Practitioner Trajectories of Engagement with Ethics-Focused Method Creation

TL;DR

This study explores how design and technology practitioners develop personalized ethics-focused action plans through co-design workshops, revealing roles, processes, and the evolution of ethical support tools in real-world practice.

Contribution

It introduces a novel co-design approach for creating personalized ethics support tools and analyzes practitioners' roles and processes in developing these plans.

Findings

Practitioners employ diverse roles and process moves in creating ethics-focused plans.

The evolution of action plans reflects practitioners' ethical dilemmas and support needs.

Resonance of the plan with practitioners enhances ethical awareness and decision-making.

Abstract

Design and technology practitioners are increasingly aware of the ethical impact of their work practices, desiring tools to support their ethical awareness across a range of contexts. In this paper, we report on findings from a series of co-design workshops with technology and design practitioners that supported their creation of a bespoke ethics-focused action plan. Using a qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis approach, we identified a range of roles and process moves that practitioners employed and illustrate the interplay of these elements of practitioners' instrumental judgment through a series of three cases, which includes evolution of the action plan itself, the ethical dilemmas or areas of support the action plan was intended to support, and how the action plan represents resonance for the practitioner that created it. We conclude with implications for supporting ethics in socio-technical practice and opportunities for the further development of ethics-focused methods that are resonant with the realities of practice.