Project Title

Ethics and values in design: a structured review and theoretical critique

Sponsor

University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics

About

This project was carried out as part of the Joint Centre for Bioethics Scholars Program in AI Ethics and Health at the University of Toronto.

A variety of approaches have appeared in academic literature and in design practice representing “ethics-first” methods. These approaches typically focus on clarifying the normative dimensions of design, or outlining strategies for explicitly incorporating values into design. While this body of literature has developed considerably over the last 20 years, two themes central to the endeavour of ethics and values in design (E+VID) have yet to be discussed in relation to each other: (a) designer agency, and (b) the strength of normative claims informing the design process.

Methods & Results

To address this gap, we undertook a structured review of the E+VID literature and classified approaches according to their positions on normative strength, and views regarding designer agency. We identified 17 distinct approaches that were distributed across the spectrum of views regarding normative strength, and we found that no approaches represented a view characteristic of “low” designer agency.

We suggest that the absence of “low” designer agency approaches results in the neglect of crucial influences on design as targets of intervention by designers. We conclude with suggestions for future research that might illuminate strategies to achieve ethical design in information mature societies, and argue that without attending to the tensions raised by balancing normatively “strong” visions of the future, with limitations imposed on designer agency in corporate-driven design settings, “meaningful” ethical design will continue to encounter challenges in practice.

Project Status

This project is complete.

Publication Status

Manuscript available here.