The Designer’s Oath: Navigating Ethical Dilemmas in UX Design with Samantha and Ciara

In today’s world of UX design, ethical considerations are paramount. But how do designers navigate the complex moral landscape while balancing user needs, business goals, and emerging technologies? For over a decade, Samantha Dempsey and Ciara Taylor have championed a collaborative approach, empowering designers to define their values, engage in meaningful dialogue, and collectively shape a more responsible future.

Their groundbreaking work, the Designer’s Oath, has evolved from a singular pledge to a dynamic toolkit for fostering ethical awareness and alignment. It isn’t just a lofty ideal; it’s a practical framework for navigating the ethical dilemmas that UX designers face every day. From data privacy to persuasive design, the challenges are real and the stakes are high.

What exactly is the Designer’s Oath you ask? Well, much like the Hippocratic Oath for doctors, which essentially is a pledge of ethics that new physicians take to uphold professional standards, a Designer’s Oath is a commitment by designers and organizations to create sustainable, ethical designs. It’s a downloadable set of templates (links at the end of this story) that you can customize to define your own ethical commitments, whether for yourself or your organization.

Obviously we had a lot of questions around this fascinating concept and so we sat down with Samantha and Ciara, the visionary creators of the Designer’s Oath, to delve into the complexities of ethical design, explore strategies for staying true to our values, and discover how organizations can cultivate a culture of ethical responsibility.

In your discussions around the Designer’s Oath, what ethical dilemmas have you encountered that seem particularly challenging for UX designers today? How can we navigate these complexities while still staying true to our values?

Samantha: We’ve found that many designers want to incorporate ethics into their work but don’t know where to start. The first challenge they face is discovering and articulating their own values. Then, designers need to figure out how to communicate those personal values to their team and facilitate a conversation about their team’s shared values. This constructive conversation is the foundation upon which the team will make decisions about how their shared values will be embodied in their collective work.

The most important thing for designers to do when they begin exploring how to incorporate ethics into their work is to articulate their personal values. If we can’t explain what we stand for and how that will be embodied in the context of our work, then we won’t be able to collaborate with our teams to identify a common set of shared values we can all act on. We need to start with self reflection.  

One way designers can discover and articulate their values is to consider their work as a step towards one of many possible futures. You can ask yourself, “How does the decision I’m making today bring us closer to a specific kind of future? Of all the futures my work could move us towards, what is the preferred future I want to help realize? Am I currently moving us closer to or further away from my preferred future?” Articulating a preferred future allows us to work backwards tracing the thread connecting our design decisions today to the reality we will all experience tomorrow.

Designers also need to be aware of the business models in which our work operates. These business models either directly benefit from or are at odds with our values. Very few are neutral. It is difficult for designers to make an impact if the values you are trying to embody are not aligned with the business model in which you work.

Ciara: In our initial research over a decade ago, we found that small design groups have been exploring ethics in design through manifestos like First Things First in 1964 where Ken Garland focused on the responsibilities of designers working in advertising. In 2007, Valerie Casey’s Designer’s Accord project brought designers, educators and business leaders together to define guidelines around environmental sustainability in design. And, in 2009 David Berman wrote the Do Good Pledge to encourage graphic designers to pledge ten percent of their professional time to ‘doing good’ while simultaneously adhering to moral codes in their work. 

Unlike these existing manifestos, pledges and projects, we were interested in how designers might collaboratively create ethical guidelines for specific project engagements and teams. We set out to curate a singular oath and over time the objective shifted to facilitate these conversations around collaborative ethics.

A glimpse at the history and timeline of the Designer’s Oath and it’s evolution: 

1. Interaction Design Association Boston – Ethics of Gamification in Service Design Workshop and Discussion (2014)
   
2. SDN: Touchpoints Magazine Article – A Designer’s Oath: Collaboratively Designing a Code of Ethics for Design (2015)
   
3. HxR (Healthcare Refactored) 2015: Designer’s Oath Lunch & Learn 
   
4. Sustainable UX 2016: Designer’s Oath
   
5. BarnRaise: Design Hackathon at Institute of Design in Chicago (October 2015)
   
6. IxDA 2016: Ethics Question Workshop/ Playtest (2016)
   
7. SmashingMag: Designing Ethics: Shifting Ethical Understanding in Design (2017)
   
8. IIT: BioMechanical Engineering Ethics Workshop (2018)
   
9. Bloomsbury Academic: Designing Ethics Tools for Self-Reflection, Collaboration, and Facilitation (2020)

Throughout our experiences and conversations, we learned that general ethics for design cannot be created by a single entity, ethics are dynamic, and ethics require care and attention from every member of a team to stay alive and relevant.

