Speaker
Colin M. Gray, PhD, Indiana University

Abstract

Design and technology work is inherently ethical, shaped by complex constraints, power dynamics, and competing stakeholder interests. Yet the same design expertise intended to support users is increasingly leveraged to manipulate them through deceptive practices often described as “dark patterns.” In this talk, I integrate my work on ethical design methods with over five years of research on deceptive design to examine how ethics is negotiated in everyday technology practice. I introduce ethical mediation as a lens for understanding designers’ roles in shaping ethical awareness and action, and connect this framing to empirical examples of manipulative and deceptive design patterns that are ubiquitous and increasingly subject to legal and regulatory scrutiny. These cases illustrate both individual and structural challenges to ethical design. I then describe efforts to collect, codify, and disseminate ethics-focused design methods, presenting a structured language for characterizing ethical stances and method components. I conclude by considering how design methods, organizational practices, and regulation can jointly support more responsible design, addressing both near-term harms such as manipulation and longer-term questions of social impact, responsibility, and governance.

Bio
Colin M. Gray is an Associate Professor in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing, and Engineering at Indiana University Bloomington, where they are Director of the Human-Computer Interaction design (HCI/d) program. They hold an appointment as Visiting Researcher at Northumbria University and have previously held appointments as Guest Professor at Beijing Normal University and Visiting Researcher at Newcastle University.

Colin holds a PhD in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University Bloomington, a MEd in Educational Technology from University of South Carolina, and a MA in Graphic Design from Savannah College of Art & Design. They have worked as an art director, contract designer, and trainer, and their involvement in design work informs their research on design activity and how design capability is learned. Colin’s research focuses on the ways in which the pedagogy and practice of designers informs the development of design ability, particularly in relation to ethics, design knowledge, and dark patterns. They have consulted on multiple legal cases relating to dark patterns and data protection and work with regulatory bodies and non-profit organizations to increase awareness and action relating to deceptive and manipulative design practices. Colin’s research and engagement activities cross multiple disciplines, including human-computer interaction, instructional design and technology, law and policy, design theory and education, and engineering and technology education.