Our mission
We define ourselves as a non-profit organisation focusing on research-action activities about tech and design practices.
The context
Design has been growing in the past few years and is now considered as a real professionnal practice that is essential to the development of digital services. This includes UX design, UI design, product design, as well as service design.
Beside this growing design trend, we also witness new problems and challenges imposed by new technologies on our societies and individuals: privacy breaches, dark patterns, accessibility issues, as well as wider problems on democracy and the environment.
This is why we think it is paramount to contribute to create a digital world in which these limits are taken into account.
Our vision
Making technologies more sustainable, responsible, empowering for people, society and the environment.
Sustainable, as in "responding to today's needs without putting at risk the abality for future generations to fulfill their own needs." (conférence de Rio). Sustainability is sometimes understood primarily in the environmental sense, but it also encompasses the social aspect of people who use it in their daily life and work.
Responsible, in the sense of causing no harm to others. Examples of irresponsible and harmful technologies are numerous : private data of individuals being shared to the world, technologies using a large amount of resources and crossing the threshold of planetary bounderies. On the other side, examples of responsible technologies are also growing from Fairphone to the Framasoft suite.
Empowering, because we believe - just like the initial intention of the founders of the Internet - in the possibility of digital services to create a future that would enable people to become autonomous and emancipate, as well as sharing information and knowledge between people.
Our role
We use the term "ethical" as a request to designers and ourselves to question our practices and actions personally and professionally.
How can we - designers and people involved in building digital services - make technologies more "desirable" ? Spoiler alert: we don't have the answer to this question.
The role of Designers Éthiques is to create a space for sharing information, exchanging views and experiences, and building a more critical thinking on digital design. Our role is also to make these thoughts and theories into practical resources to provide designers with the opportunity to experience and get training on our fields of expertise.
Our goals
The goal of our organisation is to raise awareness amongst professionals in the digital design world, teach them to develop their critical thinking, educate them and provide them with tools about design responsibility as a whole :
- Raise awareness : Share the knowledge to professionals to raise awarness on these key topics.
- Develop critical thinking : Encourage professionals to question their practices and develop a critical approach.
- Educate : Provide training to professionals to develop their skills.
- Provide tools : provide methodologies and practical tools to professionals to enable them to put into practice and raise awarness themselves.
Our actions
These goals translate into 4 main actions :
- Conduct research : Research unknown areas and produce knowledge about digital responsibility.
- Feed communities : Provide resources and create events to share knowledge.
- Provide training courses : Develop skills and expertise of designers.
- Develop projects : Create resources for designers to use in their projects and day-to-day practices.
How can you help ? Make a donation
Our organisation shares free content (guides, articles...). If you like what we do, you can help us by making a small donation !