An Ethics Toolkit for Animal Centered Design

THE NEED

Compared to designing for humans, designing for animals presents an added level of complexity for the designer, who cannot embody their intended user, but nevertheless assumes the responsibility of acting as an interpreter of the animal’s behavior and needs. In this respect, the role of the animal-centered designer is especially demanding, requiring the application of all our powers of observation, empathy, and critical thinking to gain a measure of understanding of the animal as a user and of the elements that may comprise and influence their experience, if not of the experience itself. Aside from scientific competence, this requires ethical sensitivity towards the kind of user interactions and experiences that the animal will encounter, the elements of those interactions and experiences that might be important, the way in which these might shift over the course of the project, and the repercussions that such shifts might have.

THE CONTEXT

While investigating service dogs’ interactions with access controls, buttons, and switches, during my doctoral research; I came across various ethical guidelines and approaches. Most were normative in nature - meaning that they provided principles and standards to orient the understanding of what might constitute ethical engagement when conducting animal-centered design. Although sound and incredibly thorough, these approaches were limited in the support they provided me during the course of the research, when I was inevitably faced by ethically charged and unexpected situations. These situations, required me to deal with specific details of the design context and to make moment-by-moment decisions which were influenced by my own ethical position towards service dogs. The result of the this challenge was an Ethics Toolkit for Animal Centered Design - a tool to help guide an ethically reflective, species inclusive approach to designing for and with animals.

THE RESULT

The toolkit is made up of three templates, each of which focuses on different stakeholders and aspects of a project to ensure a detailed and systematic questioning and reflection of ethical stances and potential issues.

The first template helps designers to establish their personal ethical baselines by prompting them to articulate their understanding of the animal as a user and research participant; and to consider how this understanding might influence their role as a designer.

The second template helps to capture the project’s ethical baselines, by stating the goal of the research, its intent and relevance for the animal user, how the animal will be able to participate while being protected from harm, and who is responsible.

The third template prompts designers to consider a series of scenarios that might occur during the project and their implications for the animal as a means to clearly articulate a set of ethical guiding statements for the project.

The toolkit is presented in the downloadable paper that was published in the may May 2022 issue of the journal Frontiers in Veterinary Science. Download the full paper here

As you explore and use the toolkit, I hope it will serve as a tool to help designers consider these challenges with an animal-centered lens. The toolkit is intended to be a living document. We would love for you to share how you used the toolkit and any modifications you made to it here.