We found that ethics weren’t commonly discussed or taught in design programs and therefore not being translated into practice by emerging designers. There were only a handful of tools within the professional practice that helped designers define their individual ethical values or helped facilitate ethical discussions between designers, their teams and organizations at the time. And because of this, the biggest challenge really becomes having these tough conversations and finding alignment between a designer’s personal values and the values of the project team or organization. 

We can navigate these complexities while still staying true to our values by normalizing these conversations and ensuring there are tools and resources easily accessible to help people define their own individual values, facilitate these conversations and find alignment of values within a team, project, or organization. And to set the next generations of designers up for success, it is crucial for ethics in design to be discussed in school, become a part of a student’s curriculum and for students to have exposure to guest lecturers who are experiencing and overcoming any challenges around ethics within their design practice.  

Creativity often thrives on freedom, but ethical responsibilities can sometimes feel like constraints. How do you both reconcile these two aspects in your own work? Can you share any strategies or mindsets that help maintain that balance?

Samantha: I am most creative when I am working within constraints. Constraints provide a structure in which creativity can thrive. Clearly defined ethics serve as a north star for teams inspiring us to question familiar tasks and see opportunities that were previously hidden. This north star challenges us to ask how every part of the design process can be aligned with our values and ethics. 

In my own work, I’ve explored how equity and the belief that people experiencing a problem are best equipped to solve it can transform my approach to design. This has led me to challenge some of the inequitable foundations of design thinking and redesign my approach to research, co-creation, and design strategy to emphasize sharing power with the people who are experiencing the problem. I’ve realized that we cannot hope to create an ethical outcome without crafting an ethical process to get us there. This “constraint” has led to some of the most creative work of my career.

Ciara: Designing for people, animals or our environment has its own set of constraints depending on the problem you are trying to solve. I see ethics as just another constraint. Instead of seeing constraints as a blocker to creativity, I use individual constraints as lenses to help me think big or dare I say weird, conceptual ideas at the beginning of the ideation process. In game design it is common to use lenses as part of the design process to generate new, fresh ideas. The reconciliation happens in the narrowing of ideas and alignment between the ideas and the goals and needs of the problem space and those you are designing for. 

For organizations looking to adopt the Designer’s Oath, what practical steps would you recommend they take to embed these principles into their culture and workflows?

Samantha: We recommend that organizations encourage each designer as well as the members of their interdisciplinary teams to reflect on and articulate their own individual values. To start defining your values, imagine the future that you’re trying to bring about with your work – it’s OK to go blue-skies here or even a little sci-fi depending on your preferred future! What are some of the core beliefs that are embodied by the people and systems in that future? By identifying the foundational values in the future you’re working towards, you can find ways to start infusing those values into your decisions today. 

Designers can also use the original Designer’s Oath fill-in-the-blank template to jump start thinking about your values. Feel free to change up which words are blank to make the structure work for you!

Ciara: The Designer’s Oath has evolved throughout the years and through the many conversations we have had with designers, we’ve learned that it’s not a one size fits all approach. We originally revisited and modified the hippocratic oath to make it more relevant to designers which designers could adopt and uphold in their practice. We also designed a template designers can use to define and communicate their individual ethical values through both words and visuals. As part of the initial project, we gave participants one of five sections of the oath with the goal of creating one comprehensive oath. We realized the individual oaths were more powerful on their own which then led us to focus on individuals defining their own values as the first step so they could be used to help drive ethical conversations and alignment within teams and organizations. 

In our most recent publication Designing Ethics Tools for Self-Reflection, Collaboration, and Facilitation, we developed a Framework for Ethical Alignment as an easy reference when defining values – it starts with individual self-reflection, then team based collaboration, and finally organizational facilitation. 

The first phase is all about individual self-reflection and taking the opportunity to define and articulate one’s personal ethical values. 

The second phase is for team based collaboration where individuals within a team can share and discuss their individual ethical values with each other and find alignment between those values and the work they are doing. 

