# Responsibility and Ethics

Design affects people.

That makes design a responsibility before it becomes a style.

## The client is not the only stakeholder

The person paying for the work matters.

They are not the only person who matters.

Design affects customers, employees, communities and people who may never have agreed to participate in the system being created.

A conversion increase can still represent bad design if the increase relies on confusion.

An engagement increase can still be bad design if it depends on deliberate addiction.

A successful sign-up journey can still be bad design if cancelling has been intentionally made difficult.

Metrics do not absolve judgement.

## Accessibility

Accessibility is part of design quality.

Not a technical ticket.

Not a compliance exercise.

Not something to add before launch.

If someone cannot use what you created because of a design decision you made, that decision belongs to design.

Understand the standards.

Test beyond them.

Include disabled people in research.

Learn how different technologies interact with your work.

Do not make accessibility somebody else's responsibility because fixing it would disturb the layout.

## Privacy

Do not collect information simply because the technology allows it.

Understand why the information is needed.

Understand who can access it.

Understand how long it will remain.

Understand what the person providing it believes is happening.

A checkbox does not automatically turn extraction into informed consent.

## Behaviour

Design influences behaviour.

Use that power carefully.

Do not hide important information.

Do not deliberately confuse people.

Do not create false urgency.

Do not make refusal harder than acceptance.

Do not design interfaces that depend on somebody making a mistake.

Effectiveness alone is not enough.

Manipulation can also be effective.

## Responsibility without total control

You will never control every condition surrounding the work.

That is not a requirement for acting professionally.

Know which decisions belong to you.

Influence the ones you can.

Escalate serious concerns.

Document risk.

Refuse responsibility for decisions you are prevented from influencing.

Leave environments that repeatedly require you to work against your professional standards.

Responsibility is not martyrdom.

_Standards, 11 of 15 in [Design Professionalism](https://craigjamieson.com/design-professionalism/)_

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