Ethics and consumer electronics
Contents
1. are mechanical safety e g protection against impact rather related to driver safety Furthermore user difficulties are not taken as a serious issue either by designers manufacturers or even the users themselves Can this issue be considered an ethical issue We believe so Users frequently diminish their own abilities and intelligence accepting that they are not clever enough to understand the technology Cupit 1996 posits that notions of justice are based on status that is to act unjustly is to treat people either as less than they are or as more than they are His comments are not restricted to actions towards others he includes actions to ourselves Following this interpretation of justice users are doing themselves an injustice by treating themselves as less than they are Some people might say that it is up to the user to revalue themselves either by training themselves to use the equipment or perhaps making a deliberate choice that technology is not their business leaving understanding in the hands of the professional technologist However we maintain that it need not be so Approaching the issues from the justice perspective shows discrepancies of equality between the designer manufacture and the user The fact that lengthy user manuals are considered a necessary accompaniment to these devices indicates an imbalance between the knowledge of the designer and the user If user manuals are intended to redress2. attention while you are driving you MUST exercise proper control of your vehicle at all times Highway Code Section 128 Safe driving needs concentration Avoid distractions when driving such as loud music trying to read maps tuning a radio Highway Code Section 126 Legally these recommendations can be relied upon by any party to establish any liability which is in question Road Traffic Act 1998 These legislative driving codes arise from a recognition that in car systems are potentially dangerous because of their complexity At the same time manufacturers are increasing the complexity of in car systems Clarion a leading manufacturer has announced a car PC a radio sized PC which provides Microsoft Windows access to the Internet for email and other services as well as to navigation and normal radio and hi fi functions see Figure 1 In 1998 the best selling car radio in Tottenham Court Road London was a Kenwood and had a user manual of over 500 pages This represents quite substantial complexity a driver cannot look at a manual while driving so even if some of the user manual is irrelevant to driving conditions there is still a considerable learning burden Thus on the one hand there is recognition of driving problems and on the other hand the manufacture of products that as we shall argue compromise safety A range of pressing ethical issues are raised Further the ethical issues that
3. of the consumer may take the view that counting features is not the only issue and perhaps not their top priority Worst of all they may see complexity as an inherent property of technology Conclusions The operational difficulties encountered with our example of an in car radio are unfortunately not specific to the model we studied Similar difficulties are commonly experienced with many types of consumer electronics e g fax machines see e g Thimbleby 1997 video recorders A different example from cars is illustrated by a Rover advert in The Times page 6 June 1999 Safety is Paramount the advert starts and it shows the interior of the Rover 75 see Figure 2 which is as safe as a tank but has a video screen showing a map presumably a GPS map at such detail it would be hard to read If a driver was seen trying to read a map while driving the UK police would stop them for driving without due care and attention See the quotations earlier in this paper from Sections 126 to 128 of the Highway Code We find it hard to see how a dynamic map display in the centre console of the car even if it was at a scale that was easily readable from the driver s position would not be a serious distraction from driving Yet somehow the advert claims that the Rover 75 passes the most stringent European safety tests The only way this can be interpreted as other than disingenuous is that perhaps the most stringent tests
4. s 15 second search If the search is unsuccessful e g because there is no JAZZ then the driver must repeat the process This may require up to 11 attempts as there are that many different music categories Total driver time is 165 seconds assuming no errors and full attention to the radio Total radio time is 165 seconds Overall time is 330 seconds about 5 minutes 2 The driver chooses the next RDS category does a search and waits to hear the selected station This requires less continual attention from the driver but there are more RDS choices to work through There are 30 categories and in the worst case the one the driver wants will be the last one looked at Note that although there are several music categories there is no general music category even OTH MUS means music not otherwise categorised so for example it will not find jazz Total driver time is 30x10 300 seconds Total radio time is 30x15 450 seconds Total time is 750 seconds over 12 minutes These times are surprisingly long If the driver makes mistakes using the radio the times will increase as will the amount of attention the driver needs to devote to the radio This is ironic if the driver is distracted from the radio by a driving task they are then going to have to spend more time on the radio thus further diverting their attention from driving Possible alternative design A large part of the delay is caused by the radio having only one tuner If the dri
