Work

Engaging with ethics in the HCI design process: A study of ethical design practice in different work contexts

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: As technology increasingly permeates daily life, HCI designers must move beyond acknowledging the ethical impacts of the outcomes of their designs to engaging with ethics throughout the design process. While previous research has explored theoretical perspectives and corporate practices, less is known about how ethics is understood and enacted across different professional contexts. This paper investigates how 12 HCI designers from academia, corporate, and applied research settings understand and engage with ethics in their work. Through qualitative interviews, we examined designers’ perspectives on ethics and ethics in the design process, the challenges they face, and the strategies they apply in practice. We found that designers across contexts struggle to define ethics and feel unprepared to address it. They discuss ethics in relation to design practice, and despite shared concerns, our findings show differences among work contexts. Participants are a central concern, with non-corporate designers adopting more formal approaches and deeper participant engagement. Corporate designers take more practical approaches, aligning ethics with company goals. Interviewees described strategies to address ethical challenges, offering insights into how ethics is applied in practice, where applied research designers reflect elements of both academic and corporate settings, combining strategies from each. Our findings also highlight a mismatch between formal ethical approval processes and the evolving nature of design work, where they fall short of supporting ongoing ethical reflection. Our findings offer insight into ethics in diverse HCI contexts and inform future approaches to ethics in HCI design, where we argue for more flexible, work context-specific approaches. • Designers struggle to define ethics and feel unprepared to handle ethical issues. • Ethics in practice differs across academia, applied research, and corporate settings. • Non-corporate designers show deeper engagement with ethics and participants. • Corporate designers take a practical, company-driven approach to ethics. • Findings call for flexible, context-specific tools for ethical HCI design practice.

Source: International Journal of Human-Computer Studies

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhcs.2025.103634

Authors: Leonor Costa Tejo, Paula Alexandra Silva

Institution: University of Coimbra

Language: English

Topic: Innovative Human-Technology Interaction

Subfield: Human-Computer Interaction

Field: Computer Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,510

Funder: Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia