You may be tempted to skip this episode because ethics isn't the most exciting topic, but the need for a deeper understanding of ethical design is a huge emerging design trend. In this episode, we will look at two examples that highlight the need for a better understanding of ethical design, the 5 steps you can take to improve your ethical design process and why it needs to be an ongoing investment.
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You may be tempted to skip this episode because ethics isn't the most exciting topic, but the need for a deeper understanding of ethical design is a huge emerging design trend. In this episode, we will look at two examples that highlight the need for a better understanding of ethical design, the 5 steps you can take to improve your ethical design process and why it needs to be an ongoing investment.
SHOW NOTES:
http://thecrazy1.com/episode84
FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:
Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook
What's going on everybody, and welcome to the 84th episode of The Crazy One podcast. As always, I'm your host, Stephen Gates. And this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and everything else that helps to empower creative people. Now, you can listen to all the shows, get the show notes, and a whole lot more. Just head over to the crazy, one calm. That's the crazy and the number one calm. Make sure that you hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform to get the episodes as soon as they come out. And if you have any questions, or you want more content like this, be sure to follow me on Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn is I'm posting all the time and happy to answer any questions. Now, I've got a new audio setup. I figured you know what, look, it's been three years and 83 episodes 84 now, so I guess maybe it's time to actually invest in some better equipment. So we'll see if this actually improves the show any or if this is just me doing this for my own ego, but hopefully it makes a little bit of a difference. I don't know. We'll see. I'm also incredibly curious to see how people feel about this show today. Because this episode, especially by the title probably is not one of those things you think to yourself like, Hey, this is something I'm really interested in like ethics like, Wow, that sounds like a topic I'd really, really be interested in. But this is interesting because I think that this is one of those emerging trends that I'm seeing that we need to start to talk about, we need to start to think about and this disorder is episode really started for me with it was a conversation I'd had in the beginning of the year. I'd flown down and spent two weeks in Sydney, Australia and had a dinner one night with your again spangle who is the probably one of the best design leaders. I know he's the head of design at Atlassian. Just super smart, super tuned in, like one of those people you just feel smarter whenever you're around. And I think that you know, we start to have this conversation around design ethics around how the industry has matured to the point where this has started to become something we needed to talk about. But I think also, it sort of feels like before we even get into this episode, I need to define what I mean when we talk about ethics, because I think that can be a really, it can be a dense word, it can be a confusing word, it can be a word that means a lot of things. So for the purpose of this episode for the purpose of what I want to talk about, what I think this is like, this is not about good and bad, right? Like, that's just the definition of straight line ethics. This is not about doing like, right by your customers, right? Like ethical practices, like how you handle data. Like it's not that it's not about how people act, right? Like a code of ethics, like the way that you show up in the your kind of personal code that you use, when I want to talk about is understanding and thinking about the big and small effects of our work. Right, because I think especially if you work in digital, especially for a lot of what just creativity has become in this kind of moment in time. It's having an impact on the world that I think a lot of people aren't thinking about. And I think, you know, it really comes really as a byproduct out of the maturation of our industry, right? Because if you think about it as you go through any process, and especially as you go through kind of a designer, creator process, you go through these different stages. And so like if, for instance, like if we're going to talk about digital design, we sort of started with that very basic web design, right? Like just being able to put up any sort of a page being able to do any sort of, like, just put text out into the universe, and someone can see it, right, like, just the super basic things that are there. And then we started a little bit more complicated. We started to bring in colors, we started bringing in animation, we started to bring in a little more complexity in the sound and things like that, right. So we started bringing a little bit more complexity to it. Well, then we sort of started to transcend that because then we had different form factors. We had all these other types of devices and then kind of like responsive design was born and then out of that, then it's like okay, well now this is a scalar The complexity that we need more data, we need more dynamic. So then we had responsive data driven design. And then we've had design systems and on