Promoting ethical design in small and medium-sized enterprises by an ethical design reflection workshop

Digital products and services are prevalent in daily life, increasing the responsibility of enterprises that create such technologies. Integrating ethical considerations into the design and development processes can promote responsible design and reduce negative impacts. While many large corporations have established ethics divisions to oversee product development and mitigate potential negative impacts, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) often lack the resources to incorporate ethical considerations into their design processes. This paper introduces the ethical design reflection workshop which combines human-centered design, value-sensitive design, and co-design to sensitize SMEs to integrate ethical considerations into the design process of digital products and services. To create and evaluate this approach, multiple workshops were conducted in the context of ethical design of cookie consent banners. Based on the results of the workshops we conclude that the approach may provide an effective and efficient framework for SMEs to raise awareness concerning ethical challenges in design.