The third phase is organizational facilitation to align the values of teams throughout the business with the goals, initiatives and decisions of the work being done. 

We encourage individuals, teams, companies and educational institutions to glean inspiration from the work we have done with the Designer’s Oath and use it as a starting point to collaboratively define tools or systems that work best for them.

The Designer’s Oath emphasizes the ethical responsibilities of designers, yet many UX designers find themselves in positions where business owners prioritize profits, sales, and growth over ethical considerations. Given this dynamic, do you think there should be a corresponding ‘Oath for Business Owners’ that encourages them to consider the ethical implications of their decisions within a capitalist framework? How can we foster a culture where business leaders are equally accountable for promoting sustainability and ethical practices alongside traditional business objectives?

Samantha: Ethical guidelines need to be defined collaboratively if they are going to drive decision-making in interdisciplinary teams. Teams need to align on their shared ethical guidelines together and discuss how those ethics will be embodied in their decisions. Without this discussion and co-creation, ethical guidelines will gather dust on a shelf rather than play a key role in difficult decision-making. Your team needs to feel like these were a part of crafting these guidelines, that the group owns and will stand behind those guidelines, and that these guidelines are relevant to your specific context.

The best ethical guidelines help you choose a path forward when faced with a difficult decision. This need for ownership and relevance is the reason that having a single code for all designers doesn’t work. It’s also the reason why having a different code for each role in an interdisciplinary team doesn’t work.

Designers’ work is inherently collaborative, so having a code that guides only designers’ actions isn’t enough to change the collaborative output of our  teams. Designers cannot drive ethical decision-making on our own. Our decisions about ethics need to be made collaboratively if they are going to lead to ethical outcomes. Designers need to facilitate discussion and alignment about ethics with our teams in the same way that we facilitate discussion and alignment about other critical decisions in the design process.

Ciara: Designers are often the ones advocating for the people we are designing for which can be daunting if there isn’t a safe space for conversations around ethical alignment throughout the organization.I believe everyone should be equally accountable. I don’t think this means individual oaths for different roles such as designers, business, or engineers are necessary, but I do think the different roles, their values and goals need to be articulated and considered so that everyone has a common understanding of how their decisions might make a negative or positive impact.

This will drive awareness internally and give key teams a seat at the table to discuss and find ethical alignment. To take it a step further, I think there is an opportunity to have internal groups or committees dedicated to creating an inclusive space for these conversations across teams, departments and leadership.

With technology evolving rapidly, especially with AI becoming more prevalent in design, how do you see this affecting the ethical considerations outlined in the Designer’s Oath? Are there specific challenges or opportunities that arise from this intersection?

Samantha: I view AI as the latest new technology in a long line of new technologies. Every emerging technology has the opportunity to create both benefit and harm. There is nothing inherently ethical or unethical about a technology. The impact a technology has is determined by how humans choose to utilize it. Our role as designers will be the same as it has been with every new technology. We will advocate for and help users make informed decisions about when, how, and why to use AI to best achieve their goals as it becomes integrated into the products, services, and experiences we design. This includes helping users understand and weigh any potential unintended outcomes along with the benefits. 

In order to play this role, designers need to familiarize themselves with the technology behind AI. We need to become AI-literate to understand the many potential futures this new technology may lead us towards. This will allow us to identify and make design decisions that will move us towards a preferred future in line with our values.

Ciara: The concept of the Designer’s Oath can be applied to anything as we have had the opportunity to do throughout our time working on this project and collaborating with so many people from different backgrounds. The ethical considerations will be unique to the problem space, especially with emerging technology because we are often learning about the capabilities of the technology while designing. Ethics are dynamic and should be evolving with change therefore it’s important that any initial ethical guidelines that have been defined are revisited with any new discoveries. 

Would you like to share any stories where the impact of the Designer’s Oath has fostered positive social change or made a difference in a community or specific project?

Samantha & Ciara:  We haven’t been measuring the impact of the Designer’s Oath with any concrete data. That being said, we have received a positive response from our talks, workshops, publications and features, and are grateful for the conversations these opportunities have sparked throughout the years. It’s been inspiring to hear how other designers are facilitating ethical conversations within their organizations or educational institutions using the Designer’s Oath, gleaning inspiration from it, or designing their own tools.

