Designer Ethics and the Challenges of Digital Media
Yichun Liu
This thesis examines the ethics of digital targeting strategies designed to amplify consumption by manipulating consumer behavior. To help designers realize their ethical responsibilities, I identify methods and techniques to recognize and counteract unethical targeting strategies.
Historical & Contextual Framework
To study value & ethics, it's essential to consider cultural differences in order to accurately evaluate ethical challenges.
Visual Artifact: "Perspective"
The fact that you see from a certain angle limits your ability to understand the entire truth.
Visual Artifact: "The Journey of an Opinion"
Our opinion may change as we go through different stages.
Visual Artifact: "Dark Pattern"
A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying overpriced insurance or signing up for recurring bills."Visual Artifact: "Mass Media"
This project collected different voices during the 2020 US Presidential Election to illustrate how 'difference' becomes 'sameness' when filtered through the same media complex.
Capstone: Prototype Speculative Web
The Internet and social media make it much easier for us to consume vast amounts of information easily, without questioning its accuracy, and with little time to evaluate its ethics and values. Under these circumstances, my capstone project creates a speculative website that allows users to evaluate news stories by categories and compare them side by side.Capstone: Website Coding & Design: “What’s your opinion?”
Based on the concept of my capstone project, I chose some popular questions about COVID and collected different perspectives about each question. Users can also contribute their opinion after reading those materials