challenge to enhance usability cannot be seen apart from the broader societal, and ethical concern of how technologies are accommodated in a way of living. The designer's tinkering to improve usability, is therefore an ethically relevant practice, as is the consumers engagement with new technologies. Explicit consideration and design of product impact can help to improve the accommodation of technology. The ethical problem of product impact and freedom is treated by elaborating that product impact not so much infringes on freedom but provokes specific forms of freedom.
A TOOL FOR THE IMPACT AND ETHICS OF TECHNOLOGY: THE CASE OF INTERACTIVE SCREENS IN PUBLIC SPACES
In this chapter I will elaborate on the relationship between the impact and the ethics of technology, and more specifically on the significance of the so-called Product Impact Tool for ethical reflection and discussion about technology. A case study concerning ethical reflection in a research project about the development of interactive screens in public spaces is integrated as an illustration and application of the approach.
The Product Impact Tool Designing for user-guiding and user-changing*
2013
Above the head The three preceding interaction modes, physical, cognitive and environment are about concrete relation between humans and technologies. This means that there are always concrete cases and examples at the base of the analysis. In contrast, an abstract approach results in generalizing theories and claims about the relations between humans and technologies. What is the nature, or the essence, of technology? Can we determine the course of technological developments, or does technology determine the course of human history? Obviously it is not in the power of designers, nor of users, to change how technology influences humans throughout history, on a global scale. Still, this abstract dimension is 117 5.2 The Product Impact Tool or prototype (combined and integrated with user tests). In all cases,, what is important, is to adapt the product impact mindset of seeing what the actual behaviour effects of a product are, irrespective of the (doubtlessly good) intentions of the ...
Facing Digital Dystopias: A Discussion about Responsibility in the Design of Smart Products
Proceedings of the Conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement - Sense and Sensitivity, DeSForM 2017, 2017
The paper investigates some critical issues connected to the digitalization of products and systems for the domestic environments involving the collection of personal data. The research focuses on the most innovative solutions, such as those based on AI algorithms for speech recognition, IoTs, wearable devices, cloud computing, and the use of smart phones and devices. These solutions require and imply the collection of personal data and their local or remote processing. The paper provides a design-oriented discussion on the features of smart products with respect to the consequences of design choices on complex dimensions of experience such as sense of self, privacy, and personal identity. The paper aims to set out the terms of a discussion about the most critical factors of services and systems involving personal data, and to create references on the responsibilities of designers acting in multidisciplinary project teams. The research is based on ethnography at home and on a critical discussion about case studies. The results highlight the importance of considering privacy and control issues in the design of smart solutions and provide some pointers to be used in the development of smart solutions for home.
Ethical issues in interaction design
Ethics and Information Technology, 2006
When we design information technology we risk building specific metaphors and models of human activities into the technology itself and into the embodied activities, work practices, organisational cultures and social identities of those who use it. This paper is motivated by the recognition that the assumptions about human activity used to guide the design of particular technology are made active, in use, by the interaction design of that technology. A fragment of shared design work is used to ground an exploration of different solutions to one of the technical problems that arise when technology is used to support similar work over distance. The argument is made that some solutions to design problems are better than others because they enable human interaction in different ways. Some solutions enhance the possibilities for human agency, others diminish it. This means that there can be a moral basis for choosing between alternative interaction design decisions that might otherwise be considered equivalent in terms of the functionality and usability of the technology.
Ethics of technology and design ethics in socio-technical systems
FormAkademisk - forskningstidsskrift for design og designdidaktikk
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 , 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 challen...
Design for People & Society: Turning the Product Impact Tool into a Design Tool
2018
Designers have a key role in the creation of the products and technologies that shape people and society. Awareness of the societal effect of their designs is, therefore, an important quality. The Product Impact Tool (PIT) is a tool that originated in philosophy of technology and elaborates how technologies can have a social impact. The tool has the potential to be of use to designers to design more socially acceptable products, but does not yet fit into the process of design. In this paper the PIT is further developed into a tool for designers. The question answered is how designers can make better use of the PIT to create designs for people and society. Through a literature study, interviews and ideation phase, the Product Impact Tool For Designers (PITFD) was developed. The PITFD was then tested with both professional- and student designers and improved further. It contains four booklets and a worksheet to be used in a brainstorm session and is developed to be more practical in u...
Materializing Morality: Design Ethics and Technological Mediation
Science, Technology & Human Values, 2006
During the past decade, the “script” concept, indicating how technologies prescribe human actions, has acquired a central place in STS. Until now, the concept has mainly functioned in descriptive settings. This article will deploy it in a normative setting. When technologies coshape human actions, they give material answers to the ethical question of how to act. This implies that engineers are doing “ethics by other means”: they materialize morality. The article will explore the implications of this insight for engineering ethics. It first augments the script concept by developing the notion of technological mediation. After this, it investigates how the concept of mediation could be made fruitful for design ethics. It discusses how the ambition to design behaviorinfluencing technologies raises moral questions itself and elaborates two methods for anticipating technological mediation in the design process: performing mediation analyses and using an augmented version of constructive ...
Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design
Springer eBooks, 2015
The responsibility of engineers and designers for the products they design is a common topic in engineering ethics and ethics of technology. However, in this chapter we explore what designing for the value of responsibility could entail. The term "design for the value of responsibility" can be interpreted in (at least) two ways. First, it may be interpreted as a design activity that explicitly takes into account the effect of technological designs on the possibility of users (and others) to assume responsibility or to be responsible. Second, it may refer to a design activity that explicitly affects the allocation of responsibility among the ones operating or using the technology and other affected people. In this chapter, we discuss both interpretations of design for the value of responsibility. In both interpretations, a technological design can be said to affect a person's responsibility. As there are no explicit methods or approaches to guide design for responsibility, this chapter explores three cases in which design affected responsibility and develops on basis of them design heuristics for design for responsibility. These cases are the alcohol interlock for cars in Sweden, the V-chip for blocking violent television content and developmental podcasting devices in rural Zimbabwe. We conclude by raising some open issues and suggesting future work.
2004
The entry of proactive technology into highly sensitive environments, such as the home, produces specific design challenges that are inextricably linked to ethical issues. Two design goals are presented and analysed: proactive solutions have to be both personalized and consistent. These requirements are partially contradictory, and need to be understood in the context of the sociocognitive setting of the home.