Proposing a Practical Strategy to Integrate Ethical Self-Reflection in UX/UI Designer Workflows

Sammanfattning

As the architects of digital spaces, UX/UI designers have a responsibility towards the end-users todesign as ethically as possible. Nevertheless, it has been discovered that practitioners tend to neglect toprioritize ethical considerations throughout their work. In hopes of mitigating that, researchers haveconceptualized numerous ethical tools that use frameworks such as situational and in-action ethics.Despite their strong theoretical foundations, the tools’ performance in real practitioner workflows hasyet to be tested. Thus, we created an Ethical Self-Reflection Board (ESRB), based on the aforementionedtheory, and tested it by conducting a diary study. UX/UI designers were provided with their own copyof the tool and asked to use it whenever they encountered an ethical issue in their work. The diary studywas followed by semi-structured interviews. These methods allowed for the discovery of novel insightsinto practitioners’ attitudes towards the integration of a self-reflective ethical tool in their workflows,as well as how it impacted their capability to design from an ethical standpoint. The results show theESRB helps to validate ethical concerns and to assign more tangible terms to ethical dilemmas, makingethical design more actionable. The ESRB was deemed significantly helpful in design related contextsyet failed to be of merit in other work contexts. Findings imply that tools, such as the ESRB, have greatpotential to transform ethical considerations in UX/UI designer workflows if flexibility and workflowvariety are treated as key variables in their creation.