HCID 505 DESIGN ETHICS

Design solutions often require us to confront fundamental ethical issues. Ethical design involves considering the values of all involved parties, such as designers, corporate employers, intended users, and unintended users. Ethical design involves applying values, derived from theory, in every stage of the design process.

In this course, the student will examine a range of ethical theories, from the classical Western canon to feminist and Confucian theories, in order to analyze designs in fields from mobile apps to architecture, from military technologies to financial products, and will examine in depth the ethical challenges of AI. The student will perform in-depth ethical analyses, applying theories of their choice to better understand design decisions in their fields of interest, and will participate actively in weekly discussions, applying ethical theory to existing and future design solutions.