Ethical & Inclusive Design

An essential component of modern product design practice

 

Digital systems that handle sensitive business and personal data come with inherent risks that can lead to unintended harm for both individuals and organizations. That’s where Ethics by Design steps in—a vital approach to modern product development that equips teams with the frameworks to identify and address these risks. By proactively uncovering potential pitfalls, we can ensure our products align with humanistic values, fostering innovation that protects businesses and consumers alike.

 

When done right, ethical design doesn’t just mitigate risk; it empowers creativity and trust, driving forward a more responsible digital future.

Driving principled innovation

The Virtuous Cycle of Ethical Design

As software designers, engineers, and product managers, the tools we build affect the world – customers, consumers, and even third parties. Often the people and teams building these tools are so focused on the clever solutions they’re aiming to deliver that any questions concerning potential harms such new capabilities might create are never even considered.

 

That is the Ethical Imperative.

The Ethics of Data

At Salesforce I was part of a team who built tools to monitor, track, and target users so businesses could understand their habits, history, and needs in order to deliver timely, relevant content in their sales, marketing, or service encounters.

As compelling as those goals and tools are, they also create potential risks. Along with those risks comes responsibility to gather, use, and protect customer information ethically. For any technology provider whose value proposition includes leveraging customer data, it is imperative to include guardrails for risk reduction – a feature as fundamental as accessibility, localization, and responsive design.

Creating trustworthy, secure software that includes thoughtful defaults, user guidance, customizable settings, and other trust-enhancing features not only reduces risk, it drives the circle of trust with customers and consumers, strengthening those relationships and encouraging users to feel more confident when they do decide to share their data.

To effectively address these risk vectors, in partnership with our Office of Ethical and Humane Use, we established a UX program to develop a clear perspective on Ethics, and and a plan to build a practice to take action. We developed methods and collatoral to enable teams to identify tools that could be used to create or exacerbate unwelcome, non-inclusive, or even harmful outcomes, and guides to enable risks mitigiation through design.

I led the UX effort to establish practices and methods around ethics in our our design process. I championed the cause and fought to convince leadership to invest in the guardrails that drive responsible behavior and mitigate risks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let's Get It

I believe that design is a powerful tool to improve the world. I care deeply about creating humanistic software that empowers and delights the people who use it. I’m looking for my next opportunity to make an impact. If you think we might be a good match, please reach out.