and on and on, right, but each sort of things stacks, one on top of another. But I think the reason we need to talk about this is because just it's become an increasingly important issue with the proliferation of technology. And the way that it's being bound to our lives can affect people in Super profound ways. And I'm going to give you two examples. And this was sort of what has had me thinking about this for a while because there are two examples that always come to my mind of what is the power of what we can do, but also maybe what are some of the unintended consequences of what we can do. The first one is a very, very popular game that even some of my friends now to this day still continue to play, which is Pokemon Go. Right. Like it's an amazing mobile game. It's a it's a lot of fun. Like I got into it a little bit, not a ton. I know Some people who like have multiple accounts for them and their kids. And whenever we travel all over the world, they're running off and playing it. And but but For the uninitiated, for those of you who don't know what it is like it, this is a mobile game that gives that user the player, the chance to feel like a Pokemon trainer, right? And the trainers go around, and they're these little creatures and you train them and capture them and interact with them. The difference here was that what they did was they basically overlaid the game over the real world. So you would go around in different locations, and you would actually have to travel to be able to go and find these little creatures catch them do things like that, right. So not only was it sort of breakthrough in the category, it was a breakthrough in the game plan, a lot of things like that. But it also was it was a real business success story, right? Because I think that, you know, from the numbers that I've seen, and again, I can't verify that these are completely true, but from what I've seen, it's profited over $3 billion by the end of last year, and that's why I said and I still know a ton of people that are playing this But three $3 billion like that, that is absolutely gonna get a lot of people to sit up and pay attention. Right? Because it's fun. It's simple. It seems pretty innocuous, and then the statement for this conversation, I don't really think that you would think that this would be a game that would have a lot of ethical issues, right, but, but this is what I'm talking about, because it does. And as you start to look below the surface as you start to pay attention to more again, or what are some of the unintended consequences of the things we design, it starts to get really interesting, it starts to get scary, and it starts to get concerning. So just in the case of Pokemon Go, right. There's a number of things you probably saw in the news, right? Like it was distracting drivers who are playing while they were driving, people were getting to accidents, people were going off the road. And again, that's just irresponsible use of the game. But you know, I think that you would see that some people actually were getting mugged or were getting hurt because the game was bringing them into dangerous locations or they were going to do dangerous things in the hopes of again trying to catch these Pokemon. That you know, you had a real disruption then to public infrastructure because they were suddenly accidents. There were people where there weren't supposed to be like you needed resources, like, there are a lot of those sort of things. But I think it actually probably even got worse than that, right? Because I think if you really start to pay attention, that you know, in many cases, the places where some of these creatures would appear, they actually didn't get consent from those locations to even be included in the game. So now all of a sudden, you have a bunch of people who were there who are acting and doing all these sort of things in a way that you weren't expecting. I think that in men, in some cases, whether it was intentional or not, the game excluded certain neighborhoods, which I think were mainly populated by racial minorities. So again, was that a decision or was it not? If not, you know, again, there's something there. But you know, I think that the worst thing that I saw was a Pokemon can with it, ones that were released in honestly offensive ways. There was one in particular that was a poison gas Pokemon that was founded the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. That, again, I think you can sort of understand why that would be really bad for a lot of different reasons. But that's what I said. But those are just sort of like behavioral issues. But then, you know, probably a few months ago, I was in Los Angeles, and was watching the news. And I saw something that was a far more disturbing trend that had much deeper and much more longer lasting effects than anything that I had really seen or heard of before. And I was sitting in my hotel room and a new story had come on about this new emerging psychological problem called Snapchat dysmorphia. And what this is, is that increasingly for a number of people, that sort of line between the smartphone fantasy and the real world are getting blurred. I think you see the sort of shifting with beauty ideals, like a lot of these sort of things of what happens whenever you apply filters to reality and then present it as real starts to take a real toll on people. And I think that, you know, the thing with this is that these Snapchat dysmorphia, or people who want to permanently alter the way that they look, their faces