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Ethical Design

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Unintended Consequences and Anti-Patterns

2:06 with Hope Armstrong and Michelle Zohlman

While dark patterns are intentionally deceitful, not all unethical design decisions have bad intent.

New Terms:

  • Anti-pattern: A common response to a recurring problem that is usually ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. source: Wikipedia

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    MICHELLE: While dark patterns are intentionally deceitful, 0:01
    not all unethical design decisions have bad intent. 0:05
    An anti-pattern is a common response to a recurring problem that is usually 0:10
    ineffective and risks being highly counterproductive. 0:14
    On the surface, it may seem like a reasonable solution but 0:19
    leads to unintended consequences. 0:22
    In software engineer Liz Abinante's talk, 0:25
    The Social Responsibility of Coding, she illustrates an anti-pattern. 0:28
    MaxMind is a mapping tool that provides location data for IP addresses. 0:33
    The default IP address for the United States is a long number 0:38
    representing the exact middle of the country. 0:43
    For simplicity, MaxMind decided to round it down to the nearest whole number. 0:46
    It's quite common for one's location not to be exact, so 0:51
    a country's generic IP is often used. 0:54
    This resulted in about 600 million people's 0:58
    IP addresses defaulting to a farm in Kansas. 1:01
    The family who lived on that farm was harassed for 1:05
    15 years, including being accused of crimes they hadn't committed. 1:07
    Even death is at stake for some products. 1:13
    The book Tragic Design gives the example of Therac-25, 1:16
    a radiation therapy machine used to treat cancer in the 1980s. 1:20
    A software bug caused massive overdoses in six patients causing death and 1:25
    sustained lifelong injuries. 1:29
    The device was later recalled in favor of hardware safeguards to protect against 1:32
    software errors. 1:37
    Now let's take a look at some minor examples that are still quite frustrating. 1:39
    Have you ever filled out a form only to get an error? 1:44
    Or go back a step and the form clears your entered text? 1:47
    What about a form with placeholder text that looks like buttons, or 1:51
    disappears when clicked? 1:55
    As you browse the web, take stock of the anti-patterns you find. 1:58
    You'd be amazed at how many you'd find once you're aware of them. 2:02

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