Design as Protest: Practicing Ethical UX in Flawed Systems
at Talk UX Conference 2025
Type
talk
Duration
50 minutes
What it means to practice ethical UX from within and without systems that perpetuate harm. Drawing on Peace Corps experience, Marley examines a case study of misaligned goals, power imbalances, and unmet community needs - and reframes protest as care, pause, and principled practice.
People
Marley Dizney Swanson
Methods
Stakeholder MappingIdentifying people and groups who influence or are affected by a product or project, and clarifying their interests, power and relationships so engagement and decisions can be planned deliberately.
Journey MappingJourney mapping brings research about people’s experiences into a shared visual account of stages, actions, thoughts and feelings. It is useful when a service spans multiple steps, teams, places or touchpoints and you need to see where those parts fail to connect. Collect accounts from several users before mapping. Arrange their experiences over time, identify common stages and highlight problems and dependencies. Work with the team so the map informs decisions. Preserve meaningful differences between journeys rather than forcing every participant into a single path; revise the map as further research changes your understanding.