or things like that, to match what they see in apps like Snapchat, like people actually go in and want to look like their Snapchat filter, so they want bigger eyes, they want sunken cheeks they want, they want these sort of exaggerated and cleaned up proportions that they've seen in real life that they have presented in real life for a really long time. Because the thing is that they're getting accustomed to seeing their faces in these digitally altered ways. And they're forgetting that the images on their smartphones aren't reality, and that there's a big difference. between, you know, sort of fixing something on your nose, your chin to look smaller on camera than actually doing it by moving a bone or tissue with surgery like it's gone so far recently, I've even seen some models and influencers who will post what I feel like are almost shocking photos of what it looks like whenever they are faces aren't filtered, some of them have had scars, some of them very, very significant things. But but the level that we are going to to chase this sort of false ideal is becoming, you know, honestly, for me pretty scary, because, I mean, if we just stop and think about this, the fact is that there isn't a psychological disease named after an app, right? Like that should highlight the magnitude of the power of design, it highlights both the opportunity, but then the responsibility that is increasingly coming with the moment that we're in. And these are just two apps that have issues right. There are countless more out there that I think probably have really similar problems. So what I wanted to do with this episode today is just to I guess briefly Personally, I have a discussion around this raise awareness around this, but start to look at how do you actually start to think about and approach ethical design? Because like I said, in many cases, I don't think that the creators of pokemon go I don't think that the creators of Snapchat ever considered that these sort of things would be happening. I don't think that they set out to do things that we're going to be able to kind of have these sorts of effects on people. But I think that there are a number of individual things that probably got us there, some of which are issues that we've talked about in the past on these shows, I think some of them are a little bit different. But that's why for today, I want to focus really on that the importance of ethical design in your work. And I would also argue that if you're sitting there thinking, Oh, I don't think this affects my work. I don't think that you know, what I'm doing would be a part of this. Let's start by sort of arguing that you're wrong, right, because I would probably argue that for most products out there in the world right now, right. There is a Some ethical issue would probably with what it is you're doing, because that's why I said like, if you think you don't need to worry about this and your creative process, because you're probably doesn't have any ethical issues, I would disagree. And I think that anytime you are shaping negative behavior, anytime you are shaping things that get people to do certain things, that may not be the best for them, I think you have an ethical problem. I think that, you know, some of these issues whenever I was in the financial industry, that fundamentally we rewarded bad behavior, we rewarded you for spending money by giving you points and airline miles and a lot of things that were not in people's best interest, that in many cases, you know, we were sort of overwhelmed. We were willing to overlook some of those issues. And that was a real problem. And I think that in many cases, you know, to figure out if you have a problem or not, I don't know that you can really be sure if you have a problem or not until you've taken the time to look at your product, really through an ethical lens. Right. Because you know, the one of the things that that I guess easily comes to mind for me that I think could also be looped into this Wouldn't be the issue of accessibility, I can't tell you how many teams I work with, where, you know, I try to work with them to make sure that their work adheres to ADA standards. So that this is so that people who have hearing disabilities, visual disabilities, other disabilities are able to use digital products exactly the same way. Anybody else would be right. But I think, you know, it's amazing to me how many of those teams seem to view this as a chore, right? There is no empathy, no thought it No, you know, caring honestly for how this affects the people who really need it, that it's an afterthought. It's a pain. And it's this sort of thing, right? And so that, for me sort of highlights the core problem here, right? Because I think in many cases for us, and this is probably true for a lot of us in general, we're all about doing the right thing until it's uncomfortable until it takes work until it means doing some a little bit extra. I think that's true of us as individuals and then by extension is true of us as companies, but right This is about honestly like how do we almost develop the ability to look into the future, to see how our work is going to positively or negatively affect people. Because we're in this time when ethics needs to become a step, just like any other in our creative process, we have a certain level of power, we have a certain level of responsibility, we have a certain level of thinking that goes into this stuff. And you know, look, you take the time to be sure that there are no bugs that there are no mistakes