As designers we often navigate through heavy seas of uncertainty and complexity in a continuous zooming from systems to pixels. In this context, design decisions could impact on a scale that goes from people to society. In Tangible we asked ourselves what we could do for leading conversations within our team and with stakeholders about those implications so that both are aware of threats or blind spots that could impact our designs. The Ethical Design Compass is a lightweight tool that we designed for enabling teams to map, monitor and take in charge any issue that we can steer such as inclusion, accessibility, agency, trust and safety.

2. Manuele Forcucci
Project Manager &
Experience Designer
@autobahn36
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Francesco Paradiso
UI designer
@FrankParadiso

4. The designer’s share
The real problem
Victor Papanek
Design for the Real World
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

5. The designer […] shares responsibility for nearly all of
our products and tools and hence nearly of all our
environmental mistakes. He is responsible writer
through bad design or by default: by having thrown
away his responsible creative abilities, by “not getting
involved” or by “muddling through”.
Victor Papanek, Design for the Real World (1972)
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

6. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
As a powerful social transformation tool,
design is political and every design decision
(more or less intentional) is applied politics

7. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

8. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

9. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

10. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

11. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Ethical dilemmas comes up when
things comes down

12. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

13. “Codes are better in censuring bad behaviors than
inspiring good ones”.
Cennydd Bowles - Future Ethics (2018)
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

14. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Today’s values and principles are the
vision of the future we strive to build

15. Design is an act that intrinsically lives in the future
— Sami Niemelä
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

16. Future
Present
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

17. Possibile
a
a
Futures
Present
Probable
Preferible
P
l
ausible
P
l
ausible
Possible
Possible
Fonte: Specu
l
ative Everything, di A- Dunne e F. Raby
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

18. Possibile
a
a
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Futures
Present
Probable
Preferible
P
l
ausible
P
l
ausible
Possible
Possible

19. Possibile
a
a
Futures
Present
Probable
Preferible
P
l
ausible
P
l
ausible
Possible
Possible
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

20. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
We see and understand all the
consequences of what we design only
when they happen

21. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
How can we predict future
impacts in the present?

22. Possibile
a
a
Futures
Present
Probable
Preferible
P
l
ausible
P
l
ausible
Possible
Possible
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

23. How can we define an ethical compass
that leads decisions while designing?
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

25. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
We built a framework to provoke
conversations and align teams and
stakeholders around shared purpose

26. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Self-actualization
Esteem
Love and belonging
Safety
Physiological

27. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Agency
Trust
Inclusion
Security
Accessibility & Ergonomics

28. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Accessibility & Ergonomics
Digital and physical barriers, physical ergonomics of
services, impact on sleep and health

29. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Accessibility & Ergonomics
Accessibility
Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/dominos-supreme-court.html

30. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Accessibility & Ergonomics
Ergonomics

31. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Security
Privacy, data requests,
l
ack of c
l
arity on data
management and processing policies, profiling and
intrusive inferences

32. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Security
Data request

33. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Security
Data and inferences
Source: https://abookapart.com/products/design-for-real-life

34. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Security
AI e ML
Source: Technically Wrong (Sara Wachter-Boettcher)

35. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Inclusion
Non-respect of identity, partial or exclusive
representation and
l
anguages, reinforcement of bias and
stereotypes, repercussions and social dynamics

36. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Inclusion
Stereotype
Source: https://rep.repubblica.it/pwa/commento/2020/06/03...

37. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Inclusion
Rethinking personas
Source: https://dribbble.com/shots/4862676-User-Persona-UX

38. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Inclusion
Should we call these “edge cases”?
Source: https://dribbble.com/shots/15927405-Food-Delivery-App-Design-full
• Mom with a baby in her arms
• User over 60
• Users without Paypal

39. “I have a different word: normalizing. I’m normalizing
TV. I am making TV look like the world looks. Women,
people of color, LGBTQ people equal WAY more than
50% of the popu
l
ation. Which means it ain’t out of the
ordinary. I am making the world of television look
NORMAL.”
Shoda Rhimes - Technically Wrong (Sara Wachter-Boettcher )
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

40. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Trust
Non-transparency of information, dark patterns,
persuasion and manipu
l
ation, poor sense of
trustworthiness

41. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Trust
Dark pattern

42. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Trust
Dark pattern

43. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Agency
Reduced ability to act on the system,
l
ack of feedback
and control, decisions taken instead of the user by AI and
algorithms

44. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Agency
AI e bias
Source: https://algorithmwatch.org/en/google-vision-racism/

45. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Agency
AI e decisione making
Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-jobs-automation-insight...

46. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Humane
Community
Society
Environment

47. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
From chaos to…
Our framework is a journey made up of steps leading to
an end that cannot always be determined.

48. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
From chaos to…

49. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Warm up

50. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Warm up
We a needed a trigger to enable conversations

51. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Worst case scenario selection

52. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Worst case scenario resolution
How can we prevent or solve worst-case scenarios?

53. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Manifesto / Action p
l
an

54. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Action p
l
an
Solution — Owner — Measure — First step

55. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Manifesto
Make explicit the principles concerning the ethics

56. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Remix it

57. Questions, before solutions
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

58. Agreement on principles for the
future
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

59. Responsibility in todays’ actions
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

60. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
It’s a compass, not a map

61. A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome
Our p
l
an:
• a framework to discuss the implications of
innovation
• a workshop to engage clients and define the
ethical compass of the project
• practices and tools to guide the journey

62. Nicolò Volpato
Manuele Forcucci
Giulia Cavinato
Francesco Paradiso
Giada Cantoni
Team
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome

63. Thank you!
Any questions?
Manuele Forcucci
Project Manager &
Experience Designer
manuele.forcucci@tangible.is
Francesco Paradiso
UI Designer
francesco.paradiso@tangible.is
A compass for leading teams and stakeholders towards a responsible design
World Usability Day 2021 - Rome