Are you designing for the user’s values - or your own?The future of design will be the negotiation between multiple moral worlds.Photo by Vince Fleming on UnsplashIt’s not a stretch to suggest that as technology becomes more omnipresent, the designer’s role will shift from “hands-on” making to shaping how humanity interacts with machines. We will evolve from designing screens to defining moral guardrails. And like any profession with the power to influence lives - doctors, lawyers, policymakers - designers will need a strong foundation in ethics.This is the core reason I developed the Five Pillars of Ethical Interface Design - an evolving framework I actively invite other designers to engage with and offer feedback on. The pillars are meant to push designers to confront the moral weight of their decisions rather than hide behind aesthetics, heuristics, or empathy theater.The truth is designers rarely operate from a neutral position. Even when they insist they’re “designing for the user,” their own assumptions, values, and biases inevitably slip into the work - usually without them noticing.This is mainly due to what can be described as ethical misalignment - the gap between the user values designers think they’re honoring and the internal values that actually shape their decisions.One of the main drivers of this misalignment is the industry’s habit of treating empathy as a stand-in for values - and sometimes as permission to slip personal priorities into the work.Designers st
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https://uxdesign.cc/are-you-designing-for-the-users-values-or-your-own-11ee5268dff2?source=rss----138adf9c44c---4