you QA your work to make sure it's the best it can be. I would argue that as we look at these sort of issues around ethics, it should be no different, right? You have to take the time to make your products and the people who use them the best they can be. It's no longer about if you can do something, right. It's about should you do something because we're in a time where we can create and you know, mold experiences, we can shape culture, we can do a lot of very, very significant things. But out of that, like I said starts to come, larger issues that you will start to see in more mature fields. like medicine or other things like that, where this sort of like do no harm approach needs to be thought through. As I sort of sat down and thought about this, I think that there really sort of five areas, five things that I think every person and every team needs to start doing needs to start thinking about, because I think that these are the things that lead to these sort of ethical problems. And like I said, I think in many cases, they are not done intentionally. But but in the same point, I will also argue, as with most people, as when processes like this, inaction is also an action, right? Like just simply saying that it is too hard, it is too complicated is not something we want to take on is an action. And I think a lot of this is, you know, it sounds incredibly obvious. But the best way to tackle a problem is to start at the beginning. And I think that whenever you start the beginning for this, this is really a two part approach. The first part is you know, just the simple thing of like, do you have systems and processes in place to identify and correct ethical issues? Is this even a conversation? Is it anything you Thinking about looking at? Is it a part of your process at all right? And I think so there's just the basic part of, let's raise the awareness and get this in there. So it's part of the conversation. The second part is then how those systems and processes are brought to life, right? Because I think we all know this, any process is only as good as its execution. It's only as good as how you internalize it really bring it to life. Because the worst processes, the ones that are the least effective, are the ones that people do it because someone told them to they do it, because there's a list that has been put in front of them. And if they want to keep their job or do whatever it is, then that's what you have to do. And everyone sort of rolls their eyes and thinks it's this real hindrance. But it's how it's brought to life and how its embrace that makes the difference, right. So I think, in this case, what I would argue for is almost a pre mortem. And that's where you sit down with your team and talk through possible problems that would make this product make this project, make this feature, make it whatever it is that you're working on. An ethical failure, right. Like why would be a behavior we would create what would be an outcome that we would not want? And then to actually work backwards from that to the root cause of that possible failure to see how you can avoid it. How do you not shape that behavior? How do you not sort of put that into culture or shape that into being? Because what you want to do is reduce that potential ethical risk enough so that you think you can move forward with the project, right. And so I've talked about this in the past, you know, these episodes are not created in a vacuum. I'm not like some great oz who comes up with all these sorts of insights. I do a bunch of research and try to find the best thinking that is out there on the subject. And I have to admit, whenever it comes to ethical design, there is a whole lot of not much out there, which I think is going to be real concerning to a lot of people real soon. But the best work that I was able to find was from a tech ethicist, whose name is Shannon valor. And she had a great list of what I thought were like really good sort of pre mortem questions, to be able to think about it. And so whenever you do a pre mortem, the thing you need to sit down with your team and do is Look, it's just what I said a minute ago, right? Like, how could this project fail? for ethical reasons? What would be the most likely combined causes of that ethical failure? Like what are the blind spots that would lead us into those problems? Because, again, when we think about Snapchat, when we think about Pokemon Go, those come out of blind spots, right? They're come out, they come out of data systems or things that did not account for certain ethical problems. And so again, then they just simply, if you know, honestly, ended up with these problems, I think you need to ask yourself, like, why would we fail to act like why wouldn't we want to try to stop this kind of problem? why or how, like, could and would we choose the wrong action? And lastly, and this goes back to a little bit of the first part of this process, what systems processes checks, fail safes like whatever the hell you want to call it? What are those things we can put in place to reduce that failure risk? Because in many cases, that's what I said is it these are unintended consequences, these are behaviors that are shaped these are workarounds that people create the these are things that people do whenever a whole bunch of little pieces come together to make the experience. And that very much leads me into where I think that the next source of the problem comes from, right? Because pretty much every company in the world is burdened with silos, right? Like