"Digital ethics investigates what it looks like for
individuals and societies to handle digital technology in a
responsible way."
PROJECT GOALS
The aim of this project is to catalyse the creation of a body of
knowledge in digital ethics, able to support the installment of the
EIT KIC Competence Centre for Design in Umeå, by providing a strong
academical grounding to its activities in the field of interaction
design and societal transformation. This is done in collaboration
with Umeå Kommun, RISE Research Institutes of
Sweden, other departments of Umeå University, the
Department of Industrial Design of the University of Eindhoven
and regional and national companies.
PROJECT ACTIVITIES
With this research project, activities are being set up with the
scope of raising awareness, creating and consolidating knowledge in
this relatively new field (PhD research projects, research
seminars, conferences, open debates, workshops). A dialogue with
the local government and regional societal actors is facilitated,
to gather challenges and fields of application, to explore,
experiment and validate the research work. During the course of
this project, academic production in the field of Digital Ethics is
promoted and coordinated.
PROJECT COLLABORATORS
Umeå University has strategically invested in the growth of
the area of Ethics and AI, with a pivot in the Department of Computing Science. Umeå
Institute of Design's role in this field is to explore how to
design for ethics, guaranteeing the respect of basic human and
more-than-human rights.
This research-through-design and research-through-pedagogics
approach will develop, in the longer run, both pedagogical tools
and research methodologies concerning designing for interaction,
from an ethically sound perspective.
Umeå Kommun is developing a strong practice of participated
citizenship and governance, both in civic and urban planning and in
the business and manufacturing landscape. Its operational driving
values are gravitating around social and environmental
sustainability.
Design is considered and addressed as a core competence for the
region, which is functional to implement such values and create
sustainable practices to tackle current societal challenges. Umeå
Kommun has in 2019 kicked off an initiative called Design by
Umeå that gathers all the design driven efforts in the
region, among which UID and The Pink are included. For these reasons,
Umeå Kommun is incentivising a design-driven inquiry on how digital
processes can be designed and adopted in a way that respects values
such as integrity, safety, security and sustainability.
RISE, Research Institutes of Sweden, is a
state-owned applied research-driven actor with a strong
track-record of engaging with different groups in society,
coordinating their collaborations. RISE has a deep knowledge in all
aspects related to digital technologies and possesses a strong
experience in implementing solutions and proposals, such as design
interventions, pedagogical initiatives, debates, workshops; such a
research-driven actor has the ability to gather, coordinate and
curate the transformation of practices of stakeholders from
industry, academia, public sector and the civil society to find and
undertake concrete cases concerning technology and
society.
THE EIT KIC DESIGN COMPETENCE CENTRE
The EIT KIC Design Competence Centre will catalyse the creation
of an ecosystem where creative industries will offer their artistic
and creative skills to boost sustainable transformation of more
traditional industries. In this context, the expertise of Digital
Ethics is pivotal to develop ways of prototyping sustainable
futures, with the use of digital technologies as material.
The ecosystem will operate providing transdisciplinary
perspectives and objectives that are informed by a solid foundation
in technology and design research, as well as by social and
behavioral sciences and the humanities, in order to develop
capacity to tackle the effects and ethical implications of
technological change and its effects across society.
The center is establishing and hosting collaboration ecosystems,
which will enable the actors within these systems to identify
relevant partnerships and competences, and thus act as a catalyser
for continued exchange of knowledge and best practices.
