Ethics and professional conduct

Discussion articles

• All watched over by machines of loving grace: some ethical guidelines for user experience in ubiquitous-computing settings
  With our orientation toward, and intense dedication to improving, the quality of interaction experienced by users of the World Wide Web (and technical systems of all sorts), we in the user-experience community are uniquely positioned to affect the emergence of this technological milieu for the better.

• Computer ethics: future directions
  This talk, by John Weckert, will consider three aspects of computer ethics: problem areas, methodology, and its interdisciplinary nature.

• Ethical and legal aspects of human subjects research on the Internet (PDF)
  A report of a workshop held in Washington DC in 1999.

• Ethics in HCI
  Users are human. As HCI professionals we must be sure that our fellow humans perceive their encounter with usability and design professionals as pleasant without sacrificing the accuracy of our results. There are guidelines produced by professional organizations like the APA and the ACM about how HCI professionals should behave. However, there are few examples from real life about how to translate this information into everyday behavior. This CHI2001 panel will discuss specific examples of HCI dilemmas that the panelists have faced in their daily work.

• Ethics for conducting a usability test
  A brief outline of ethical issues in testing and the ingredients for informed consent.

• Ethics, lies and videotape
  Videotape has become one of the CHI community's mostuseful technologies: it allows us to analyze users' interactions with computers, prototype new interfaces, and present the results of our research andtechnical innovations to others. But video is a double-edged sword. It isoften misused, however unintentionally. How can we use it well, without compromising our integrity? This paper presents actual examples of questionable videotaping practices. Next, it explains why we cannot simply borrow ethical guidelines from otherprofessions. It concludes with a proposal for developing usable ethical guidelines for the capture, analysis andpresentation of video.

• Online experiments: ethically fair or foul?
  Online experiments may be helping researchers gather more data faster than ever before, but those advantages are coming with greater ethical challenges--threats to participant confidentiality, questions over whether the participants really understand what they're getting into and the possibility that less scrupulous researchers could steal your ideas.

• The ethics of computers that persuade
  Ethics is an important perspective from which to view computers as persuasive technologies. Adopting an ethical perspective on this domain is vital because the topic of computers and the topic of persuasion both raise important issues about ethics and values.

Codes of conduct

• ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
  Commitment to ethical professional conduct is expected of every member (voting members, associate members, and student members) of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This Code, consisting of 24 imperatives formulated as statements of personal responsibility, identifies the elements of such a commitment. It contains many, but not all, issues professionals are likely to face.Section 1 outlines fundamental ethical considerations, while Section 2 addresses additional, more specific considerations of professional conduct. Statements in Section 3 pertain more specifically to individuals who have a leadership role, whether in the workplace or in a volunteer capacity such as with organizations like ACM. Principles involving compliance with this Code are given in Section 4.

• Australian Computer Society Code of Ethics
  An essential characteristic of a profession is the need for its members to abide by a Code of Ethics. The Society requires its members to subscribe to a set of values and ideals which uphold and advance the honour, dignity and effectiveness of the profession of information technology.

• Usability Professional's Association Code of Professional Conduct
  The Code of Professional Conduct of the Usability Professional’s Association will express the profession's recognition of its responsibilities to the public, clients, employers, and colleagues. The Code will guide members in the performance of their professional responsibilities and express the basic tenets of ethical and professional conduct. The Code of Conduct calls for UPA members to evaluate the risks and benefits of their actions on all stakeholders and ensure these actions meet highest ethical standards.