Morten Rand-Hendriksen Interview - On Bringing Ethics Into Web Design (#WCEU Series)

Heya, everyone! It’s time for the second interview from our #WCEU series. If you missed our first  interview with Hajj Flemings, be sure to check it out when you get a chance. Today, we’re sharing an insightful interview with Morten Rand-Hendriksen about ethics in web design.If you missed our other interviews, you can catch them all in their  dedicated category.For the first time, Themeisle was an official  WordCamp Europe media partner, which gave us a great opportunity to catch up with some of the conferences many interesting speakers.If you are familiar with WordCamps, then you have seen a Morten Rand-Hendriksen speech. Not only is he a great WordPress speaker and contributor, he remains a much-loved teacher and instructor from LinkedIn, Lynda.com, and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He also finds time to regularly publish articles and books on web design, web standards, design, and UX. He has also been known to dabble in philosophy.In this interview, Morten shares his insights on ethics and web design. Ethics in tech is a hot-button issue. As a variety of platforms, business strategies, and networks mature, we are seeing some negative impacts bleed into public life, most notably in fake ads during elections, fake stories, wild rumors, and more. It is in this context that Morten developed his ethical framework for web design.Not a web designer? Dont go anywhere just yet. Youll still find some interesting nuggets in this interview, for sure!Because this interview was originally a video, weve slightly edited the text version for clarity and brevity. If you want to see the original videos, though, you can click the embedded Tweet to the right. Make sure to click to see the full thread of videos, as the embedded Tweet only shows Mortens answer to the first question.Now that the Morten Rand-Hendriksen interview is Twitter limit friendly we posting it in a single thread.Question 1: What do you mean by ethical web design and how is it d ifferent from user centered design? #WCEU pic.twitter.com/jsdxVlq9cY ThemeIsle (@ThemeIsle) June 16, 2018 A lot of the decisions that were made early on about how we do things, and the kind of services we provide, over time have turned out to be really bad decisions that have then piled on top of one another and created these huge problems. So, what youre seeing with social media right now where the way people behave on social media, or the way social media makes people behave actually alters people and alters their behavior and alters the society they live in. And, its all done to get people to click on ads. If we thought about that in the beginning, we wouldnt have done it that way.It turns out that a lot of people in the beginning were thinking about that and kept saying You know if you do this then bad stuff is going to happen but then everyone was like Oh who cares about that? Its not that important. So ethics is that; its taking the time to think through what youre doing, why youre doing it, and how youre doing it, what you become by doing it and what happens when you do it.So that instead of saying Im doing this because I want some result youre actually thinking through the process. The other part of it is, because you were asking how this is different from user-centered design, I like to say that its capability-centered design.What is capability centered design? Morten Rand-Hendriksen: You think about what capabilities you either give or take away from the user in your design options. Instead of just thinking about what the user can do, you think about how does that change their life, what kind of future do they end up in if you do this.Its easy to say that ethics is a list of things. You say I do this thats why Im ethical. Ethics is actually two things: its a way of thinking about the world, but the second part is its a tool that you can use to evaluate your decisions. So, when youre talking to philosophers, like me, about ethics, what well say is tha t ethics is basically a craft for figuring out, or judging, the rightness or wrongness of an act,  and figuring out a way of doing that in an objective way.So, if you say you want to do something I can give you a judgement and it will be my moral judgement based on my personal ideas. Which is a very subjective thing. Ethics will then say is there a way we can make it so that everyone can agree to some sort of structure so that you say I want to do this and everyone would say yes or no, based on that.So, for web design or design in general what we need is a way of building ethical thinking into our process. So that ethics becomes a tool like user research, like personas and all those sorts of things that are a natural part of the process. You go through these steps think through the consequences of what you are doing and how they change the world, before you move forward, in a natural way because then it actually helps inform your designs instead of just being this blanket that you put on top of it to suppress creativity.How do you see ethical web design becoming a process inherent to web design? Morten Rand-Hendriksen: So, Ive been talking about ethics and web design for many years now, and its funny because when I first started talking about it it was this thing where people said: I dont want someone telling me what to do. People often see ethics as this moralistic way of thinking: That is wrong; you should never do that because then youre a bad person.The first step in the process, I realized, was helping people to understand what ethics is and what it isnt.It is not a list of right and wrong actions. Its a set of tools and skills you can use to evaluate every situation in the context. In certain circumstances, doing something can be the right choice; in certain circumstances it can be the wrong choice. And you have to decide how you figure out why; why is it the right choice here but the wrong choice here. Then you need to kind of roll back and say what a re the causes of this.So, what Ive come up with, and what Im presenting today, is this notion of to do this, instead of picking unethical theories, because there are all these different moral philosophies, instead of picking one, why dont we use all of them? Take the best parts of four different moral philosophies and put them in kind of a chain.Then say for a decision to be a good one that I feel comfortable with it needs to pass tests on all these philosophies because each of them will have holes in them. Like deontology is a great idea except there are all these use cases where it doesnt work, and its actually bad.Consequentialism is great except for all these things. But then if you say consequentialism has these problems which can be solved by deontology, which has these problems that can be solved by virtue ethics, which has these problems that can be solved by a capability approach, and you can stick them together. And you think that sounds crazy complicated, but its not. Its actually super simple because, well, you can make it as complicated as you want but it can start very simply.So, youre a designer and you want to do something where you want to start thinking ethically about your decisions. Heres what you do: Start by asking one question: Why am I doing this?And the answer is not I want to make money or I want to make money for my client. Its I want to grant the end user a capability to do something. So, that would be if youre making a shopping assistant and youre selling some products. Lets say youre selling a boat. The website youre building, you are granting the user the capability to find out enough information about this boat to know