A Semiotics-based epistemic tool to reason about ethical issues in digital technology design and development

Abstract

One of the important challenges regarding the development of morally responsible and ethically qualified digital technologies is how to support designers and developers in producing those technologies, especially when conceptualizing their vision of what the technology will be, how it will benefit users, and avoid doing harm. However, traditional software design and development life cycles do not explicitly support the reflection upon either ethical or moral issues. In this paper we look at how a number of ethical issues may be dealt with during digital technology design and development, to prevent damage and improve technological fairness, accountability, and transparency. Starting from mature work on semiotic theory and methods in human-computer interaction, we propose to extend the core artifact used in semiotic engineering of human-centered technology design, so as to directly address moral responsibility and ethical issues. The resulting extension is an epistemic tool, that is, an instrument to create and elaborate on this specific kind of knowledge. The paper describes the tool, illustrates how it is to be used, and discusses its promises and limitations against the background of related work. It also includes proposed empirical studies, accompanied by briefly described methodological challenges and considerations that deserve our attention.