A FRAMEWORK FOR ETHICS EDUCATION IN PERSUASIVE UX DESIGN

Abstract

The use of persuasion has become ubiquitous in interactive systems with the intent of increasing revenue, gathering user information and maximizing user engagement. However, it has been argued that users’ autonomy is an ethical concern within persuasive UX design. This paper argues that there is a need to integrate ethics education within UX pedagogy and practice. Focusing on the topic of ‘persuasive UX design’, the authors test a framework to educate design students about the ethics of persuasion from a user autonomy perspective. We introduced autonomy related ethical considerations to a graduate user experience class of 22 students. Through a pre/post activity, we show that the introduction of these ethical considerations increased students’ critical attitudes towards persuasive designs. We also conducted in-depth qualitative interviews with five students to understand students’ experiences of ethics education and its impact on their ethics understanding. Through these interviews, we identified the needs and gaps in ethics education, including the difficulties which design students face to understand and incorporate ethics in their design process. Based on the findings from this study, we discuss future directions for integrating ethics education in user experience design.