Embedding Ethics in Design Education

Through a cross-campus partnership, the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society and the Stanford d.school help students apply ethical reasoning to real-world design challenges, shaping how future leaders think, build, and care.

How can ethics become a meaningful part of how designers think—not only after something goes wrong, but as a consistent feature of their creative process?

At Stanford, a collaboration between the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society (Ethics Center) and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school) explores this question. Through an evolving partnership, a postdoctoral fellow and faculty have worked across disciplines to incorporate ethical reflection into core design courses—not as an add-on, but as a structural element of how students learn to work through complexity. 

At the heart of this collaboration is a deceptively simple idea: what if design students had access to the same ethical frameworks philosophers use, translated into tools for practice?  

As Yousef Al-Riyami, ‘26, reflected, design often involves navigating uncertainty. The ethics tools, he noted, “didn’t necessarily simplify that process—but they helped [us] sit with the ambiguity, ask better questions, and surface new paths forward.”

This kind of grappling—the kind that resists easy answers—underscores the broader purpose of the initiative. As Carissa Carter, Academic Director at the d.school, explains:

“Designers have a lot of power. And students want to use that power responsibly to better the world. But when you are creating things that affect people, the planet, our descendants, etc., there is never one correct answer. Integrating ethics across our curriculum gives students a range of ways to make their value systems explicit and see how they feel. It allows them to try on the implications of their design decisions. It gives them a skill set they can bring to their work long after they leave Stanford.”

Rather than supplying predetermined ethical frameworks, the collaboration equips students with practical tools—like values cards and trade-off maps—to support critical inquiry within real-world design challenges. The aim is not to simplify decision-making, but to deepen the process

A Toolkit for Ethical Imagination

Values aren’t just personal–they’re structural

Embedding ethical inquiry into design education starts with the right tools. Emma Ruth Duncan translates that idea into practice through hands-on curricular development. Duncan, who earned her PhD in Philosophy from UC San Diego and her BA in Graphic Design from Portland State University, is a postdoctoral fellow with joint appointments at the Ethics Center and the d.school. With a focus on trust in fields like public health and AI, her research directly informs her contributions at the d.school. Working closely with faculty, Duncan has been developing ethics modules and materials for multiple design courses across the d.school curriculum -- from Design 1 to the graduate-level Design Capstone series. For example, in Design 301: You Are Here: Foundations in Design and Design 360R: Advanced Reflective Practice, these modules include short lectures, decision-making frameworks, and a deck of “values cards” -- each representing core moral considerations like justice, dignity, privacy, autonomy, and trust.

It wasn’t just about what could go wrong—it helped us think about what might happen if things go right, and what unintended consequences we might miss if we didn’t slow down and ask deeper questions. —Shawn Smith, '26

“Like all the ethics materials we’ve developed, the value cards are meant to be a starting point for ethical inquiry, not an end,” Duncan explained. “Rather than being a checklist for creating an ‘ethical design,’ the cards serve to scaffold students’ understanding of moral values and exploration of the sometimes subtle ways they can be impacted by a design.” Each card includes a concise explanation of a specific value, along with a series of questions exploring how the design may engage with that value across various contexts—such as user interactions or the design’s impact on broader societal practices and systems.

Students don’t engage with these tools in abstraction. They apply them mid-design, using values maps and harm-benefit worksheets to interrogate decisions within the context of messy, real-world projects. For many, the process reshapes how they think—and what they build.

“Bringing in the ethical lens added another dimension,” observed Shawn Smith, ‘26. “It wasn’t just about what could go wrong—it helped us think about what might happen if things go right, and what unintended consequences we might miss if we didn’t slow down and ask deeper questions.”

That process of slowing down, of anticipating ripple effects, becomes a kind of muscle memory the team can carry into future projects.