those invisible walls between different divisions, those invisible walls between teams, those things that are barriers in our behavior in our thinking, in our action. And like I said, you know, we've talked about just, you know, for teams in general, that that is such a major problem that they will only think, as far as the project or the goal in front of them because this is my piece. This is my silo, this is what I'm concerned about how it comes together is somebody else's problem. That's a general problem because that sort of approach hinders stops kills suffocates Big Picture thinking it suffocates innovation. And it can be a big reason, honestly, why I think also ethical problems happen. Because the teams are going through and you're just doing what you've been told, right? Like the project moves from that spark of inspiration to the reality of execution, things comes up, things are changed, and they evolve. But the problem is, is that no one is watching. Nobody's thinking about the big picture. Because those silos are keeping them from seeing the bigger problem from seeing those bigger things. That's why I said, I think as we look at those examples, I think that it was probably a lot of independent decisions by independent teams, who thought they were making the best decisions they possibly could. That only in the combination only in the launch of it whenever it came together, whenever the big picture was revealed, whenever the behavior was created. Did you sit there and go, Oh, shit, I think we did something that we maybe didn't necessarily mean to. So I think that silos, silos are just the death of kind of everything for me, but I But I think especially in this particular case, it is that problem, right? Whenever you say, I'm only responsible for this little piece in front of me, I'm only responsible for thinking this far. nobody watches the big picture. Nobody thinks about that. But the bigger part of what's going on, we really run into these sort of issues. And again, it's sort of action by an action. So here are the things that I think you need to ask yourself. And again, I'll put the list of what these all are, in the show notes to be able to kind of make this easier to go back and digest but but you know, what you need to do is you need to ask yourself, right, like, what just simply what's the big picture here? Like, like, what am I helping to build? Because yes, even if you feel like you're a little cog in a much bigger machine, you still have an ethical responsibility to ask these things to make sure that they're being looked after to think about these things. To say like, Look, what contribution is my work making in it? Are there ethical risks that I might need to think about? Are there things that it's like, Look, you know, I've been told to do this, but I feel like there could be an ethical problem here. If there are risks, are they worth it? Right, like given what the potential benefits are, because again, you know, you can create some of these problems. And they are there in all different sizes. Some are very innocuous, some are things that people can sort of live with and adapt with. And then you need to decide is that major enough, but like I said, if there are ones that are sending people into traffic that are creating distracted driving, that are creating offensive situations that are causing people to be driven into plastic surgery, those are ones that I feel like are very, very different conversations, but I guarantee you, they're not ones that are really sort of part of any of those project briefs. And I think that's the problem. Because, you know, a lot of this comes down to the third point, which like, it's, it's easy to think that people only use your product the way you want them to, right. We all sort of have this omnipotent feeling like we've designed it a certain way. We've done it a certain way. And so that's the way that people are going to use it. I've often felt like whenever you go into user testing whenever you go in, to do live testing on a product it's not it's not A one way conversation, right? It's not, there is only one way of doing things, that the systems are so complicated the way the things that we do are so varied, that it's not a one way dialogue, right. It's a conversation. And it This isn't a set of instructions. Right. And and I think that this is why for me, it continues to be so important because of issues like this, for why customers are kept at the center, why they are kept as a source of truth for what's going on. Because then there's a clear way to come back to the fact that this is a conversation, right? That this is not a one way dialogue and that everybody uses it the way that we think because that's what I said is nobody I'm sure said hey, let's go send people in the traffic or do whatever that is. But, you know, I think it's, that's why I said I'm a huge believer in the we need to get out. We need to watch people use our product. You need to see them without guidance without prompting to see the reality of the reality of how they actually interact with things that to see if that that idea that you have in your head matches reality, as I said, because for me design, design is always a conversation, right? Your design is saying something to people it is communicating something to them. And you know, whether you intend to do it or not. I think that you everybody puts subtle cues to invite users to engage with your work in certain ways instead of others, right? This is that this is what usability design, like we put a lot