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The Ethics of User-Centered Design: From Minor Dilemmas to Life or Death The practice of user-centered design (UCD) involves many ethical trade-offs. Some ethical issues are obvious, such as protecting our participants from physical or mental harm. Other ethical issues, like the language we use to present results to management (how do we slant the results to highlight what we feel is critical to the success of a product?), the choice of tasks for a test, the extent to which we prompt participants in a lab study, and the degree to which we tell our clients about the limitations of our research methods, confront us nearly every day. In this session I present a taxonomy of ethical issues that confront UCD practitioners, discuss both common and extraordinary ethical scenarios, and provide some heuristics for making trade-offs when you find yourself in the throes of ethical dilemmas. Speaker: Chauncey E. Wilson is a Senior User Experience Consultant and Adjunct Professor in the Human Factors and Information Design Program at Bentley College. He is currently writing a book on HCI methods. Before starting work on his book, Chauncey spent two years as the Director of the Bentley College Design and Usability Testing Center. Chauncey has also been a product line development manager at BMC Software, Inc. and an HCI architect at IDX Corporation, FTP Software, Dun & Bradstreet Software, Human Factors International, Cisco, and Digital Equipment Corporation. Chauncey co-authored chapters on usability engineering, ROI, user-centered design, and criminal victimization. He has presented often at UPA, STC, and CHI conferences and is a member of UPA, STC, HFES, and IEEE. Chauncey wrote an early draft of the proposed Code of Conduct for the UPA and has presented often on the myriad ethical issues faced by usability practitioners. Comments about the Conference:"I enjoyed the conference and liked that you had a room where people could mingle and chat. I wish that a few more folks from outside had come, but this fall was just filled with conferences and courses and such. We had some trouble getting people to some of our sessions here in Boston . I had to miss the lunches (the first one because of a late bus and the second because of a con call) so I can't comment on those. Excellent work by you all."
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Contact Us Usability & Accessibility Center Co-sponsored by the Office of the Provost of Michigan State University, University Outreach & Engagement, and the Michigan Chapter of the Usability Professionals' Association |
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