035 – Future Ethics Author and Designer Cennydd Bowles Shares Strategies for Designing Ethical Data Products That Benefit Our Business, Community and ...

Cennydd Bowles is a London-based digital product designer and futurist, with almost two decades of consulting experience working with some of the largest and most influential brands in the world. Cennydd has earned a reputation as a trusted guide, helping companies navigate complex issues related to design, technology, and ethics. He’s also the author of Future Ethics, a book which outlines key ethical principles and methods for constructing a fairer future.

In this episode, Cennydd and I explore the role that ethics plays in design and innovation, and why so many companies today—in Silicon Valley and beyond—are failing to recognize the human element of their technological pursuits. Cennydd offers his unique perspective, along with some practical tips that technologists can use to design with greater mindfulness and consideration for others.

In our chat, we covered topics from Cennydd’s book and expertise including:

• Why there is growing resentment towards the tech industry and the reason all companies and innovators need to pay attention to ethics
• The importance of framing so that teams look beyond the creation of an “ethical product / solution” and out towards a better society and future
• The role that diversity plays in ethics and the reason why homogenous teams working in isolation can be dangerous for an organization and society
• Cennydd’s “front-page test,” “designated dissenter,” and other actionable ethics tips that innovators and data product teams can apply starting today
• Navigating the gray areas of ethics and how large companies handle them
• The unfortunate consequences that arise when data product teams are complacent
• The fallacy that data is neutral—and why there is no such thing as “raw” data
• Why stakeholders must take part in ethics conversations

Resources and Links:

Cennydd Bowles

Future Ethics (book)

Design for Real Life 

The Trouble with Bias

Twitter: @cennydd

Quotes from Today’s Episode

“There ought to be a clearer relationship between innovation and its social impacts.” — Cennydd

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t think there was a strong upside to technology, or if I didn’t think it couldn’t advance the species.” — Cennydd

“I think as our power has grown, we have failed to use that power responsibly, and so it’s absolutely fair that we be held to account for those mistakes.” — Cennydd

“I like to assume most creators and data people are trying to do good work. They’re not trying to do ethically wrong things. They just lack the experience or tools and methods to design with intent.” — Brian

“Ethics is about discussion and it’s about decisions; it’s not about abstract theory.” — Cennydd

“I have seen many times diversity act as an ethical early warning system [where] people who firmly believe the solution they’re about to put out into the world is, if not flawless, pretty damn close.” — Cennydd

“The ethical questions around the misapplication or the abuse of data are strong and prominent, and actually have achieved maybe even more recognition than other forms of harm that I talk about.” — Cennydd

“There aren’t a whole lot of ethical issues that are black and white.” — Cennydd

“When you never talk to a customer or user, it’s really easy to make choices that can screw them at the benefit of increasing some KPI or business metric.” — Brian

“I think there’s really talented people in the data space who actually understand bias really well, but when they think about bias, they think they’re thinking more about, ‘how is it going to skew the insight from the data?’ Not the human impact.” — Brian

“I think every business has almost a moral duty to take their consequences seriously.” — Cennydd