Ethical Design: Building Responsible Products, Services, and Systems for a Better World

Key takeaways

Ethical design is the practice of creating products and services that prioritize social responsibility and consider the broader impact of your work. Here are some important things to know:

• With 45 percent of consumers researching a business’s values before making a purchase and nearly one-third of Americans boycotting businesses for ethical reasons [1], prioritizing ethical design can help strengthen your company’s bottom line. 

• Ethical design principles include attention to usability, accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability, privacy and data protection, transparency, user involvement, and well-being.

• You can center your research on empathy, collaboration, and data-informed decision-makingcreate products that minimize harm, promote trust through transparency, accommodate varied abilities, and positively enhance user experiences without sacrificing functionality.

Explore the basics of ethical design principles and frameworks and discover how you can incorporate them into your work. To deepen your understanding of ethical standards, responsible AI, business ethics, and data ethics, consider enrolling in the AI for Creative Work Specialization. In as little as four weeks, you can build skills and explore AI’s relationship to creativity while learning how to use this technology sustainably and successfully. 

What is ethical design?

Ethical design is the practice of making intentional design decisions that consider the impact of your choices on society. By adopting ethical design practices, you commit to social responsibility, inclusion, empathy, and the public good. This extends beyond established ethical standards such as copyright law, accessibility regulations, and conflict of interest policies to the broader social, environmental, political, and economic contexts in which you implement your designs. This practice promotes transparency and encourages designer accountability by shifting the focus from “Can you make this?” to “Why are you making this?”

What are types of ethical design frameworks?

Various approaches to ethical design fall into one of three broad frameworks: consequentialist, duty-based (non-consequentialist), and virtue-based (agent-centered). The framework you choose will likely depend on the situation you are presented with and will vary from situation to situation. Each framework borrows from the others and has its advantages and disadvantages.

Consequentialist framework 

Using the consequentialist framework, you evaluate actions by their future effects, aiming to produce the greatest good. The consequentialist framework considers who is affected by your decisions and encourages you to weigh outcomes to guide your design choices. While this pragmatic approach helps balance benefits across many people, unpredictable consequences and compromises can complicate decision-making. 

Guiding questions

• Will the action serve the greater good? 

• What kind of outcome will you produce?

Duty-based framework

When using a duty-based framework, you make decisions based on moral obligation rather than considering the outcomes of your choices. You act ethically by following moral rules and doing what’s “right,” regardless of the outcome. This framework promotes fairness and respect but can feel rigid when duties conflict. 

Guiding questions

• What are your obligations in the situation?

• What things should you never do?

Virtue-based framework

In the virtue-based ethics framework, you focus on the kind of person you want to be and what your actions reveal about your character. You define ethical behavior by what a virtuous person would do, cultivating traits like honesty, courage, and compassion to act according to your highest potential. This approach values character growth but offers little guidance for specific actions. 

Guiding questions

• What kind of person will you be if you take this action? 

• What will your actions show about your character? 

Who uses ethical design practices?

Designers in government agencies, academic programs, and private firms apply ethical design principles to prioritize user welfare, transparency, and integrity in the design process. Whether you work in technology, education, engineering, health care, marketing, or manufacturing, you will likely use design ethics to develop products, services, or systems for your industry.

Ethics of AI in design

When you design artificial intelligence (AI) systems, you have a moral obligation to prioritize fairness and transparency and to mitigate biases, which can perpetuate social inequalities. To ensure those affected by AI systems understand how the systems make decisions, ethical design must consider transparency in decision-making. With AI technology taking over many tasks, ethical design in AI should also consider the impact of AI systems on human jobs and society as a whole. AI ethics has become such an important part of AI development that roles such as that of an AI ethicist now exist to guide organizations’ moral compasses regarding AI.

Ethical design principles: How do ethical standards in research impact design?

Ethical research standards influence design by going beyond effective products to prioritize user rights, safety, and inclusion. These standards guide the research for and creation of ethically designed products, services, and systems through principles such as usability, accessibility, inclusivity, sustainability, privacy and data protection, transparency, user involvement, and well-being. 

When you consider and test these principles as part of your research, your designs are more likely to protect people physically, emotionally, and financially. By centering your research on empathy, collaboration, and data-informed decisions, you create products that minimize harm, promote trust through transparency, accommodate varied abilities, and positively enhance user experiences without sacrificing functionality. 