Grounded Design: Ethical Practice in the Field

Centering Trust in Community Relationships: Ethical Considerations in Extreme

When design students from Stanford’s Design for Extreme Affordability course traveled to Costa Rica, they weren’t just testing prototypes—they were navigating ethical terrain. The course, a longstanding interdisciplinary offering rooted in human-centered design for global impact, sent students to work alongside seven different community partners in rural and low-resource settings across the country. Projects ranged from revitalizing intergenerational coffee farming and coral reef conservation to increasing revenue for small women-powered small businesses along ecotourism trails, and proving apprenticeships for indigenous communities. 

To support a collaborative process, the teaching team partnered with Duncan to integrate trust-focused reflection sessions rooted in philosophical concepts of trust - before and after fieldwork in Costa Rica. Duncan’s approach drew on multiple philosophical views to unpack the 'anatomy of trust,' helping students see how care, humility, cultural sensitivity, and respect shape not only their trustworthiness but also how they interpret trust from others. 

These weren’t theoretical exercises. Students were embedded in local communities, collaborating directly with farmers, conservationists, and community leaders. That complexity made ethical reflection essential, not just as a classroom discussion, but as a daily practice.

As Shreya Ramachandran, ‘25 reflected: “The experience moved ethical principles from abstraction to action: I’ve often heard how important it is to build trust with communities and the people you are serving and working with. However, I’ve never had the opportunity to so thoroughly break down what that means. This workshop made trust-building actionable for me, and allowed me to see what kind of steps my Extreme team needed to take to not only create strong relationships from the beginning but also how to repair broken bridges if need be."

To support a collaborative process, the teaching team partnered with Duncan to integrate trust-focused reflection sessions rooted in philosophical concepts of trust - before and after fieldwork in Costa Rica. Duncan’s approach drew on multiple philosophical views to unpack the “anatomy of trust,” helping students see how care, humility, cultural sensitivity, and respect shape not only their trustworthiness but also how they interpret trust from others. “There are many different views about what trust involves and what we expect from others when we trust them,” Duncan noted. “This means that even when we speak openly about trust, we still run the risk of talking past each other.” 

The timing proved key, according to Naita Saechao Chialvo, Associate Director of Design for Extreme Affordability: “Although we’ve always emphasized ethical engagement, this partnership allowed us to refresh our approach with new research and frameworks—especially around trust. Emma helped our students think more deeply about power, privilege, and responsibility, right at the moment they needed it most: before entering the field, and again when they returned. It helped them process what they experienced and design with more intention.”

Rather than offering one-size-fits-all solutions, students used ethical reflection to name and navigate dilemmas unique to each context, whether weighing accessibility against environmental preservation or considering who gets to tell a community’s story. That reflective practice complements the Extreme program’s existing co-design pedagogy, guiding students to design not just for impact, but with humility.

Designing Through Ethical Tension

A Design Process That Welcomes Moral Complexity

Another student team in Design 301 used the tools in a project called Systems Check, aimed at improving Bay Area water stewardship. One of their proposed interventions? An anime-style media campaign. As playful as the concept was, the ethics work grounded it. 

Using the value cards, the students surfaced tensions between engagement and accuracy, between accessibility and expertise. Would the show inspire real understanding, or spread misinformation? Could entertainment dilute the message? 

The team didn’t just name the tension. They worked through it.

“If a show like this actually gets made, how might it cause harm?” Smith recalled. “We started thinking through ways to prevent that, like adding disclaimers or pointing viewers to real resources. It pushed us to consider the full ripple effects of what we create.”

Ethics became a lens not only for critique, but for creation–a way to imagine outcomes, adjust strategy, and build trust with audiences. 

Worksheets designed by Duncan in collaboration with Meenu Singh, a Design 301 instructor, helped structure their process:

• Step 1: Identify a core value driving the project (e.g., justice, responsibility)
• Step 2: Anticipate both positive and negative outcomes through that value’s lens
• Step 3: Explore trade-offs and remediation strategies

Far from being a bureaucratic add-on, the ethics integration became a creative accelerant. 

