Abstract
As discussions about AI and its societal impacts grow, questions about how to practise design responsibly and ethically have become more prominent. This paper examines how designers do ethics in practice, focusing on the relationship between universal frameworks and situated, lived experiences. Conversations with design practitioners reveal that while universal ethical frameworks provide consistency, they often overlook the everyday negotiations designers face in the workplace. Practitioners report that current governance systems, influenced by external regulations, are overly ‘top-down’ and narrowly focused on specific technologies. This approach leaves designers to identify and fill ethical gaps themselves, often through subtle, even covert, methods. Drawing on conversations with designers and my own observations, this paper reframes ethics as a dynamic, negotiated process embedded within design work. It argues that designers’ talk—their reflection, hesitation, and sense-making—serves as the key to understanding how ethics operates in practice.
Keywords
design ethics, responsible design, design practice, tech ethics
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2077
Citation
Osys, S. (2026) Beyond situated ethics: Towards a practice-based understanding of how designers do ethics, in Simeone, L., Gray, C. M., Verhoeven, A., de Götzen, A., Bakırlıoğlu, Y., Zohar, H., Stead, M., and Buwert, P. (eds.), DRS2026: Edinburgh, 8–12 June, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2077
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Beyond situated ethics: Towards a practice-based understanding of how designers do ethics
As discussions about AI and its societal impacts grow, questions about how to practise design responsibly and ethically have become more prominent. This paper examines how designers do ethics in practice, focusing on the relationship between universal frameworks and situated, lived experiences. Conversations with design practitioners reveal that while universal ethical frameworks provide consistency, they often overlook the everyday negotiations designers face in the workplace. Practitioners report that current governance systems, influenced by external regulations, are overly ‘top-down’ and narrowly focused on specific technologies. This approach leaves designers to identify and fill ethical gaps themselves, often through subtle, even covert, methods. Drawing on conversations with designers and my own observations, this paper reframes ethics as a dynamic, negotiated process embedded within design work. It argues that designers’ talk—their reflection, hesitation, and sense-making—serves as the key to understanding how ethics operates in practice.