Exploring Ethics in UX Design

Digital technology envelopes modern life, from invisible urban infrastructures that micro-manage traffic flow to trackable pills that provide health data on the user. Analysts predict that by 2020, a mere year from now, there will be nearly 200,000 billion connected digital devices in the world. So what’s the responsibility of user experience (UX) professionals — the people who design these ubiquitous devices — to recognize their influence on the quality of our everyday life, and ensure they're making a positive impact?

Our resident design leader, Dorothy Shamonsky, Ph.D., explores the pressure on UX pros to develop more-detailed ethical standards. She suggests taking a page from the architecture profession’s playbook. She posits that using initiatives like “human-first design” and “well building” as models may help UX professionals craft their own initiatives for an ethical design approach. Read Developing a Code of Ethics for UX Design: What We Can Learn from the Field of Architecture.