Anything in this world can be used for good or for harm. Technology, like fire, like money, like design itself, is neutral and reflects the intention of those who wield it. Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century, encouraged people to view technology as neither inherently good nor bad, but as a tool that can be chosen to elevate and used for good.
Just like the invention of the radio, satellites, the printing press, and the internet, AI can (and is being) harnessed not as distractions or empty noise, but as a tool for spreading light, knowledge, connection, and even saving lives, like these examples:
As designers, our responsibility is to take neutral tools—interfaces, products, and algorithms—and ensure they serve people with dignity, empathy, and purpose.
Why Talk About Ethical Design Now?
With the speed at which we receive and process information today, design has reached a tipping point. Impact is swift and BIG. With AI shaping decisions at scale and digital products embedding themselves in nearly every corner of our lives, the choices designers make ripple across society, psychology, and culture. InStephen Gates’ podcast, he explores this reality in a fantastic episode about ethical design {link to the episode.He uses the game PokĂ©mon Go as an example of unintended and severe consequences to what otherwise seemed like a fun, positive idea (that could even get people outside to exercise and socialize). Remember that craze? Players became so absorbed that they walked into traffic or put themselves at real physical risk.
You know how a kid (or adult) will respond to something they did wrong sometimes, “I didn’t mean it…” You also didn’t mean not to do it, because you didn’t stop to think about the possible outcome of your action. Ethical design means caring enough to consider the potential outcomes. And if we don’t anticipate those outcomes early, we end up having to do damage control after launch instead of preventing harm before it happens.
In a couple of paragraphs, we’ll discuss how to approach outcomes as a team and how a UX team can champion ethical design across all their collaborations with any team.
What Is Ethical Design?
So, what is ethical design? Ethical design is the practice of making moral and responsible choices throughout the design process to create products and services that benefit users and society without causing harm. It can be challenging to do this work because many people who hire designers still think they’re doing so, so we can ‘make things look pretty.’ More are understanding that it’s actually to make things work properly and better. So designers sometimes feel out of place having conversations about ethical design.
Ethical design encompasses accountability, inclusivity, transparency, and awareness of impact. It asks: Who benefits? Who might be excluded? What could go wrong? How could this be misused? And it forces us to design for well-being, not just for engagement or profit. As it turns out, ethical design is good for business. It builds trust and makes the world a much better place.
Key Principles of Ethical Design
Responsibility: Designers are accountable for the outcomes of their work, including unintended consequences.
Inclusivity: Products should serve diverse communities, not just a narrow user persona.
Transparency: Users deserve to understand how a product works and what data it collects.
Impact Assessment: Designers must consider social, psychological, and environmental effects, not just immediate goals.
User-Centricity: Add value and solve problems.
Avoiding Harm: Anticipate potential misuse, from addiction loops to discriminatory bias.
Collaboration: Bring in diverse voices to shape every product or experience.
Why Ethical Design Matters for Designers
Some of the biggest names in tech are, unfortunately, also the biggest offenders when it comes to unethical design. Many designers dream of working in these organizations, imagining they’ll be the ones to drive change from the inside. The reality is that too often, you end up a cog in a machine where scale and metrics outweigh people every time. Many have reported that they couldn’t move the needle even a fraction of a bit. Sometimes the most ethical choice you can make is to ‘save yourself’—to step out of the machine and put your energy where it will actually matter. That’s the power of ethical design: it gives you agency. It lets you decide where you’ll have the most impact. It’s the difference between designing to extract and designing to uplift. And when you commit to uplifting humanity, the effect flows both ways—you’ll feel it, too.
Bias in AI: Who’s Programming the Future?
AI is only as neutral as the humans who train it. Every dataset, every algorithm, every rule reflects the perspective of its programmers. And we all have bias. It’s shaped by where we were born, the culture we grew up in, how we were raised, what we were taught or not taught, our identities, our experiences, and the media we consume. These biases influence how we design, and when left unchecked, they get baked into AI systems that scale worldwide. We’ve already seen it: facial recognition software that fails on darker skin tones, hiring algorithms that discriminate against women, and content recommendation engines that amplify extremism.
As designers, the first step is to acknowledge that we have biases. Once we identify our blind spots, we can design intentionally to minimize harm. (Some ways we can do that are by diversifying the voices at the table, testing with edge cases, and asking questions like ‘who could this fail?’
Frameworks and Standards for Ethical Design
Google’s AI Principles emphasize responsibility, safety, transparency, and accountability. They apply reviews and ethical checks before launching new AI tools, embedding ethics as part of the product lifecycle rather than an afterthought. Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is another framework that integrates human values directly into design phases, ensuring products are evaluated not just for usability but for alignment with societal values. Value-Based Engineering (VBE) goes further by treating ethical considerations as requirements. If a design causes more harm than good, it demands walking away, even at financial cost. These frameworks remind us: design is not neutral. It shapes behavior, signals values, and changes lives.
The Designer’s Code of Ethics
Just like doctors have a Hippocratic oath, many designers have argued for a designer’s code of ethics. Like doctors, we have the power to help or harm, and with that power comes the responsibility to protect, elevate, and design in ways that serve people, not exploit them.
Designers owe clients and users not just execution but counsel, which sometimes means pushing back, raising concerns, or even refusing harmful work. To practice ethical design, we must see ourselves not just as service providers but as advocates for people. (‘Edge cases’ are people, too!)
Actionable Practices for Ethical Teams
In his podcast episode, Stephen Gates outlines five powerful actions every creative team can take:
- Pre-mortems: Before writing code, brainstorm as a team on how what you’re building could possibly fail ethically. In other words, ask yourselves, “What are the worst things that this feature/product could make happen?”
- Break silos: Ensure teams understand the entire user journey, not just their piece.
- User reality checks: Watch real people use the product in an unscripted setting.
- Fresh eyes: Bring in outsiders to uncover blind spots.
- Post-mortems: After launch, revisit real-world consequences, not just performance metrics. These aren’t abstract values—they’re practical steps. And they reinforce the truth: you can’t QA for ethics after launch.
Ecommerce: Ethical Selling Is for real capitalists
Good capitalism creates loyal customers and sustainable revenue. Badly designed or deceptive e-commerce experiences do the opposite: they spike returns, frustrate customers, and drive people very quickly to your competitors.
The tricky part is that manipulative tactics can work well in the short term. Oversized ‘Add to Cart’ buttons, forced redirects, sneaky subscriptions, and countdown timers all drive impulse sales. But they erode trust. And once trust is gone, so is your customer. In the long run, those short-term wins are really long-term losses.
Why Ethical Design Builds Better Business
Ethical design builds trust. It reduces churn by removing friction, It saves development costs by preventing rework. It strengthens culture by aligning teams around empathy and clarity. And it positions businesses as principled leaders in a marketplace where users are increasingly savvy about manipulation. Today, customers are quick to call out dark patterns. They reward transparency and inclusivity. Companies that embed ethics into design future-proof their reputation.
Final Thoughts
So, what is ethical design? Ethical design is the intentional practice of designing with foresight and responsibility. It’s seeing technology and design as neutral tools, and choosing to use them for good. Ethical designers acknowledge our biases, ask ourselves and others tough questions, and sometimes make the difficult decision to walk away. If your company claims to care about ethics, look for proof: budget, authority, accountability. Choosing ethical design now is acknowledging that design is powerful and we are here to help leave the world a little better
than it was when we found it.
Good design doesn’t happen by accident. Ready to make something great? Reach out! We’re here for it, and as always, we’ll be here all day.