Depending on the industry or type of product, service, or system you’re designing, you might find variations on these principles For instance, tech areas, including biotechnology and genetic engineering, ecommerce, and user experience development, outside the field of information technology, each employ specific ethical design practices, based on general design ethics but specific to each field, to ensure adherence to ethical design principles.

• Biotechnology: Evaluate community needs before launching projects, conduct safety audits and monitor environmental impacts, protect creative exploration and share research openly, hold public forums to discuss technology risks, and ensure equitable access and benefit distribution.

• E-commerce: Clearly label ads and promotions, simplify cancellation and payment procedures, disclose terms and fees upfront, and respect privacy choices.

• UX: Design intuitive interfaces that guide users, implement accessibility features such as adjustable text sizes and screen reader compatibility, consider user demographics and needs, offer customizable preferences, including language options, and provide helpful and informative content.

Ethical design in tech

With technology’s wide reach and strong impact on individuals, organizations, and society, ethical design in the field is more crucial than ever. Rapid advancements in AI, automation, social media, and data-driven systems introduce complex ethical challenges, from bias in algorithms and inaccurate decision-making to privacy breaches and misinformation.

Information professionals must navigate these issues with transparency, fairness, and responsibility, ensuring data protection, cybersecurity, and respect for intellectual property. By embedding ethics into design and decision-making, IT professionals build trust, safeguard users, and create technology that benefits society while mitigating harm in an increasingly digital world.

Read more: 53 Artificial Intelligence Use Cases + How to Get Started

Advantages of incorporating ethical design practices

Beyond demonstrating your company’s social awareness and being the “right thing to do,” ethical design practices can benefit your business in many other ways. Design ethics can help you build trust, protect your reputation, strengthen workplace culture, and meet client and regulatory expectations. These principles can also help you reach a larger audience, maintain a loyal customer base, and increase your referrals. 

With 45 percent of consumers researching a business’s values before purchasing from them and almost a third of Americans boycotting a business for various ethical reasons [1], prioritizing ethical design can also help a company's bottom line. 

Examples from ethical designer brands and tech leaders

You can find a range of companies and various ethical designer brands that have successfully incorporated design ethics into their business models. Real-world examples of ethical design include: 

• Everlane: This clothing company eschews fast fashion and prides itself on its ethical manufacturing process, which includes factory audits for fair wages, hours, safety, and environmental impact. The company also provides transparent pricing, revealing the cost behind every product.

• IBM: As a global technology company, IBM commits to incorporating ethical design practices such as transparency, explainability, and anti-bias efforts to ensure fairness and impartiality in its AI systems. The company takes its commitment to transparency one step further by publishing a comprehensive AI ethics policy.

• Patagonia: This socially responsible clothing company donates 1 percent of its profits, $140 million since 1985 [2], to environmental nonprofits as an “earth tax.” Patagonia also rallies against fast fashion, encouraging you to recycle and buy used garments, a process it facilitates through its online store. 

• Apple: As a well-known technology company, Apple prioritizes privacy by minimizing data collection. The company also promotes transparency and offers you control over your data by processing it on your device rather than on the cloud.

How to design an ethical organization

To design an ethical organization, consider treating ethics as a design component, rather than just a belief system. By providing opportunities that make “doing the right thing” easy and rewarding, you can “design” an environment where ethical behavior is the rule, not the exception. Consider the following steps to design an ethical organization:

• Connect your strategies to clear, actionable values that guide daily decisions.

• Keep ethics at the forefront of decision-making, align incentives with positive outcomes, and reward ethical behavior.

• Foster supportive cultural norms through visible ethical leadership, peer modeling, and recognition of good conduct.

• Reinforce principles in hiring, evaluation, and compensation systems.

Bring design ethics into your work: What is the ethical design method?

The ethical design method prioritizes transparency, societal good, and user well-being over profit. You can incorporate ethical design into your work by incorporating the following steps into your decision-making process:

 

1. State the facts

2. Identify the ethical issue

3. Evaluate alternative options for action

4. Make a decision

5. Test your decision

Explore our free resources for designers

If you’re interested in exploring design principles, subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn more about industry-related topics. You can also explore our free digital resources:

• Fuel your curiosity: Glossary of UX Terms and Definitions

• Watch on YouTube: A Quick Guide to AI Ethics

• Consider a Professional Certificate: Welcome to UX Design: Course Introduction and Objectives

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