The research paper I co-authored titled Responsible Design Thinking has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Marketing, and I’m thrilled.
It grew out of conversations I had with my colleague, Prof. Minu Kumar, more than five years ago. We were both teaching design thinking in the marketing program of the College of Business at San Francisco State University. Since then, Minu has gone on to become the founding director of the Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship Research Initiative there.
In parallel , I have been developing the critique at the center of this paper—couched here in the most abstruse of academic terms—under the rubric of “design consciousness” that has been my passion for a while. I see it as foundational to an ethical approach to design by situating our understanding in the larger social context and the power dynamics which reign over how critical design and innovation choices are made.
I have rolled this broader framework into a course called Design Thinking for Social Change that I teach to seminarians at the Pacific School of Religion. It’s been a fascinating and generative ride.
In this note, I hope to share a meaningful perspective on ethical design that didn’t, and couldn’t, find its way into a paper to be published in one of the most prestigious academic marketing journals in the land.
At least that’s what my co-authors, Minu Kumar, Pietro Micheli, and Jatinder (JJ) Singh reassure me of. I believe them, for they haven’t steered me wrong through the five years of writing and re-writing that have required the patience of Job and, to risk piling mixed metaphor on top of cliche, the persistence of a beaver. They have been my teachers and given me a new respect for the “publish or perish” ethos. I am indebted to them for that.
Before getting to those reflections, here’s the abstract of the 74-page doorstop of a paper. It’ll give you an idea of what it’s about without having to read the whole thing Let me know if you would like to, though, and I’ll happily send it on.
Design thinking (DT) has generated significant attention in relation to new product development and innovation and, more generally, value creation activities. Despite its focus on identifying and addressing the needs of users and other stakeholders in an empathetic way, several implementations of DT have resulted in ethically questionable products with negative consequences for firms, customers, and society. This research adopts a grounded theory approach to understand the main ethical concerns with DT as currently practiced and to investigate how DT teams could better include ethical considerations in their work. Based on the analysis of data gathered from in-depth interviews with DT practitioners, it identifies four ethics-related blind spots caused by: (1) the exclusion of the natural environment, (2) narrow definitions of users, (3) quick prototyping and testing, and (4) the rapid increase of scale. Using the development of a Responsible AI product as an illustration, we show that firms can develop three interrelated capabilities to mitigate these blind spots: (1) systemic inclusion of impacted entities and stakeholders, (2) anticipation and mitigation of potential harms, and (3) ethical governance. Together, they form a novel approach: Responsible Design Thinking. The article concludes by discussing our contributions to theory and practice.”
If there’s any one thing that I appreciate above all others about what human-centered Design Thinking has accomplished since it crashed the business strategy party twenty or so years ago, it’s that it finally got the business world thinking about design, at all. It made the case for taking design seriously—not as surface polish or last-minute salvage, but as an essential contributor to value creation. It successfully made the case that how we design things matters. Who we design things for matters. And context is everything, from the immediate spaces and places in which an object of design will be experienced, to the natural ecology on which our sustained well-being depends. It is critical that we pay the utmost attention to doing this well, getting things right regardless of how complex they get. Design Thinking gave millions a method and a common language of creativity, because collaboration really matters too.
Some skeptics call Design Thinking a passing fad, others hew to a different formulation—Lean, Agile, or something else. But they’re all still thinking about design, and that’s what matters the most to me. It is only when you are aware that you can engage with the ethical dimensions, of what you’re doing. Twenty five years ago this conversation about design in the business world would have been impossible (I know: I was there, and I tried). This paper being published in a premier journal would have been impossible too.
Attaching the term “human centered” to design is, in itself, an appeal to ethics—an effort to align creative intention with human values. In an early draft of the paper I made the argument that, at its foundation, design as a profession, originated as an ethical discipline. We need just turn to the design thinking of pioneers like William Morris and Walter Gropius, whose musings about design were ethical in their essence.
William Morris, the principal figure behind the Arts and Crafts Movement of post Industrial-Revolution Britain said, “If you want a golden rule that will fit everybody, this is it: Have Nothing in Your Houses That You Do Not Know to Be Useful or Believe to Be Beautiful.” That’s an ethical proposition, and not a statement about style or an aesthetic prescription per se.
Walter Gropius, the founder of the influential Bauhaus school of art and design in pre–WWII Germany, added, “Our guiding principal was that design is neither an intellectual nor a material affair, but simply an integral part of the stuff of life, necessary for everyone in a civilized society.” Design is an ethical discipline.
It took another century to arrive at a creative praxis that recognizes that design must begin and end with our humanity in mind. Let’s hope it won’t take another hundred years for us to realize that responsible design thinking doesn’t—and mustn’t—stop there.
We point out in the paper that in the context of the complexity of the current technological moment, design practice must go beyond concern for the individual user. Designers must engage with its impacts on the broader ecologies into which it is inserted. It must extend ethical awareness outward—across time and system boundaries. This includes, as we argue in the paper:
- Systemic inclusion of all impacted entities—not just direct users, but communities, environments, and future stakeholders.
- Anticipation and mitigation of potential harms before they occur, recognizing that rapid scaling often outruns our moral imagination. Even the best of intentions can have undesired consequences. It is all of our responsibility to question the “move fast and break things” ethos in a world teetering on edge.
- Ethical governance, which embeds responsibility into the decision-making structures that guide design work—not as an afterthought, but as a foundational principle. “Bad design” doesn’t necessarily arise from the work of “bad designers,” but of consequential design decisions made all along the way. Governance structures—not just design processes—shape outcomes. Who gets to decide what counts as good? What is the business model, and its metrics that drive decision-making? These are ethical questions too.
Together, these elements form the backbone of Responsible Design Thinking—a framework for designing not just with empathy, but with humility, accountability, and compassion.
Because all design ultimately becomes part of the world we inhabit—shaping environments, institutions, and behaviors—it must not be guided purely by a pursuit of narrow utility and profit, but by a commitment to human flourishing, along with the wellbeing of all who live on a planet that is our only home.
We’re ready to have the vital conversation about the ethics of the way in which we shape the experience of being human by design. We may not always call it “Design Thinking”, but one way or another we will continue to think about design.
