Shelter's Ethical Framework for Digital and Innovation
What are ethics?
Ethics are based on standards of right and wrong that dictate what humans should do, usually in terms of “rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues.” This covers:
refraining from wrong actions, such as theft, murder or fraud
human rights, such as the right to life and the right to privacy
virtues, such as honesty, compassion and loyalty
Applying ethics to our work – being ethical in our digital products and services – means:
deciding what we should do – what decisions are morally right or acceptable
explaining why we should do it – justifying our decision using language of values and principles
describing how we should do it – outlining an appropriate process for acting on the decision
Who is this framework for?
This framework is for anyone who is part of building or running digital services in Shelter. It sets out Shelter’s approach on building and maintaining anti-racist, ethical services.
As stated in Maya Goodwill’s Power Literacy: Towards a Socially Just, Decolonial & Democratic Design Process:
“Without a deeper understanding of systemic and social structures (such as norms, roles, rules, assumptions and beliefs) that uphold structural inequality and injustices, designers are likely to reproduce existing inequalities by keeping power concentrated in the hands of those that are already privileged.”
The framework outlined in this document aims to guide teams in how to understand these inequalities, and ethically develop products and services. It also offers an approach for teams to navigate functionality or product requests in an ethical manner
The framework is a set of principles and values that provide a solid foundation for safe and ethical practice in product and service development.
The Shelter ethical framework has three sections:
Product and services innovation toolkit
The Danish Design Centre offers five core principles to consider when designing digital solutions.
1. Put the human in the centre
If you only remember one thing about ethical digital design, it is to put humans at the centre. Sometimes the human can be forgotten when creating digital services. Remember that humans are not abstract people but living beings of flesh and blood - like yourself. And remember that not only your users but all those who may be affected by your digital product or service.
2. Avoid manipulating
Often, digital services are designed to help people by making decisions for them. But often, this help can undermine people’s ability to make decisions about their own lives. Take care to ensure that your solution does not manipulate people in a harmful way.
3. Make your technology understandable
Digital solutions are often complex and difficult for ordinary people to understand. You have a responsibility to make your digital service understandable and transparent. Users should be able to comprehend how the solutions work and affect their lives.
4. Avoid creating inequality
Digital design without thought for ethics can often perpetuate and reinforce existing inequalities in society. Always think about designing solutions that do not create more imbalances. Our services must be usable and understandable by anyone who wishes to use them, no matter their physical or cognitive ability - more information on this can be found in our accessibility guidelines.
5. Give users control
Digital solutions may help people and make their lives easier, but they must not leave people with a sense of losing control. Always make sure to design solutions that give people more and not less control.
The Danish Design Centre also provides three more detailed areas for product teams to consider.
Automation
Automation is a key component of many modern digital services. It can provide many benefits, such as reducing simple manual tasks to allow people to take on more complex work. However, it can also bring challenges to ethics.
When automating part of your digital service, you should consider three main areas:
The consequences if your automated system fails, including with worst case scenarios. As much as possible, avoid black box systems where you do not understand how the algorithms work.
Always try to design your systems in a way that doesn’t make people redundant but instead makes them better and happier at doing their jobs.
Make it obvious to users that they’re communicating with an automated system. Such as making your automated system more mechanical – preserving a robot voice and rigid robotic language. Your automated system should not mimic human behaviour.
Data
Data collection is a core part of how Shelter helps people and generates income. There are two key components to ethical data collection:
Only collect the data you need. Excessive data collection is illegal under GDPR, and is unethical, impractical, and risky. Large amounts of data increase the risk of data leaking outside Shelter. It also makes it more difficult for you to handle data on behalf of the user. When creating any form of data collection, ask yourself if you need each data point and why. Always try to remove a data point for users rather than adding a new one.
Ensure you have obtained user permission to collect and process their data. This may be for cookies to collect data, or data collection through a form. You have an ethical obligation to get permission in a way that is understandable to your users. If you cannot get informed permission from your users, do not collect data. If you do collect their data, help your users understand their rights regarding it.
Behavioural design
Digital design is most often about creating interfaces that are user-friendly and helpful for users. But many organisations have an interest in making users do things that are not to their benefit. For example, making users continue to subscribe to a service they do not use, buying more products than necessary, or perhaps saying yes to conditions that aren’t in their best interest. In these cases, design becomes manipulative design. Always design based on your users’ interests, and follow these three behavioural principles:
When designing, you should not only think about usability but also about user needs. Make sure the service you are building is defined by user insight and other forms of evidence rather than assumptions.
