Abstract
Procedural ethics—applying for approval—alone may fail to address many issues that arise during fieldwork (ethics in the field), particularly when designers enter sensitive contexts such as healthcare. Building on our earlier contribution (DRS 2024: Embedded Ethics in Practice), we reflect on shadowing recently diagnosed cancer patients through a set of ethical considerations. Using framework analysis, we examine challenges encountered by what we term shadowers—five designers and one nurse who accompanied 14 patients throughout the service journey, from consultations to treatment. By noting the actions taken and feelings experienced as ethical issues emerged, we question how to navigate such complexities. Examining the shadowers’ narratives alongside relevant literature, we generate five themes that describe their experiences whilst proposing speculative, creative ways to address ethical challenges: On doing, not doing and harm; Toward risk-and-benefit consent forms; The researcher’s right to withdraw; Who is who?; and The before, during and after of embedded ethics.
Keywords
ethics in design research; shadowing in healthcare contexts; embedded ethics and fieldwork; reflexivity in participatory design; ethical challenges in practice
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2026.2226
Citation
Renedo Illarregi, E., Hartman, L., Sañudo Recacha, Y., Aguado González, L., Sierra-Pérez, J., Medina Castillo, A., Artigas Ortega, V., and Romero Piqueras, C. (2026) Designerly Ethics: reflections on shadowing cancer patients and ideas for embedding ethics in practice, 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.2026.2226
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Included in
Designerly Ethics: reflections on shadowing cancer patients and ideas for embedding ethics in practice
Procedural ethics—applying for approval—alone may fail to address many issues that arise during fieldwork (ethics in the field), particularly when designers enter sensitive contexts such as healthcare. Building on our earlier contribution (DRS 2024: Embedded Ethics in Practice), we reflect on shadowing recently diagnosed cancer patients through a set of ethical considerations. Using framework analysis, we examine challenges encountered by what we term shadowers—five designers and one nurse who accompanied 14 patients throughout the service journey, from consultations to treatment. By noting the actions taken and feelings experienced as ethical issues emerged, we question how to navigate such complexities. Examining the shadowers’ narratives alongside relevant literature, we generate five themes that describe their experiences whilst proposing speculative, creative ways to address ethical challenges: On doing, not doing and harm; Toward risk-and-benefit consent forms; The researcher’s right to withdraw; Who is who?; and The before, during and after of embedded ethics.