of effort into trying to lead people down past. But it's easy to messages that the user receiving that they say something, and that what it says is important that it can create behaviors and that if they buy into it, if they really think about it, those cues like we've talked about already, can be very powerful can elicit behaviors can can shape ways of thinking can shape self image, like, again, these are very powerful things. And the hard part here is that whenever I'm thinking about, oh, I'm going to create something I'm going to do a button on go to, you know, create some interaction, I'm going to do something. All that we're thinking about is like, how do we make it as sticky as possible? How do we make it as usable as possible? How do we, and that's what that's what we should be doing, right? But it's those unintended consequences that I think sometimes also need to be thought about. So here are the questions for me as we think about this sort of discussion, as we think about this dialogue, are things like what could somebody infer from the design about how it should be used? Right? And again, this is more as it goes to behavior, psychology, things like that. Because when we start to look at that, like, there is a discussion of how do we want people to use it? How do we want people to use it? You know, do your design choices and affordances reflect those expectations? And are you perverting prove you know, creating other kind of use legitimate uses of this product or creating behaviors that are byproducts that we don't necessarily want? And so I think, like it's just understanding that this is no longer A button. It's no longer just an interface. You know, we are shaping people's financial futures, we are shaping their psychology, we are shaping a lot of very profound things that affect happiness that affect lifestyle that affect, you know, future generations and a lot of things like that. I think that's what you're starting to see all these conversations around the relationship between children and technology, people and technology, social media, and people, social media and wellness, like, these are issues that are coming up. Because for me, this is the wave that is starting to break around ethical design, because we've just been doing things because we could and we haven't been stopping to say should we, but in many cases for me and and the way that I'll come back to about this is that the best teams that I've been a part of, and the best teams that I've seen work, will actively try to break what they create, they try to break their ideas. They try to find the weak spots, to push each other to do their best work right because they are closest to it. And I think like you can apply a very similar concept when it comes to ethics, that once you build something You think, like, Look, you know, and you I'm really proud of this. I think this is somebody that that's really you know that this is something people are really gonna love. You need to ask someone to try it, to break it. And honestly to prove that it isn't great. And I think this is really important because as the creator of something as somebody who is the designer of something, and I suffer from this just as much, it's hard to see the flaws in your work, when you're has been so close to it for a long time. Especially, especially if it is something that you are proud of. If it is a design that you feel like has been the best you've done in your career, if it's something that you've really been proud of the team about. If it's something about that you tend to only see it in the best light. You don't see it for what it is you don't really press you don't really look at these sort of things. Right. So I think that's why I've seen this so many times, right? Like it's not unheard of, for new employees, new customers new like somebody with fresh eyes to come in. Find the flaws, the bugs, the inefficiencies, the inconsistency is almost immediately that the rest of the team that's been looking at it every day has missed. Because you work with it all the time you start to almost see it for what you think it should be, not what it actually is. And that's a real issue, right? But but by asking people who haven't been involved, to come in to look at the work to look at it through an ethical lens, this is going to help you reduce the risk of that sort of ethical negligence, it's going to have people come in and say, Well, you know what, I would actually start to do this all the time. And, you know, I'm actually not sure that that would be a really good thing for me, or I'm not sure that that would be a good behavior or that that would be productive. So here again, you need to ask yourself things like, you know, what are those ethical pressure points here? Like what are those places where we feel like we could have ethical problems, like, you know, what are the trade offs between, you know, value and ideals, like you know, have we made them the right way, because, you know, sometimes the business will just simply overrule logic. And whenever that happens, great things don't tend to happen. Like, what happens if we why'd that that widen that circle of possible users to include some people we may not have even thought about? You know? And is this solution the only one? And is it the best one. But that's why I said is to look at things with fresh eyes constantly, constantly trying to break it constantly come back, to find the sweet spots to find its problems, do it with the work, do the execution, do it with the ethics, like, do this