Rosenverse

This video is only accessible to Gold members. Log in or register for a free Gold Trial Account to watch.

Log in Register

Most conference talks are accessible to Gold members, while community videos are generally available to all logged-in members.

What Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?

Gold
Thursday, March 11, 2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Share the love for this talk
What Role(s) Can Research Play in Responsible Design?
Speakers: Mandy Drew
Link:

Summary

Netflix's documentary "The Social Dilemma" shined a harsh spotlight on how design patterns and advertising targeting developed to encourage engagement and tailor content to users' preferences have dangerous, far-reaching consequences. We will discuss: What role can researchers play in mitigating negative social and personal impacts during the design process? If we discover evidence that a design solution to a business goal negatively impacts customers' lives, how might we help our design and product partners consider a different solution? What is the responsibility of researchers to determine how products we've already launched affect our customers' lives?

Key Insights

  • Algorithms designed to simplify decisions can inadvertently perpetuate biases and unfair outcomes, such as racial bias in healthcare and inappropriate criminal sentencing.

  • Misinformation spreads farther and faster than truth on social media, significantly impacting family relationships and societal trust.

  • Infinite scroll exploits behavioral addiction by triggering dopamine responses through continuous rewards, mirroring cycles of substance addiction.

  • Remote and unmoderated research reduces observer bias and captures more authentic user behavior compared to traditional lab studies.

  • Diverse research participant recruitment is vital to ensure products serve a wide range of real-world needs and perspectives.

  • Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods allows better prediction and observation of product impacts at scale and in context.

  • Digital nudges can reduce addictive social media use by requiring deliberate user actions and promoting mindfulness.

  • Current industry success metrics, like time-on-site and page views, often incentivize addictive behaviors rather than user well-being.

  • Researchers have a responsibility to advocate for new success metrics that prioritize user health, happiness, and community.

  • Including marginalized and diverse perspectives in research teams helps identify and mitigate internal biases in product design.

Notable Quotes

"The people we’ve lost are not intelligent, gullible, or willfully ignorant. They’re victims of how design and technology amplify misinformation."

"Algorithms help us find what we want quickly, but when used in criminal sentencing or healthcare, they can produce unfair and biased results."

"Infinite scroll is behavioral cocaine sprinkled all over our interfaces, triggering dopamine hits that keep us endlessly scrolling."

"False information spreads significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, often by an order of magnitude."

"Remote research lets us observe how people really use products in their own environments, mitigating the hawk-orn effect."

"We need to rethink business metrics that reward addiction and instead measure the quality and meaning of user interactions."

"Digital nudges invite users to be more mindful by pausing autoplay and requiring actions to reveal notifications, reducing addiction."

"Researchers should seek out people who don’t look like us or think like us to check our biases before they shape products."

"We can’t stop technology development, but we must understand the immense responsibility of unleashing new technology into society."

"Let’s use algorithms to promote sources with scientific integrity and create design patterns that enrich people’s lives."

Ask the Rosenbot
Sam Proulx
Accessibility: An Opportunity to Innovate
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Ovetta Sampson
Managing the Human Engagement Risks of AI
2025 • Designing with AI 2025
Gold
Luz Bratcher
This Is a Talk for Tired People
2022 • Design at Scale 2022
Gold
Jorge Arango
Meeting of the Waters: Designing for Successful Inorganic Growth
2021 • Enterprise Community
Dan Hill
Strategic design, slowdown, and the infrastructures of everyday life
2022 • Enterprise Community
Erin Hoffman-John
This Game is Never Done: Design Leadership Techniques from the Video Game World
2017 • DesignOps Summit 2017
Gold
Bilan Hashi
The Tension Between Story Collecting and Story Telling in Research
2021 • Advancing Research 2021
Gold
Marina Martin
Lives on the Line: The Stakes of UX at the Scale of Government
2018 • Enterprise Experience 2018
Gold
Jen Briselli
Learning Is The Engine: Designing & Adapting in a World We Can’t Predict
2025 • Rosenfeld Community
Kara Kane
Theme One Intro
2022 • Civic Design 2022
Gold
Chris Geison
What is Research Strategy?: A Panel of Research Leaders Discuss this Emergent Question
2021 • Advancing Research Community
Roberta Dombrowski
5 Reasons to Bring your Recruiting in House
2021 • DesignOps Summit 2021
Gold
Dan Mall
“Ask Me Anything” with Dan Mall, Author of Upcoming Rosenfeld Title, Design that Scales
2023 • DesignOps Summit 2023
Gold
Jemma Ahmed
Theme Three Intro
2023 • Advancing Research 2023
Gold
Jorge Arango
AI as Thought Partner: How to Use LLMs to Transform Your Notes (3rd of 3 seminars)
2024 • Rosenfeld Community
Nathan Curtis
Design Systems for Us: How Many One-Source(s)-of-Truth Are Enough?
2019 • DesignOps Community

More Videos

John Cutler

"Sometimes leaders focus so much on scanning the river they’re not observing the surroundings—the banks tell you if the river is deep or shallow."

John Cutler

Oxbows, Rivers, and Estuaries: How to navigate the currents of change (without burning out)

December 3, 2024

Darian Davis

"Reviewing decisions out loud held everyone accountable and made it harder for Jeff to forget or change his mind."

Darian Davis

Lessons from a Toxic Work Relationship

January 8, 2024

Dave Gray

"Our communications is all over the map — email, Slack, Hangouts, face-to-face, GitHub — it surfaced some gaps we didn’t fully appreciate before."

Dave Gray

Group Activity: Making Sense of DesignOps

November 7, 2017

John Cutler

"The highest leverage thing you can do is design statements that capture the essence in ways that set sail a thousand ships."

John Cutler

The Alignment Trap

November 29, 2023

Abby Covert

"When was the last time that you felt stuck? The one where you feel a sense of being stuck trying to understand something."

Abby Covert

Stuck? Diagrams Help

October 27, 2022

Mark Interrante

"Side-pav proposals answer what’s going on, why it matters now, what you propose, what action to take, and what benefit comes from it."

Mark Interrante

Collaboration Flows in Product Development

June 9, 2017

Devon Powers

"The future will be struggle; we need to face that forward, not deny it."

Devon Powers

Imagining Better Futures

March 9, 2022

Prayag Narula

"There is overlap between design and research when it comes to different types of research; it’s not a strict divide."

Prayag Narula

How to Empower Your Designers to Do Good Research – And Why You Want To

June 10, 2022

Peter Van Dijck

"Trust the user and trust the model are the two lessons I’m getting over time."

Peter Van Dijck

Hands on AI #3: Claude Code for UX people

October 22, 2025