Building a Culture of Ethical Reflexivity 

Beyond the Classroom, Toward a Norm

What sets this collaboration apart isn’t just the tools–it’s the culture being cultivated. 

By embedding ethics into design curriculum, not as a separate discipline but as an integrated way of thinking, the Ethics Center-d.school partnership helps students see ethical reasoning as part of their academic and professional identity. 

I think there’s just more and more interest right now at the student level. Not just in applying frameworks, but in understanding the roots—how different paradigms of ethics can lead to different outcomes. — Al-Riyami, '26

“We want to normalize ethical reflection and deliberation as a core practice across all kinds of work,” Duncan emphasized. “That’s why partnerships like this matter. Design students might never take a philosophy course, but they still want, and need, to grapple with complex moral questions. And they need accessible tools to help them do that.”

Students have echoed this need. Graduate student Anastasha Gunawan, ‘26 described how the tools shaped not only a class project but her broader approach to design: “It’s not realistic for any product to be perfectly ethical. What I appreciated most about the framework was how it helped us think through trade-offs. That’s why I really love the value trade-off worksheet. You’re asked to prioritize a few values while you’re ideating, and then think about what you’re sacrificing as a result. That kind of balancing scale is really helpful because if we’re not going deep into the ethical thinking, it’s easy to just say, ‘Well, we’re prioritizing these, so we’re good to go.’ But it’s not that simple.”

Her experience highlights a larger student interest in not just using tools for ethical reflection, but exploring the philosophical foundations that inform them.

Several described a desire for more opportunities to explore ethical frameworks, and even to study the differences between traditions–utilitarianism, deontology, and Aristotelian ethics.

“I think there’s just more and more interest right now at the student level,” Al-Riyami observed. “Not just in applying frameworks, but in understanding the roots—how different paradigms of ethics can lead to different outcomes.”

These insights reflect a larger shift already underway–not just among students, but across campus. As ethics becomes more integrated into coursework, research, and design practices, the opportunity grows for academic units to collaborate in ways that are both rigorous and responsive. By fostering a culture where ethical inquiry guides how students imagine, build, and reflect, the partnership helps set a new norm–one that measures design not only by innovation but by its impact on people, communities, and the world.

Taking the Tools Beyond the Classroom

Ethics in the Field, at Work, and in Conversation

Design education at Stanford doesn’t just train students to build—it prepares them to navigate moral complexity wherever it arises. Several students have already begun applying the ethics tools outside of class, adapting them to fieldwork, team dynamics, and even side projects with real social stakes.

Gunawan, who used the values worksheets for a development project with the Design for Extreme Affordability class in Costa Rica, shared how they shaped her approach in the field: “We’re implementing something in a community that isn’t our own, and that’s not something to take lightly. I’m using the value trade-off worksheet and the unintended/intended harms framework with my team because we need guardrails. We have to make sure the solutions we design actually reflect the values of the people we’re working with—not just our own.”

This kind of transfer—using classroom ethics tools to guide collaborative decision-making in complex, real-world environments—speaks to the deeper potential of the program. When students treat ethics not as a separate subject but as a lens through which they see their work, design becomes not only more inclusive but also more accountable.

The Future Is Ethically Designed–If We Build It That Way

Ethics can be provocative. It can slow us down. It can even make things messier. But it can also make our work–our designs, our decisions, our collaborations–deeper, more inclusive, and more just. 

“We don’t want people to think of us just when things go wrong,” Duncan affirmed. “We want them to think of us when things get complicated.”

Connect With Us

To explore other ways that the Ethics Center is integrating ethics into teaching, research, and product development, explore our Embedded Ethics website and our ongoing open-source ethics, policy, and technology case studies for use in university and industry settings. 

Jennifer A. Reimer is a contributing writer at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. She is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Oregon State University-Cascades and a writer-editor. She writes about collaboration, race, migration, and poetry.