Human Approach

Transform your design.

Design should consider its implications and respond ethically and empathically to include all potential beneficiaries and assess the consequences on the psyche and environment.

Page Overview

This page provides Information about human-oriented design principles – Ethic and Empathy. Sections in Detail:

01: What is Ethical Design
02: Reasons for Ethics in Design
02.1: Layered Context
02.2: Ethical Principles
03: Empathy
04: How to design empathic
05: Universal Design & Accessibility
06: Actions to take

What is
ethical
design.

Ethics is a field that inevitably makes it necessary to talk about responsibilities. Fundamental values like fairness or respect need a starting point and require conscious action. While design shows us ways we can or want to do things, ethics shows us a way, a process, of how we should do those things. Ethics thus offers us a guideline against which we can align our design.
Ethical design can be described as:

"Businesses, products, and services that grow from a principle of fairness and fundamental respect towards everyone involved."

— Falbe et al. - The Ethical Design Handbook

The Ethical Design Handbook

Why do we need
more ethics
in design ?

The traditional designer is often conflicted between personal interests and values and the pay of commissioning companies. Rather, designers are hired to drive product sales and increase corporate profits. By the way we design products, we create psychological obsolescence in those who use them.

Design can be used as a weapon that purposefully manipulates or consciously or unconsciously excludes users and reinforces social inequality.

The Layered Contexts of
digital design ethics.

Layered context of digital design ehtics

As the systemic focus has already shown, ethics is also a part within a networked system. Ethical design is accordingly placed in a superordinate context, which has different characteristics and levels of abstraction depending on the level. For the design – 3 levels can be declared. The infrastructure, business and interface level. The lowest level contains all the possibilities and limitations of a platform on which we build the technology. The World Wide Web.

Within this level, designers have virtually no influence. The second level, however, contains the business model, which is built on the base. This determines the value and moral character of the products. The last stage is the classic design level. Here, abstract problems are transformed into specific solutions. If we want to have a relevant influence, we should already intervene at the company level.

It’s our responsibility to pull away from designing screens and “experiences” and lend our skills to the design of policy

Curt Arledge — Design Ethics and the Limits of the Ethical Designer

— Ethical
Principles

Ethics, based on values such as fairness and respect can be picked up within the design. For this, human rights, effort, and their experience should be considered and included in the process. Ind.ie's ethical Design Manifesto describes the following principles.

Empathy
— Designing
for individuals.

More empathy
— in design.

In addition to business-level changes, designers can also apply ethics and empathy to their design. In this context, empathy refers to the intuitive ability to identify with the thoughts and feelings of other people. Designers empathize with the motivations, values, preferences, and emotional and mental models, such as the inner conflicts, of their users. Empathic design lets designers feel people's lives and experiences in order to create products that are directly tailored to people's needs.

A Framework for Empathy in Design

„Designers should imagine themselves living in users’ shoes, interview people with disabilities, and ask them about their painpoints when using technology products and what features could help them use digital products more effectively.”

How to design
— empathic?

For a full empathic understanding, it is important to build a genuine and deep connection or share experiences to be able to develop compassion for the needs of the beneficiaries. An open mind and constantly questioning the status quo can help us be open to other cultures, places, people, or ways of life.

In practice, it is especially important not to exclude people. Designers should put themselves in the shoes of users, interview people with disabilities, as well as older people or children, and ask them what problems they have in using technology products and how they could use digital products more effectively.

Ask the hard questions to find out the weaknesses

Aspects for the
implementation
of Ethical Design

Privacy — Security — Transparency — Accessability — Usability — User Centered — Focus — Sustainability — Storytelling

Empathy Design Resources

Universal
Design &
‍Accessibility.

Empathy, however, means not only designing for the users of the target group, but constantly questioning who has been excluded and forgotten. What would be their experience and what problems do disabled people have. Accessibility should therefore already be a part of the development process of any product or service and not be added afterwards. This is not just about more severe disabilities - even a visual impairment or a red-green deficiency can have a lasting impact on the experience and should be included in the design.

Designing for Accessibility

Practical Examples of accessible Design

Making viewport units accessible
Appropriate text size and resizing (>16px)
Sufficient Contrast-Ratio
Subtitles for Audio/Video
Make Clickable Elements big enough
Introduce features over time
Avoid task splitting and give feedback
Design with ergonomics in mind

The four cores of accessible web design:

‍See — Operate
— Hear — Understand

Ethical Design Sources

Action
time.

Now it's time to put the information into design. three concepts can help you make your design more systemic, ethical and empathic.

Call to Action!

A systemic &
future-oriented —
design abstract

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Page Overview

What isethicaldesign.

Why do we needmore ethics in design ?

The Layered Contexts of digital design ethics.

— EthicalPrinciples

Empathy— Designing for individuals.

More empathy — in design.

How to design— empathic?