HCI researchers are increasingly interested in describing the complexity of design practice, including ethical, organizational, and societal concerns. Recent studies have identified individual practitioners as key actors in driving the design process and culture within their respective organizations, and we build upon these efforts to reveal practitioner concerns regarding ethics on their own terms. In this paper, we report on the results of an interview study with eleven UX practitioners, capturing their experiences that highlight dimensions of design practice that impact ethical awareness and action. Using a bottom-up thematic analysis, we identified five dimensions of design complexity that influence ethical outcomes and span individual, collaborative, and methodological framing of UX activity. Based on these findings, we propose a set of implications for the creation of ethically-centered design methods that resonate with this complexity and inform the education of future UX practitioners.
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Tensions in Enacting a Design Philosophy in UX Practice
Design culture is increasingly present within organizations, especially with the rise of UX as a profession. Yet there are often disconnects between the development of a design philosophy and its translation in practice. Students preparing for UX careers are positioned in a liminal space between their educational experience and future practice, and are actively working to build a bridge between their developing philosophy of design and the translation of that philosophy when faced with the complexity of design practice. In this study, we interviewed ten students and practitioners educated within design-oriented HCI programs, focusing on their design philosophy and evaluating how their philosophical beliefs were shaped in practice. Building on prior work on flows of competence, we thematically analyzed these interviews, identifying the philosophical beliefs of these designers and their trajectories of development, adoption, or suppression in industry. We identify opportunities for enhancements to UX educational practices and future research on design complexity in industry contexts.
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- PAR ID:
- 10168533
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- DIS '20: Proceedings of the 2020 ACM on Designing Interactive Systems Conference
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 2107 to 2118
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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