with all of us. I think that's the part of it for me, is that for really high performing teams, these sort of mindsets of doing pre mortems, breaking down silos, understanding the design as a conversation, right? Like trying to break and break through and break down your work and to be able to push on that they they're doing a lot of these things already. And if you're not doing this, these are the sort of behaviors that you need to start to work on. But it's just simply the addition of understanding the behavioral components, the ethical components to this, not just simply the executional and that sort of brings me to my last thought around this. Which is like if you Don't get the answer, right. Being able to go back through your process is crucial, right? And I think that for many teams, this is why we do post mortems. Right? It's the ability to go back and look at what did we do? How did it do? How did we do? But you know, for me, most post mortems are only done to review process and to find inefficiencies that would benefit the company. Rarely Is it done to benefit the customer, then most post mortems I'm a part of is how could the team's work better? How can we communicate better? How can we improve our documentation? We aren't, we aren't going back and doing a design post mortem to defend the design decisions. We made the ethical decisions we've made to look at this to see how it is performing. to really say, look, did we do the right thing. We just simply assume that whatever we launched is right, because it launched and that's not really always the case. Right? And I think this can be really effective because you can focus on the finish work that's in a real estate and look at it in the cold light of day because Whenever you're in the process, again, you tend to be working towards that ideal or you tend to be working on your piece. But in the post mortem, you can look at this and be able to say, Okay, look, in its totality, in the way that it has launched in the way that has manifested in the world, not what is going to be 2.0 not what are we working on? Not what is in the roadmap, what is in market today? How is it doing? What are we looking at? How is this like, what's going on with this? And for me, then it's starting to ask again, these sort of questions like, Are there limitations to this product? Like, what are the trade offs that we made? And were they the right ones? Like, you know, does our product risk being misused? And if so, you know, what are the things that we could do to potentially mitigate that our other users are going to have trouble with this product like now that we've seen it in this form? Maybe there are things that we didn't necessarily account for think about that we're like, oh, crap, you know what this is gonna be? This is gonna be an issue. And I think like, how probable is it that the good and bad effects are likely to happen? And again, having a discussion around the magnitude of those and and your willingness to honestly just sort of live with them because All of this. And that's why I said is I think at the core of this for me why I don't think this should be a stretch for a lot of teams, I don't think this should be a stretch for a lot of designers is that if you want to change culture, if you want to improve your work, the behaviors that we're talking about, either should be on the way to being in place or already be in place. But changes and investment. I mean, you've heard me talk and countless times before about, you know, how change is like falling in love. That's a lot of little things that add up to something big. And in this case, you know, ethics is an interesting thing. And that was why I sort of wanted to define the word in the beginning because I'm always amazed how much money time effort things like this right like companies will put into and will invest in cultural initiatives, corporate retreats, well being days like whatever else it is, right. But whenever it comes to like ethics and our comes with about their consumers, the well being of their consumers, how many of them just simply will not spend a penny to do that? And there seems to be this sense whenever I talk to a lot of designers and whenever it A lot of teams, because this is an issue that's been on my mind for a little bit. I seem to get this sense from a lot of people, that if you're a good person, then you're going to build a good and ethical product. I think that sounds very altruistic. It sounds almost a little even Pollyanna, to me that like, oh, if you're a good person, good things, you know, will be the result. The problem is, is that you start to look at this. And like I said, the evidence overwhelmingly proves that that's not the case. That if we are not thinking about this, because of either corporate barriers, because of our own barriers, because it's just more work, or whatever it is, right? Like ethics needs to be something you learn about, you need to build resources and systems of support, you need to recruit for it. You need to incentivize people who embody it, who practice it, who invest in it. It's also something that you need to do for the right reasons. Because again, I think that you know, I see so many cultural changes, so many teams that want to change because some executives said it because they feel like it's the right thing to do just because there is some thing or Right, and they're not doing it for the right reason they're not doing it because they believe it, they're not doing it. Because they genuinely want it. And I think especially