Our projects generally belong to one of three research areas:
- Studying Tech Workers’ Ethics Practices in Organizational Contexts
- Addressing Values in Design Beyond the Design Process
- Design Futuring Approaches to Consider Values and Ethics
1. Studying Tech Workers’ Ethics Practices in Organizational Contexts
These projects study how technology professionals–such as user experience (UX) professionals, product managers, or artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners–attend to values and ethical issues as a part of their professional work. Who does what type of work to address ethical issues; whose work is seen as legitimate; and how do practitioners learn what it means to act ethically?
Recent Publications
- Seeing Like a Toolkit: How Toolkits Envision the Work of AI Ethics. (2023). Richmond Y. Wong, Michael Madaio, Nick Merrill. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 7, CSCW1
- Tactics of Soft Resistance in User Experience Professionals’ Values Work. (2021). Richmond Y. Wong. Proceedings of the ACM Human-Computer Interaction, 5 (CSCW2)
2. Addressing Values in Design Beyond the Design Process
These projects explore how we can exert pressure or enact change toward ethical goals in ways that go beyond directly making changes in technical design. Other social, cultural, legal, and economic practices may be of use. Much of our focus is on law and policy, but other practices may be of use as well such as: corporate disclosures, standards and risk management frameworks, media campaigns, community organizing, or collective action.
Recent Publications
- Privacy Legislation as Business Risks: How GDPR and CCPA are Represented in Technology Companies’ Investment Risk Disclosures. (2023). Richmond Y. Wong, Andrew Chong, R. Cooper Aspegren. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 7, CSCW1
3. Design Futuring Approaches to Consider Values and Ethics
This project seeks to improve the capacity of design futuring methods to investigate the complexity of ethical issues. Methods such as speculative design or design fiction have the capacity to generate discussion and reflection about ethical issues. How can design futuring let us explore alternate ways to conceptualize and implement values in technology? For instance, how might different configurations of technology and society mean for how we conceptualize values such as privacy, fairness, or free speech?
Recent Publications
- Broadening Privacy and Surveillance: Eliciting Interconnected Values with a Scenarios Workbook on Smart Home Cameras. (2023). Richmond Y. Wong, Jason Caleb Valdez, Ashten Alexander, Ariel Chiang, Olivia Quesada, and James Pierce. In Proceedings of the 2023 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’23)