Ensure your service doesn’t manipulate someone into taking an action that isn’t to their benefit. Pay special attention to children and other vulnerable audiences who are particularly easy to manipulate
Do the hard work to make your service simple. Avoid long and complex texts as much as possible. Try to split information into smaller chunks and present it when relevant. This will help users to better understand the actions they are taking.
Guidance on inclusive ways of working
Product teams may find that changes are required to ways of working in order for inclusivity to truly be at the heart of their work. These four proposals for change should be reviewed by the team at the start of the work.
Consider if Shelter are the right people to deliver the work that has been proposed. Would a grassroots organisation be better placed to lead on this work with Shelter as the facilitator?
Transition from designer-as-hero to designer-as-host. Assess how Shelter can cede power to those that had lived experience of the problem space and how these groups can be meaningfully involved in the work. Both the privileged and marginalized should build collective responsibility and innovative solutions to solve problems. As stated by equityXdesign, those in privileged positions should not problem solve for those experiencing oppression:
Our current innovation conversation is exclusive, accessible only to the powerful and privileged… An equitable design process expects the privileged to trust and listen to the voices on the margins to identify the root causes of inequity and the ways they manifest. It positions the marginalized as leaders in the design process and experts in their experience, arming them with a process to solve their own problems.
Be self-aware of the lived experiences, backgrounds, and biases each person brings to the team. Create intentional pause points in the process to check for biases - the whole product team should be involved in this work and should strive to develop a psychologically safe space for honesty and openness.
Plan in appropriate time and resources for recruiting a diverse range of participants - plan the research as early on as possible and set expectations with the team about the appropriate timeline for this work
Ethics for working with people who have lived experience
The following is informed by the Equity Army Inclusion Principles and the Market Research Society code of conduct. For consistency in language, the term ‘participant’ is used to denote someone with lived experience who provides input to the design of the products and services we deliver.
Planning for research
Prioritise recruiting participants who are at risk of being most impacted by being excluded from using the product. Define and make use of different recruitment avenues to ensure participants are representative and diverse.
Take reasonable steps to assess, identify and consider the particular needs of vulnerable people involved in research activities. Put in place risk assessment strategies for both the participant and the researcher before research takes place.
Carrying out research
Researchers must have gained voluntary informed consent from the participant to be able to conduct research. Templates for consent forms can be found here.
Ensure the purpose of the research is communicated to participants in a transparent manner - one approach for this is offering the participant an information sheet that they can keep after the research has taken place
Provide appropriate compensation and incentives to research participants - take time to consider what kind of incentive or compensation would be valuable to that participant
Prioritize research participants’ emotional and physical safety over convenience, organizational goals, and budget. Ensure that individuals are not harmed or adversely affected by taking part in research. Follow Shelter’s safeguarding policies.
Keep in mind individual context by recognizing members of underrepresented communities as experts of their lived experiences
Think beyond the individual in problem-framing, considering cultural, social, economic, political, tech, institutional and systemic barriers
Disseminating findings
Share credit with communities and individuals whose ideas directly contribute to the final solution
Respect the confidentiality of information collected during research
Researchers must ensure the anonymity of participants is preserved unless they have given their informed consent for their details to be revealed or for attributable comments to be passed on.
Researchers should be particularly careful they do not inadvertently identify participants. For example, this may arise:
where sample sizes are very small (such as organisation and employee projects)
where data contains sufficient contextual information to permit identification (such as attributes or descriptions of participants)
where data can be matched with publicly available information (such as social media profiles)
and/or where data can be matched with other sources (such as transaction histories held by clients)When sharing research learnings via storytelling, ensure the participants know how their stories are being told. Involve them and include their voice in these narratives. Share the final research findings with participants and be open to their feedback.
When disseminated, research findings should be clearly and adequately supported by the data. Researchers must take reasonable action to ensure that findings from a project are not incorrectly or misleadingly presented.
Ensure the access, use, and collection of participants’ data complies with data privacy regulations. Destroy data when it’s no longer required or in line with the data protection approach outlined in the consent form.
Resources for teams
Tarot Cards of Tech - designed to help teams consider the impact of technology and reveal opportunities for creating positive change.
Ethical Explorer Pack - to help facilitate more responsible tech decisions and brainstorm positive solutions.
Design Ethically Toolkit - resources and workshop templates to help teams integrate ethical practices into their ways of working.