Summary
As fake news floods our feeds and small businesses suffer due to disruption from startups, many tech designers are hearing exhortations to focus on ethics. There are tool kits, checklists and even a sort of hippocratic oath for designers to take. These efforts are laudable and understandable, and they can help in some ways -- notably, in reducing harms of bias. But ethics also have limits because private sector capitalism is a force that is much bigger than anything that any one person can do. Instead, a countervailing force, such as the public sector, is needed to shape our technology. How might designers better understand, and even seek to work with and strengthen the public sector -- whose role it is to shape society? Alexandra is the author of the new Rosenfeld Media title, Deliberate Intervention: Using Policy and Design to Blunt the Harms of New Technology
Key Insights
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Ethics alone cannot save technology from its negative impacts.
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Design research often identifies pain points, not true harms.
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Harms resulting from technology can resist simple interventions and may contradict business interests.
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Understanding local and national policy landscapes is crucial for addressing technology-related harms.
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Policy and design processes have similar cycles but differ in their underlying motivations—values vs. profit.
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Design can actively contribute to policy-making through informed advocacy and collaboration.
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Proactive measures in design can help mitigate known harms in areas like user safety and privacy.
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Designers must balance ethical considerations with the realities of working within capitalist frameworks.
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Greater collaboration between designers and policymakers is needed to address complex societal issues.
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Civic tech offers opportunities for designers to engage in meaningful policy discussions.
Notable Quotes
"Something's not right with the tech world."
"Harms often accrue at the societal level rather than to individuals."
"Ethical design can impact some harms, but not all."
"It's hard to predict what harms will emerge from new technologies."
"Policy ideally is driven by values, whereas UX in the private sector is driven by profit."
"Designers need to understand the role of policy to address technology harms effectively."
"The future of technology shouldn't rest solely on the ethics of individual designers."
"Designers are not all-powerful; other forces shape society too."
"It's important for designers to rethink their savior complex."
"The conversation about design and policy needs to be broader and more inclusive."
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