It's a new year and at Tech Circus we wanted to start with a discussion around ethics, and the darker side of design. As we reflect on a challenging year in history, it's more important than ever to elevate our craft, to ensure we're working on products which truly better the world around us.

This event will be kicked off by Ben Sauer, who will share an introduction to the complexity of Design Ethics, before Jessica Cameron will speak about dark patterns and the dangers of oversimplification. Picking up on this theme, Gisella Fama will then introduce a framework for approaching design ethically and getting your team and business invested. Finally, we will finish the event with a look ahead at what is next for Ethical Tech and a talk from Cennydd Bowles.

Also featuring a panel Q&A at the end of the event, there will be plenty of time to ask your own questions of our speakers, so if you're keen to be an ethically driven designer... don't miss out!

Featuring:

Ben Sauer - Independent Product & Design Strategist
Jessica Cameron - Research Lead - Lloyds Banking Group
Gisella Fama - Experience Design Capability Lead - KPMG
Cennydd Bowles - Designer & Futurist - NowNext



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UX Crunch at Home is proudly sponsored by:

Zebra People

Zebra People specialise in digital recruitment – bringing together the smartest digital talent with the best-loved brands, leading agencies and innovative start-ups.
https://zebrapeople.com/
Contact Sam Gale to find out more: sam@zebrapeople.com

SHERPA

SHERPA is a UX design studio found in Istanbul, currently operating in London & Istanbul, focused on creating unique user and customer experiences.
https://sherpa.digital/en/
Contact Oğuz Tan to find out more: oguztan@designedbysherpa.com

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Tickets are FREE, and you can watch the recorded even if you miss the live stream.

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TECH CIRCUS

Tech Circus is a networking and educational events company specialising in UX Design, Fintech and Search. Founded in 2015, our flagship event 'The UX Crunch' has quickly grown to become Europe's leading UX event.

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Ben Sauer - Independent Product & Design Strategist

Ben Sauer is a product and design leader, formerly of Babylon Health and Clearleft. He's worked with organisations like the BBC, Pearson, Tesco, and TCS to raise their product game.

He’s been speaking and training people all around the world, with a focus on voice UI for several years; particularly in how to rapidly design conversational experiences. Teams at Amazon and the BBC use his methods, and through O'Reilly, he's trained folks at NASA. He’s also spent many hours at home removing the ridiculous things that his kids have added to Alexa’s shopping list

The road to hell is paved with JIRA tickets: an introduction to ethics

Living a life full of ‘good’ decisions is something that has been debated for millenia: after all, what does good even mean? People can start with the best of intentions, but accidentally destroy societies, kill millions, and fill the world with dictators. If someone is to think about what good means then, it helps to start with what the different versions of good actually are. In this talk Ben will outline some of the key concepts in ethics, taking them out of the abstract realm of philosophy, and placing them into the context of design. Regrets? You’ll hear a few.

Jessica Cameron - Research Lead - Lloyds Banking Group

Jessica Cameron is a native New Yorker living in Edinburgh. She is a Research Lead at Lloyds Banking Group, where she is helping customers better understand their financial needs.

Jessica has a PhD in experimental social psychology from Stanford University, and uses qualitative and quantitative research techniques to study people’s attitudes and behaviours. Her research has helped improve user experiences in financial services, the public sector, travel and e-commerce. Jessica has taught undergraduate and graduate level courses at Stanford and the University of California at Berkeley, and she has been involved in developing and delivering training courses in areas including user-centred psychology, UX benchmarking and accessibility.

Jessica has come to terms with the pizza in Scotland, but she has given up on ever having a decent bagel again.

Darker patterns: What if our user experiences are too easy?

We check our mobiles 85 times a day, habitually and without conscious planning. We respond to Facebook likes as rats do to sugar solution. We let YouTube’s algorithms determine what our kids watch. We choose potential life partners by swiping right. We like it when websites tell us what to buy, we converse using pictures of small yellow faces, and we have conversations with our appliances.

All of these experiences are, well, easy. But at what point does engaging with technology become too easy? What are the social impacts of making certain behaviours hard to resist? Should we create user experiences that maintain a bit of friction, to remind us that we still have the capacity for complex social interactions and effortful decision making? Or does the future lie in removing barriers to technology use, so that all corners of society can participate on level ground?

This session may not give you all of the answers, but it will raise some interesting questions.

Gisella Fama - Experience Design Capability Lead - KPMG

Gisella has spent over 15 years of experience in design and creative production, working on digital products across many industries, from Video on Demand to Healthcare, Finance, e-Learning and Analytics. She is currently – and proudly – part of KPMG Human-Centred Design Team where she leads a group of talented designers who have the big mission to “solve business and user problems while doing the right thing”.
Outside of work, Gisella helps startups’ founders in the development of their product strategy, volunteers to explain technology to young students and enjoys her time travelling with her husband or at home with their 2 black cats, Djinn and Tonik. 

Make me think
How to stop simplifying the world and start embracing its complexity with Design Ethics

From fast fashion to next-hour delivery, we have been racing to make experiences intuitive and pleasing for both the users and the business. But what if that was not right (or enough) anymore? It’s now time to pause, reflect and plan for future designs that include more factors than just the users’ needs and the business requirements.

During this session, Gisella will explain how you can kickstart the conversation on Design Ethics in your immediate team, and how you can continue it in your organisation and with your clients.

Cennydd Bowles - Designer & Futurist - NowNext

Cennydd Bowles is a designer and futurist with nearly two decades of experience advising companies including Twitter, Samsung, Accenture, and the BBC. He is the author of Future Ethics – ‘a must read for anyone who is inventing the future’ – and now runs responsible design and futures studio NowNext.

Cennydd has lectured on ethical innovation at Facebook, Stanford University, and Google. He is a frequent keynote speaker at technology and design events worldwide, and a regular commentator on ethical design and technology, quoted by The Guardian, Sky News, The Wall Street Journal, and WIRED.

Cennydd has been an invited futurist for the UN, a contributor to the BSI’s Responsible Innovation steering group, and a reviewer for MIT Press. He holds a Masters in IT from the University of Nottingham, studied Innovation & Future Thinking at IED Barcelona, and is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists.

Where Next for Ethical Tech?

Reluctantly, the tech industry has owned up to its deep social, political, and moral impacts. Now the hard work begins. A slew of ethical aids have emerged – toolkits, card decks, playbooks – but the true challenges run deeper, caused by complex human trade-offs, misaligned values, and faulty incentives. Can concerned technologists genuinely shift the moral cultures of high-performing tech firms? Will ethics become a shared industry commitment, or forever remain a mere discussion point?
Cennydd Bowles, author of Future Ethics, explores why nascent ethics initiatives stumble in tech companies, the structural difficulties that lead to unethical decisions, and the questions that most obstruct moral progress. The answers will help illuminate a radical new path that helps ethical advocates to consider hidden stakeholders and harms and that draws on collective power to change entrenched systems.