"We will evolve from designing screens to defining moral guardrails. And like any profession with the power to influence lives - doctors, lawyers, policymakers - designers will need a strong foundation in ethics. This is the core reason I developed the Five Pillars of Ethical Interface Design - an evolving framework I actively invite other designers to engage with and offer feedback on."
"The truth is designers rarely operate from a neutral position. Even when they insist they're "designing for the user," their own assumptions, values, and biases inevitably slip into the work - usually without them noticing. This is mainly due to what can be described as ethical misalignment - the gap between the user values designers think they're honoring and the internal values that actually shape their decisions."
Technology's ubiquity will move designers from hands-on making to shaping human-machine interactions and defining moral guardrails. Designers need a strong foundation in ethics comparable to professions that influence lives. A Five Pillars of Ethical Interface Design framework encourages confronting moral weight rather than hiding behind aesthetics, heuristics, or performative empathy. Designers rarely operate neutrally because assumptions, values, and biases slip into work, often unnoticed. Ethical misalignment occurs when perceived user values diverge from internal priorities guiding decisions. Treating empathy as a substitute for values enables projection and premature assumptions. Observing behavior and imagining internal states is unreliable without rigorous research.
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