5. the eye to accommodate presumably a driver can read their instruments and the requirements on visual accommodation is not a special problem of radios The writing on a legal UK licence number is 8cm high well mine is I don t know what the law is Doing the sums 8cm at 20 5 metres is equivalent so far as the image on the eye s retina is concerned to 3 1mm at 80cm 3 3mm at 70 degrees Yet some of the radio s text is 1 5mm high so at the 70 degrees viewing angle its effective height is 1 4mm This is known to be too small to read for drivers who are able to pass the legal vision test Thus to read the radio s status lights the driver has to move their head closer and in this car lower Doing the sums the driver would have to move their head 0 64 metre closer to the radio Doing so will significantly reduce their vision of the road not that they can be looking at the radio and the road at the same time Possible alternative design Important symbols on the radio display could be made a readable size The radio display has effectively spare space currently taken up with icons Alternatively some of the fixed symbols need only appear when they are relevant A different approach would be to make better use of sound see the comment on beeps above as the radio is obviously used by a driver who is able to listen to its output 4 A reasonable task is I want to do some driving We conclude that the radio is not desi
6. this imbalance they mostly fail and we would go as far as to say that they merely serve to make the user feel even more inadequate We suggest that using the notion of a veil of ignorance as described by John Rawls 1971 may focus the designer on user s difficulties and yield beneficial results We would like to take the idea of a social contract further by stating that as a matter of justice users should be treated equally and not less than they are We take the position that designers manufacturers are at the very least jointly responsible with the user the balance of power is weighted on their side they are the holders of knowledge and the means of change Acknowledgements This work was supported by EPSRC grant number GR M14548 Penny Duquenoy is a PhD student funded by EPSRC References D Berdichevski and E Neunschwander 1999 Toward an Ethics of Persuasive Technology Communications of the ACM 42 5 pp D Concar D Graham Rowe P Marks Special Investigation Mobile Phones New Scientist pp20 25 162 2181 1999 Editorial p3 G Cupit 1996 Justice as Fittingness Oxford University Press Driving Standards Agency The Highway Code The Stationery Office 1999 P Duquenoy amp H Thimbleby Justice and Design IFIP Conference on Human Computer Interaction Interact 99 1999 in press M D Harrison amp H W Thimbleby editors Formal Methods in Human Computer Interaction C
7. Ethics and consumer electronics Harold Thimbleby amp Penny Duquenoy Gary Marsden Middlesex University University of Cape Town School of Computing Science Department of Computer Science LONDON N11 2NQ Private Bag RONDEBOSCH United Kingdom 7701 South Africa http www cs mdx ac uk http www cs uct ac za Abstract The design of car automobile radios exposes ethical issues in the design of consumer electronics We show that car radios despite being manufactured for many years and being a well understood technology are unsafe to use It is implausible that manufacturers design such unsafe devices unwittingly We argue that complex in car devices raise clear ethical issues i their complexity of operation demands and diverts driver attention from road safety social ethics social responsibility ii the values embedded in their design e g marketing values seductive styling are not consistent with their function design ethics issues of professional responsibility Further we show there is a correspondence between theories of justice and these ethical issues Introduction This paper proposes that the evident unnecessary complexity of technological systems is an ethical issue and we illustrate our argument with examples from in car devices In car devices provide a clear trade off their design complexity requires attention and attention on the roads is of paramount importance for safety and is legislatively recogn
8. ambridge University Press 1994 T Landauer The Trouble with Computers MIT Press 1995 K F H Murrell Ergonomics Man in his working environment Chapman and Hall 1965 R Nader Unsafe at Any Speed Pocket Books 1965 Pioneer KEH P7600R User Guide J Rawls A Theory of Justice Oxford University Press 1972 Originally published 1971 Harvard University Press H W Thimbleby Design for a FAX Personal Technologies 1 2 pp101 117 1997 Appendix We now give specific examples of design problems with car radios For the sake of concreteness and so that readers of this paper can check our comments all discussion relates specifically to the Pioneer KEH P7600R radio and the Peugeot 505 car Experiments with the car radio were performed with the radio outside of the car in a rig and in ideal laboratory conditions that is not under driving conditions All measurements were taken with the car stationary For each task we draw a conclusion about the consequences of the design of the radio and we very briefly offer an alternative design approach that could avoid the problem Although our purpose is not to explore design alternatives in this paper the intention is to show that the design problems are not inevitable and that trade offs of course not necessarily those we suggest could have been made that would have resulted in a safer design 1 A reasonable task is I want to listen to another radio s
