Justice
Ethics Interlude 3
Critical Understanding
Clarification
Justice is a vague term that is most often associated with the judicial system and batman but it has a very important and necessary part of both research and design. The Belmont Report notes that justice in science is about the equal distribution of harms and benefits from an experiment or test. As noted in Beneficence, the harms must be outweighed by the benefits, but they also must not fall on any particular individual or group. Undue burdens (harms being placed on someone not receiving many benefits) or denied benefits (benefits some get but others do not) should be eliminated wherever possible. Some people may think that this means that no research study can discriminate based on age, race, gender, sexual orientation, experience, or merit but that is not true. The Belmont Report acknowledges that those discriminations are sometimes necessary to the research and that they must be explained as to why they are necessary.
Difficulty
Research is often underfunded or at least on a tight budget so participation in research is voluntary or has minimal compensation much of the time. This results in those participating in research being able to afford to participate (middle and upper class white people). Researchers have a difficult time getting a wide swath of people to participate in studies so that the benefits of the research can be shared by everyone, not just a small group who participated. It can also be difficult to equalize any harms because, especially in medicine, some people will have far more side effects than others and some will have great benefits while others won’t. This doesn’t mean that the research is not acceptable, but it is problematic and makes the job of the research team harder.
Application
Research Example
Any and all research conducted with humans needs to follow the principles of Justice regardless of the topic or field of study. From medical research to usability testing, the benefits and harms of research should be distributed as equally as possible.
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In Sprint 2 we were tasked with testing the usability of a microwave. Our group only observed three people but they all came from the same demographic: college students. College students are not the only ones who would be using the microwave but by collecting data on only this small group, any product we might make would not work for the vast majority of the people who might buy the product. To fix this, we should have included a larger sample size with a wide range of people in every demographic so that we could design a product that would work for everyone. Unless, of course, we wanted to design a microwave specifically for college students, in which case the narrow demographic would be perfect for our test.
When actually making a product like that, having a ridiculously high price point would not be just because those participating in the study would not be able to get any benefits from it. Obviously, they didn’t have much harms and were compensated with popcorn, but it is still not right to have them participate towards the creation of something they couldn’t use. In this situation, ensuring those participating in the research can afford and use the product they’re contributing to is essential to justice.
Design Example
The principles of Justice are not only applicable to research, they can be used for anything that involves people, including design. All things that people use should consider justice in their targeted audience and accessibility to people.
A high stakes example of how design needs to be just is election materials including ballots. Everyone who is an eligible voter should be able to vote but if, for example, the design of the election materials were only in english it would exclude anyone who could not read in English. This could include, immigrants, blind people, and people who are illiterate. Inequality like that would be an example of injustice in design because it excludes people from a something they have a right to. To solve this problem, most states offer ballots in braille and many different languages but there are still people who are left out. Design in every form can have a real impact from affordability, to accessibility, to usability there may be people excluded. To prevent this, all designers should consider the principles of justice to ensure that what they are designing can be used by anyone.
