Should product design be ethical?
Thanks to repeated scandals, the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, and Netflix’s documentary “The Social Dilemma,” the public has become more aware of some of the ethical issues around AI, technology, and the use of data. There is a growing movement of developers, designers, and technologists who have become socially active and now encourage companies to rethink their business practices. In short, these people want companies to be more ethical.
I recently had the pleasure of speaking with Jonas Downey, a designer at Basecamp and co-creator of HelloWeather. Basecamp has a new email service called “Hey.” Unlike services such as Google’s Gmail, it focuses on privacy and includes ethical design concepts.