The photograph shows the vinyl applied to the glass doors and windows of the former SJ ticket office at Stockholm Central Station. SJ is a government-owned passenger train operator in Sweden, and the largest passenger train company by journeys, passengers and turnover. In 2021, the last three remaining staffed railway ticket offices in Sweden were closed in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. Since then the last remaining SJ ticket machines (one is in the photograph) have also been removed.

While other operators exist, they too have moved to digital platforms for the sale of tickets. In Sweden, the implicit expectation is that transport tickets are bought online, either via web or smartphone apps, using a debit card, credit card, or the (Sweden-only) digital payment service Swish.

One can still buy tickets from convenience shops, but only in larger towns and cities in the more populous southern part of the country and always for a 100SEK (€10) premium. Bus and tram tickets cannot be bought for cash, and purchases made on board, at the point of inspection, are usually more expensive.

Passengers without access or the ability to use these technologies, or passengers without access to these digital banking services are penalised. People escaping violence or conflict, people without a permanent address — and even tourists with certain foreign banking services — are all penalised. Passengers seeking assistance in stations are directed towards roaming employees who may (or may not) be found on stations.

Ticket barriers fail to address systemic problems in public transport and offer a band aid solution to the issue while hindering access to people with disabilities or diverse body types. Fare evasion, in Bogota at least, is a symptom of a systematic problem of inequality in addition to a public transport system that is precarious.

Loot boxes are digital bags that gamers have to buy, either with real or in-game currency. They are sometimes given, but mostly paid for, and they contain virtual in-game items of varying values that are randomly distributed. The trick is that one never knows what’s exactly inside. Loot boxes exemplify popular predatory monetisation within video games bearing close proximity to problem gambling. Fuelled by online marketplaces which function like stock exchanges, tracking the price of said virtual items, some of which can be valued at thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, prove to be very addictive. Moreover, they are mostly unregulated regarding age. As a result, some game companies have introduced weak precautionary measures in order to subvert gambling loop holes and continue to sell loot boxes to children all over the world.

Medication pamphlets serve to provide patients with relevant and understandable information about the benefits and risks of a medicine, and to provide usable instructions on how to use a medicine. These leaflets are heavily regulated and controlled through European legislation. The result is a text in a tiny typesize that is poorly structured, too long, hard to understand, and at several points paternalistic. The leaflets are printed on very thin paper and folded many times.

These leaflets are hard to handle even when you are young and healthy. What chance do elderly, who often use medicines, have when they receive several of these leaflets? Thus, this information needs to be provided not through a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach but a personalised, culturally sensitive, and appropriate approach for the type of medicine. Information about medicines needs to be relevant, findable, understandable, and usable. The current leaflets often fail on all four accounts.

In Italy for decades large billboards on streets have displayed, and still do, imagery with heavy allusions and sexism exploiting the female body to allure the male public. Almost naked women sit on cars, sell roofs, announce discounts and sales accompanied by text including a play of words that has clear sexual references. The text renders the ad vulgar and degrading as it highlights the clear objectification of female bodies and is accepted and warranted in the context of a clear and normalized unbalance in power between male and female in Italian society. Thus, such billboards serve as manifestoes of a patriarchal culture and society.

Urbanistic patterns that prioritise transportation only by car and exclude all the rest of the modes of transportation. This unethical design can also be seen in walkways that will not consider blind or low vision people or that will be too narrow for a wheelchair to pass by, and streets designed only for cars that will not provide space for bicycles.

Traditional crafts are being devalued with the availability of cheaper substitutes and authenticity of materials and techniques are being lost. This is a parallel to shrinking biodiversity where we are rapidly losing cultural diversity to a more homogenous and unsustainable world. Designers and design students often work 'collaboratively' with artisans to learn from them. But they invariably do not acknowledge them either financially or as knowledge partners. For example, patterns and motifs are appropriated and cheaper techniques are used to mass produce them. A recent example¹ is a designer who used block-print motifs for a mass-market brand.

One notable example of unethical design is the case of IBM's facial recognition technology, which has been shown to have biased algorithms for darker skin tones. In a 2018 study conducted by the MIT Media Lab, it was found that commercial gender classification systems, including IBM's, had higher error rates when identifying the gender of darker-skinned females compared to lighter-skinned males. The error rates were significantly higher for darker females, lighter females, darker males, and lighter males, indicating a clear bias in the algorithm. Due to these biased results, IBM's facial recognition software became scrutinised and criticised. It highlighted the potential dangers and implications of using such technology in real-world applications, particularly in law enforcement and surveillance, where misidentifications based on race can lead to severe consequences. Following the revelations, IBM announced in 2020 that it would no longer offer, develop, or research general-purpose facial recognition or analysis software. This decision was made to prevent the potential misuse of the technology and address concerns related to bias and privacy.

