Beyond Checklist Approaches to Ethics in Design

Abstract

Recent public discussions about technologies and social values have called for greater consideration of ethics during technology development and deployment, leading many organizations to create and promote compliance- or checklist-oriented toolkits and frameworks to address values and ethical issues. However, surfacing discussion and consideration of ethics in broader, more open-ended ways during the design process may help surface unique needs, social corner cases, or new or different understandings of values and ethics. This one-day workshop will convene CSCW researchers and practitioners to propose and consider new interventions and approaches to ethics in design that go beyond formal checklist- and compliance-oriented approaches. CSCW's rich set of methods when investigating values and ethics provides a starting point for developing new approaches and interventions. These may potentially include design activities, games and roleplaying, critical making, changes to work practice and organizational structure, or conducting empirical research. Our goal is to explore multiple and alternative forms of values and ethics interventions, rather than coming to a particular 'best' approach. This workshop aims to map out a space of interventions for values and ethics, propose new approaches and interventions, and craft an agenda for experimenting with and evaluating new interventions.