whether or not this is the right boat for them. And then that would inform your design, right? Because youre not just ramming information and saying You must buy this boat right now because it is the best boat ever.Youre more thinking What information will enable the user to make the right choice? Because this boa t might be the wrong choice and we need to make sure that people dont accidentally buy the wrong boat. Thats the first question.The second question we ask is Who do I become when I design this? What do I believe in? Am I comfortable with who I become by doing this? So when you make a decision youre not just thinking about the business itself youre thinking about what kind of standard you set by doing this. And, thats where all these codes of ethics and everything come in, thats virtue ethics. Like I aspire to be this and Im going to model that kind of behaviour in my design process.Then you say What are my duties of care? What am I responsible for? Who am I responsible for? What are my responsibilities? How do I uphold those responsibilities to other people? What kind of best practice am I establishing by doing this? If I do this, Im basically saying every other person in the situation should do the same thing; am I comfortable with everyone doing the same thing I just did?Finally, you say What are the consequences? If I put this into the world whats actually going to happen? The thing I want will happen but what else will happen. What happens to that person after they interact with this thing? Where do they go? Who do they interact with?Then by those four questions,   youve now used the capability approach, virtue ethics, deontology, duty ethics, and consequentialism. And if you can pass those four questions, then you have a better ethical framework. Theyre there to start the conversation. If youre an entry-level person in a company these four questions give you the tools you need to go to your boss and say Hey theres a problem, and heres why. Instead of saying I dont feel right, you can actually say theres a problem and this is why. You can walk through the process with them.Is it possible to ethical in the digital world when everyone is so easily offended? Morten Rand-Hendriksen: Theres no such thing as being 100% ethical. So, when youre talking about eth ics youre not actually talking about a definition of right and wrong. Theres no such thing as right and wrong decisions; its all grey. The question is in what direction does it lean and does it lean very heavily in one direction? Is that ok? What you often see is people will pass moral judgments on things; its tricky because you have two terms ethics and morals. Ethics is the science of morals, and morals are the foundation of ethics.So, the way it works is: you can think of morals as I may have a personal opinion about the something like the pruning of trees. I am against the pruning of trees; you should never cut trees because its bad for the trees, right? I can try to convince you that its a bad idea and I can try to convince the world that its a bad idea.Theres a very small chance that everyone will be Yeah, lets stop cutting tree right now. But, I can have that opinion and that is my moral judgment of the world. To make that into a system you have to then say can we create som e sort of process where we can objectively judge the cutting of trees. So that the majority of people feel comfortable with the process. And, in that not say you can or you cant but more say this is how we adjudicate whether or not its ok.So, we agree on a method and then the outcome depends on the people involved and it becomes more flexible. The danger is that you get subjective or moral relativism where each individual person can justify anything because it doesnt affect them. Thats the problem with a lot of these theories seen as individual theories. Consequentialism often leads to moral relativism because you can say I personally think that these views are irrelevant. Theyre not irrelevant you just decided that, but youre comfortable with that so thats fine. With duty ethics, you can say Well, I think everyone should have crypto miners on their websites. Other people will not agree with you, but you can say that and feel comfortable with it. What ethics does is it allows you to say No. Before you put those crypto miners on your site we have to have a conversation about this. And actually, map out what that does to the world. After that conversation, if you still want to put crypto miners on your site, youre welcome to. Fine, but everyone else is not going to do this, right. And, youre probably not going to get anyone on your site anymore because everyone is going to be aware of it. But, it gives you this way of talking through it.Its less about making a list of rights and wrongs than giving you the tools to help discuss it and figure out whats actually going on. And, why you feel strongly in one thing and someone else feels strongly in another. It opens the door to communication.Does ethics kill creativity? Morten Rand-Hendriksen: No, it doesnt. If you think about ethics as a moral blanket, then it does. You can imagine a government entity being like Red is wrong. No one designs with red anymore. Its bad for the eyes.  That  would kill creativity.   The moralistic blankets that exist usually come from a position where someone wants to impose their view of the world onto other people.The difference between that and ethics is that in ethics we use tools to help each individual judge the situation in an objective way.  And allow them to have a conversation with other people  to figure out what is this. Whereas the moralistic approach is to say we have defined whats right and wrong.When we talk about ethics people often say I dont want someone to tell me what to do. Thats not what it is. It is someone saying Heres a set of questions you need to answer and be comfortable with answering and have conversations around before you make this decision. Which is  totally different; its not the same thing at all. Once people realise that they see that when you start asking these questions you actually discover opportunities in your design that you previously didnt see.If you have a client and they want to do something; they want to get people to sign up to their newsletter. If you say What capabilities does this newsletter give them? What is the value to the end user in this newsletter? What does the end user get out of it? And, not only get out of it, but how does it make their life better and open the door to more things for them? Once, your client can answer that question their newsletter will be much easier for people to sign up to. It will be something they actually want, something they care about, something that does something to them.It changes the whole dynamic of the design process. From saying we are designing this to meet some company goal to we are designing this to help  our end user do something. And because were helping them, we benefit from that because theyll end up buying or interacting. So, it changes the conversation and actually opens the door. I think I said once that ethics in design helps us harness the power of the creative fires without burning down the house. What do you think about M ortens framework? If you find it valuable and want to share your own ideas or experiences, then be sure to leave your questions, thoughts, and suggestions in the comments section below. And while you’re at it, sharing this interview with your connections will help further the ethical debate and provide fuel for the conversation.Free guide5 Essential Tips to Speed Up Your WordPress SiteReduce your loading time by even 50-80% just by following simple tips.