The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations is a major achievement in establishing guiding principles for humanity that were debated and affirmed by multicultural and diverse contributors. They are intended to apply to all people. But these universal articles have been a source of debate or even rejection ever since. Concerns are raised by states or regions who argue that universalization at the global level does not fit their local social, economic, or cultural contexts, e.g., that it represents a too western-oriented interpretation of human rights. 

An example of this procedure can be found in experiments conducted by Experian. As acknowledged by its former CEO, some researchers/designers A/B tested the effect of images while customers were waiting between a query and the results. They found out that aggressive images were triggering higher rates of purchasing. Senior management first considered the approach unethical, as customers were not informed of the experiment, while the researchers found it very appealing. However, it was fortunate that it was reverted as the company did not have any policy or framework in place. As the designers were not aware that this approach was not a good practice, this example opens a debate on what kind of education, methods, and corporate frameworks need to be put in place to avoid this kind of behaviour and insert a sense of accountability and responsibility when conducting research to develop products and features. Within the specific case of A/B testing, this example calls for a reconceptualisation of this research method to insert mechanisms of control and impact awareness. 

This bench is in a public space and it is publicly funded. Yet a decision has been made to ensure that its design (slats and spaces) is such that the public are unable to sit comfortably on it for an extended period of time. The aim of such designs is usually promoted to deter ‘anti-social’ behaviour, such as loitering and rough sleeping. Hence, we get the series of terms associated with such forms of design: hostile design, defensive architecture, anti-homeless architecture and so on. It is this terminology, as much as the artefacts, that is interesting. With the implementation of such designs, which are often located on commercial high streets, their intended use rarely deters their intended targets. And, of course such devices have no bearing on (and may even be counter productive for) homelessness as a social issue. More broadly, the design industry appears to have little consensus around a code of ethics (Fridman et al., 2022). 

The intentional restriction of specific uses of public space through architectural design interventions. Through such interventions, a very specific power balance is created, where the decision-makers (property owners, local governments) decide and dictate which activities are proper for those public spaces, and which should be physically obstructed and prevented. Certain activities are deemed undesirable, and are thus blocked, in an effort to realize the dream of gentrified urban uniformity, cleanliness and order. Public space is stripped of societal functions for the groups of people who need to make use of it. As a result, homeless people have less shelter options, passers-by cannot sit and socialize in a public, non-commercialized space, and certain recreational activities (namely skateboarding) are heavily frowned upon and obstructed. Instead of addressing the systemic problems that lead to people needing to use public spaces for shelter, and instead of providing adequate infrastructure for sporting, socializing and just existing in a public space, cities end up demonizing and ostracizing their less fortunate members. Different values are at tension, and in the end, the decision-makers with power prevail and opposing views and people are set aside and out of sight.

South Korean AI chatbot service ‘Lee Luda’ used hate speech towards sexual minorities and disabled people, and made racist remarks in conversations with its users. This chatbot is unethical because even though the negative consequences were unintentional, it caused harm to individuals and specific communities by failing to be inclusive. It is an unsurprising result when looking at the opaque design process of the chatbot service, which was not ethically framed from the beginning. First of all, the data needed for the training algorithm was inappropriately obtained. The company used data without obtaining consent from the data providers (users) in creating an AI chatbot. Moreover, after the service was released, the chatbot was not properly managed or controlled by the company. Luda did not hesitate to express hatred towards a certain group of individuals, and the service provider was ignorant of all these hatreds that users experienced. This indicates a lack of accountability and responsibility. 

In some residential care environments, design prevents harm and provides a safe environment for residents with dementia. However, some design features are deceptive or infantilizing, impacting residents’ dignity and well-being. For instance, murals are a typical design used to disguise exit doors. Motifs/ patterns such as bookcases can confuse some residents when they recognize the function of the door and the flat 2-D image of the books yet witness people walking in and out of the bookcase. Further, when others without dementia or an early stage of dementia witness residents perceiving the bookcase as real, this contributes to the paternalism and stigmatization of people with dementia. Not only are these murals dated and condescending, but they also do not recognize the capacity/ capabilities of people with dementia. Future designs should be more modern, interactive, and suited to the diverse interests of an adult population.

When systems, services, or products are intentionally or unintentionally developed with the goals of the designer or company in mind more than or rather than the psychological and physical safety of end-users, this can be considered as unethical design. Designs that undermine people’s wellbeing by encouraging destructive behaviours or maintaining inequities are also examples of designs that exploit vulnerability.

Let’s take the example of ‘Fair and Lovely’ face cream. In India, the beauty standard for women is to have white skin. As a remedy for dark  skin tones, there are a skin-lightening creams that reinforce the idea that brown skin is undesirable and success and attractiveness are associated with lighter skin tones. Such products, and advertising campaigns that promote them, reinforce damaging and discriminatory beauty standards, often resulting in low self-esteem, particularly in young adults.