A program for incubators to help tech start-ups consider and act upon the ethical implications of their digital products or services. Through a three-step journey, founders and their teams learn to future proof their digital solution from the get-go. What if ethical design became a common practice in the tech start-up community? What if Founders and Product Managers were able to spot potential ethical risks and opportunities linked to their digital product from the get-go? In this project, we took on the challenge to build fast and actionable practices for teams of tech start-ups to assess and act upon the ethical implications of their product. We worked in partnership with the Danish Design Centre, focusing on 3 areas being data, automation and behavioral design. Check out the below video to know more about the research!

Start-ups’ attention can become scarce when it comes to focusing on digital ethics. We thus chose to deliver our solution through incubators instead of creating another online open source tool. We also prototyped provocative question prompts such as ‘Say Trump took control of your product, what would he try to do with it?’. We printed these on cards and beers and sent them to start-ups. It resulted in the creation of the Devil’s Advocate cards set, which is sold through the F*** Ethics truck that we drive to incubators’ HQ as an awareness touchpoint.

Through an introduction to digital ethics, discussions and workshops, start-up teams are encouraged to see the blind spots of their solutions.