Designing for Ethical Products, Avoiding the Unintended
You want to create a product that will change the world, but what happens if it actually does? How will it impact the way that humans behave? How our democracy works? Will your user’s data be hacked? Will millions of people lose their jobs? We’ve spent the last 20 years putting nearly every aspect of human infrastructure on distributed servers and digital displays. Now, we’re learning what the true unintended consequences of those actions were. We’re entering a new era where technology will be forced, either by governments or user demand, to build better, more ethical products. This talk is designed to help anyone involved in creating products and services to see beneath the ground of ethical minefields, and to make better decisions for their companies, employees, and users.
Loose Agenda –
6:00 – 6:30 – Grab a Bite (pizza provided) & Network
6:30 – 7:00 – Introduction to Product Ethics
7:00 – 7:10 – Ethical Game: Malicious MadLibs
7:10 – 7:30 – Hands-On Activity: Malicious MadLibs
7:30 – 7:45 – Ethical Game: Externalities
7:45 – 8:10 – Hands-On Activity: Externalities Map
8:10 – 8:30 – Wrap-Up + Q&A
Category
Organizing Leads
Session Materials
Event Photos
About the Speaker –
Andre Plaut has spent his entire career at the intersection of technology, design, and education. As an employee trainer at Apple, he had the experience of teaching hundreds of people not just about technology, but how to work with users and customers to understand how products fit into their lives. In 2012, he applied Apple’s corporate learning approach to President Obama’s re-election campaign, where he taught hundreds of volunteers how to persuade voters. For 4 years at General Assembly, he worked as a Product Lead along with the world’s most talented designers, developers, and product managers to develop global education programs on user experience design, engineering and product development. Currently, he’s the Director of Learning at Huge Inc, a partner at Ordinary Astronaut, a boutique firm that helps companies of all sizes implement new technology solutions like Slack, Notion, and Airtable, and finally, the founder of Human Machine, a consulting group that helps companies make more ethical products.
