Navigating Ethics and Power Dynamics through Participant-Designer Journey Mapping

Abstract: As Digital Transformation and innovation driven by Information and Communication Technology (ICT) continue to mark the evolution of society, ethics emerges as a central concern not only in terms of the outcomes and implications of technological systems but also throughout the activities carried out through the development of those systems. Power dynamics have been identified as a recurrent ethical challenge in the design and development process. As designers, participants, and project stakeholders engage in the process, potential conflicts, power imbalances, and ethical challenges emerge. This requires that awareness is raised on these imbalances and that teams proactively act on them. To address this issue, we propose the Participant-Designer Journey Map (PDJM), a tool to assist designers in conducting an ethical design process, aware of power imbalances. The proposal for the PDJM was evaluated, based on a set of criteria derived from the literature, by three design professionals, against nine other alternative tools. The PDJM was identified as the tool with the most potential to facilitate a structured approach to navigating ethical dilemmas, particularly those related to power dynamics.