By Janus Boye
Tech companies exploiting consumers is unfortunately nothing new and dark patterns remain commonplace.
Still, we are experiencing a shift in consumer behaviour, where ethics matter more. How do you actually do ethical design from the beginning? To answer this and to and share practical techniques to make honest interfaces work, Trine Falbe, Kim Andersen and Martin Michael Frederiksen have co-authored the new Ethical Design Handbook published by Smashing Magazine.
Martin kindly shared his insights with us in a recent member conference call with a few from our product management community.
What’s in the book?
As Martin said in the opening, it’s a handbook, so it’s intended more like a reference guide than something you would necessarily read from beginning to end.
A major part of the book is on how to convince people to change their design habits. While in our call, we spoke more tech than design, Martin did highlight that top management can be a key issue for ethical design, in particular if staff is treated just like resources and not properly listened to.
According to Martin, the situation in many organisations is one where safety and security is expected, but not necessarily funded. In other the words, the consequences of unethical design are not accepted.
Expectedly, the book also talks about conversions and how to establish long-term strategy for better conversion. As Martin said:
It’s a myth that conversions drop if you are transparent about how you use data.
Using design to build or erode trust
Martin shared two examples of design tackles trust in different ways.
LINGsCARS - this is a cult site referred to as honesty wrapped in a boxing glove. This site breaks pretty much every UX convention, but it does sell well.
Facebook - probably the most well-known and controversial of the tech giants with numerous examples of both data breaches and unethical design. Martin referred to a photo of Mark Zuckerberg with tape over his laptop camera to illustrate how the Facebook founder personally views privacy.
It goes without saying that customers don’t buy from somebody they don’t trust. As Elie Auvray from Jahia said in the call:
Ethics must be built-in from the start. The way you deal with customer data will define you as a company
Participating in the call, was also Shaun McGough from Elastic, who mentioned how they have built in security-by-default based on breaches in the past. In Shaun’s view openness breeds both honesty and trust. It’s also a key element to foster a developer community around your product.
Learn more about ethical design
Don’t forget to actually buy the book. Here’s the order form on Smashing Magazine.
On the topic of trust, you might like these posts:
Elie from Jahia recommended The Power of Digital Policy by Kristina Podnar as a good companion to this new handbook.
Finally, you can also watch the entire 36-minute recording below.