[Sigia-l] Are your intensions good/

[Christopher Fahey]

Dan Saffer wrote:
> The fundamental ethical baseline for interaction designers 
> should be the quality of the interactions engendered by the 
> design between people, both from the person initiating the 
> interaction (the email sender, say) and the person receiving it.

While I agree that the user experience is fundamental to UXD, I don't agree
that there is a *single* baseline for UXD ethics. If your design thwarts
user objectives but wholly supports the company's business objectives, then
you can still still possibly consider yourself an ethical UX designer. For
example, if your company has decided that it's in their financial best
interest to build an Internet Explorer-only web site, then you simply have
to work within that user-unfriendly constraint. If your company makes crazy
amounts of money by putting up full-screen ads before the user is permitted
to view content, then you have to work within that unpleasant constraint. 

User advocacy is great, but the business's objectives are often just as
important, sometimes more so. I'd hate to see our field evolve some kind of
code of ethics where we are expected to pledge undying advocacy for the
user's experience even if it means fighting the marketing or tech
departments on issues where, in the bigger business picture, they may be
correct. This not the adversarial system of criminal law where the
deliberate hostile conflict of positions is meant to produce the best
result. In business we all have to work together to make our products
successful.

-Cf

Christopher Fahey
____________________________
Behavior
http://www.behaviordesign.com
212.532.4002 x203
646.338.4002 mobile