Your game, “Ethics Quest,” is a very creative approach to tackling these difficult conversations on ethics! Could you tell us more about this game – how you came up with the idea of using gamification, and what has been the response from participants when they engage in this playful exploration of ethics?

Samantha: Talking about ethics can be difficult. We’ve learned that many designers want to incorporate ethics into their work but don’t know how to start. Game design can be a powerful tool to lower the barrier to these conversations. Designers can create a safe space for participants to engage with new ideas and have uncomfortable conversations by utilizing game design techniques. By emphasizing a playful approach through unlocks, leveling up, and role-playing and other game mechanics designers can reduce discomfort, build empathy between participants, provide structure, and create meaningful new ways for participants to engage with their teammates.

We incorporated these insights and techniques into Ethics Quest, a table top role-playing game for teams to collaboratively design their ethical guidelines. Ciara and I designed Ethics Quest in 2017 and have been playtesting it with diverse groups to refine the game. Keep an eye out for more announcements about Ethics Quest soon!

Ciara: Games are a powerful tool – for storytelling, community, motivation, etc. I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the emotional attachment between a player and their avatar which led me to consider how we might take the positive attributes of digital games – community, collaboration, education, and knowledge sharing – and apply them to impact real world change. Samantha and I had the opportunity to apply game design combined with behavior change design to digital apps in healthcare, wellness and financial services. As the Designer’s Oath evolved to be more about conversations across multidisciplinary teams, a game seemed like a natural progression. 

Ethics Quest is a tabletop RPG (role playing game) designed to facilitate conversations within interdisciplinary teams around ethics. It helps people gain empathy and better understand the perspectives of other members of their team. The game helps people break out of their traditional mindsets and breaks down the barrier to tough ethical conversations.

Overall we have received positive feedback from participants who have played Ethics Quest – they are interested in the concept, enjoyed gameplay, and expressed feelings of empathy for other roles within the fictional project team. There is still more work to do and a little more game testing before we can produce a final version.

As we look toward the future, what changes do you anticipate in the way ethics are perceived and discussed within the design community over, let’s say, the next decade?

Samantha: As we continue to witness the worsening effects of climate change, I anticipate that designers will begin to more openly discuss the unique opportunities we have to mitigate these effects. I believe that more designers will begin to ask how they can use their design skills to create impact in line with their personal values. While we may create some of this impact through value-aligned decisions at our day jobs, I believe that much of the impact will come from supporting the organizations and nonprofits that are already working to bring about our preferred futures but do not yet have access to designers.

I have started putting this belief into action by volunteering “at the highest level of my licensure”. This means using the skills at which I am most highly trained (design research and strategy) to support the nonprofit Creature Conserve, whose mission is deeply aligned with my values. I sit on their board of directors and lead design research and strategy efforts that help them maximize their impact as they combine art with science to cultivate new pathways for wildlife conservation. Their mission also aligns closely with my preferred future.

We both envision a world where everyone works together to make saving species and their habitats more accessible, meaningful, and relevant for all people in order to create a healthier world. You can learn more about how Creature Conserve is leveraging design to support wildlife conservation in my recent Boston Design Week keynote, “Designing Better Problems: Research-Led Impact in the More-Than-Human World”.

As designers turn their focus to complex issues such as climate change and mass extinction, the need to work collaboratively will only grow. Collaboration will be required to solve these problems. We hope that designers continue to seek out and create more tools like The Designer’s Oath and Ethics Quest to make those conversations easier, more normalized, and more fruitful.

Ciara: We’ve already seen an increase in discussions around ethics in design – in professional practice and in educational settings. More tools are being designed and are being made accessible for designers to use and leverage within organizations.

We are in a time where designers are being called upon to help solve some pretty epic problems and have a desire to align their personal values and apply their skills to make a more meaningful impact in this world. 

I am in the process of transitioning from digital design to focus on environmental and wildlife conservation efforts. I have been attending local conservation conferences and programming in the desert while volunteering at local organizations to uncover opportunities for designers to collaborate on these initiatives. Conservationists are open to collaboration and receptive to new methods and cross-functional team structures to tackle the most pressing issues. Time is of the essence! With access to ever growing tools and conversations around ethics in design, there’s an opportunity for designers to lead the charge in facilitating ethical conversations and empowering people within their teams and organizations to have these conversations regularly.

Designer’s Oath Template Download