ethics, to me is something that is so disposable for so many people, right? Because you can't go into this process thinking that you're gonna make money or recruit the best people. And that that's why you're gonna do it. Because the reality is, and I can tell you, because I've seen it so many times, is that you're gonna abandon it. The second you find a more efficient way to achieve those goals. The second you think you can rationalize why you don't need to do this, why you don't need to think about this. Because here's my thing, right? If a company that you are working for want to go work for, or whatever it is, right, like if they're saying they're gonna take ethics seriously, they're gonna say they're gonna take this ethical design seriously. Ask them a few really hard questions. Like ask them things like how open are they to accepting restraint and accountability restraint, especially as a big one? You know, like, how How much are they willing to invest in getting? ethics? Right? That's one of the big things that I've learned when I talk to companies when I interview things like that, you know, Cuba Gooding Jr. had it right? Show me the money. If you're going to grow the team, show me the headcount show me the budget, show me where you're doing this, Show me the money that is going towards doing this. Don't talk about how it's initiative at somebody's side job about how it's like something somebody's going to get to Sunday and like, gee, Won't that be great? Whenever it actually happens? Show me the money. Because here's the thing is that at the end of the day, you got to walk your talk, and, you know, push them on this point. Are there things like are they willing to get rid of their best people, the best performers, if those people aren't conducting them themselves in a way that they should? And that's true in a lot of different ways. But that's the thing. Are they willing to walk their talk on doing things like this? And it's like I said, I think this is I'm hoping that this is a little bit of a canary in the coal mine for people. I'm hoping that this starts to raise awareness starts to have a conversation around why ethical design is important, why this is an emerging trend, but also that people can start to see that it is up to us it is if you have made it this far in this podcast, this is an issue that affects you. Right? That it is up to us to think about this, to be aware about this, to start to push this conversation and to start to raise it up to start to check our work to start to do these things. Because again, you know, for the power that we're trying to get the leadership, we're trying to get all these sorts of things that we talked about on this show that we're in again, this amazing moment, where we have all this possibility that we haven't seen since need us or revolution that does not come without a cost. And the cost is that we need to be diligent, we need to be thoughtful about what it is we do, and about what it is we create. Because whenever we don't, the effects in the blowback can be catastrophic. It'll be catastrophic for your company, it will be catastrophic for the bottom line, but mostly it will be catastrophic for your conscience, knowing that you may have hurt people knowing that you may have created things that you may have done things unintentionally but that it still has And, but that this is the sort of time and a place that we live in, that the conversations and the thinking that we're doing has to be more, we have to answer for more. And again, like most things on the show, that has to start with you. So I hope, like I said, I hope this is a conversation starter. You know, reach out to me on social media, if you think this is something that is really a problem if your company is doing it really well on to hear from you. If you think that is some of your company, you know, wants to work on where do you Where do you start? Let's have that conversation, right? Because again, I think that we're not going to do any of this sort of stuff alone. So, you know, again, I hope that you find all this useful, right? If you do, I'm always incredibly appreciative. Take a couple seconds, head over to your favorite podcast platform. leave a review, it always kind of brings a lot more people into the show, and I think it's really good, like I said at the top of the show, so make sure you hit the subscribe button, get latest episodes. Whenever those come out, head over to the crazy one calm. That's the crazy number one.com get the latest articles, podcasts. And all that sort of stuff like that, again, follow me on social media, I'm always up for good conversation. You can like the show on Facebook, Follow me Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, any of those sort of things. As usual, everybody down in league wants me to remind you that the views here are just my own. They don't represent any of my current or former employers. These are just always my own thoughts. And finally, I say it every time because I mean it every time but thank you for your time. I'm always incredibly humbled that you want to spend any of what is such an incredibly precious resource with me because I know time is truly the only real luxury and commodity that we have. And finally, you know, I say it every time because I mean it every time. Once again like this is not easy work that we are doing. This is stuff that has a lot of consequences that is very, very complicated. And some of these issues are not easy, which is why as much as ever it is so important. Stay crazy.