9. and no opportunity to test it in car So who is treating who unjustly The marketing people at least are treating other road users who are not consumers of their products as less than they should be Indeed these other road users are not influenced by the status or other features of the radios they are only influenced by the driver s skill and attention available to use that to ensure they drive safely We could argue that drivers treat other road users as less important than say the desire to change radio station However to argue this would be to draw attention away from the manufacturer s greater responsibility to the drivers an argument that Ralph Nader 1965 has already defeated The manufacturers are responsible for the car s safe engineering Radios in perspective and versus other technological problems Are we worrying too much about one sort of problem because it is easy to focus on rather than being significant For example having argumentative children in a car may well place greater demands on the driver than even a badly designed radio A radio does not provide emergency demands like children can For example the New Scientist points out that we worry about mobile phones heating our brains yet they don t heat them as much as hair dryers do Mobile phones are a witch they are an obvious complicated technology that is easy to blame because we do not understand it whereas hair dryers are well establis
10. are represented in a clear cut way in this domain are indicative of more subtle trends in other domains Our lives are becoming increasingly dominated by gadgets and thinking clearly about the issues raised is easier in a domain such as transport which has a regulatory framework that makes distinctions between appropriate and inappropriate behaviour manifest The Sale of Goods Act 1979 as amended by the Sale and Supply of Goods Act 1994 and the Sale of Goods Amendment Act 1994 which require that products should be fit for purpose and should correspond with the description of them impose weaker requirements than the Road Traffic Act Justice and design There are three aspects we explore as they relate to the ethical conception of justice i In car entertainment is promoted by marketing and responds to actual and perceived consumer demand For example car manufacturers perceive that they can sell their cars more easily if they contain sophisticated in car systems ii Given that the in car devices have an appearance and functionality determined by the market a second question is whether the devices are appropriately engineered For example if using an in car device requires understanding a long manual then this seems implausible iii The designer and user of a device do not have an equal relation mediated by the device The designer is in control of the device and understands it deeply but for the user the devi
11. ce is fixed and largely unknown These points relate closely to ethics and to justice in particular i Whether systems promote a higher quality experience of driving over a wide range of possible dimensions such as safety alertness relaxation navigational knowledge or not is a question of fittingness in Geoffrey Cupit s sense of justice as fittingness ii The second point relates to John Rawls notion of justice following from a veil of ignorance iii Thus there is a lack of reciprocity between designer and user Thus the third point relates to justice via the implicit social contract Moreover the design community has closely corresponding concepts i task fit and ii know the user but these have not hitherto been expressed ethically In short there is a precise correspondence between the design issues and clearly articulated notions of justice We can go further in two ways First we can put ethical approaches into correspondence with various competing design paradigms utilitarian e g the ISO definition of usability deontological guidelines virtue formal methods and so on and thus see that there is unlikely to be a resolution of the various methodological approaches e g user centred cf Landauer 1995 formal methods cf Harrison amp Thimbleby 1994 within the design community Secondly Rawls conception of justice is operational that is it can be recruite
12. d as a method for designing more ethically Duquenoy amp Thimbleby 1999 Thus a Rawlsian approach can be used to change the world rather than merely describe what is wrong with it Since in car devices represent a high margin and leading edge technology finding ways to make these devices better itself an ethical judgement is paramount it is pleasing then that there could be spin offs into many other areas of our lives with high technology Problems with current examples The Appendix to this paper provides a list of reasonable tasks a driver would wish to undertake using a car radio and it gives full details of the way in which a particular radio is used to achieve the driver s goals Here in the body of the paper we summarise the findings Routine tasks take a long time some simple tasks take over ten minutes and demand the driver s almost full attention The radio is illegible and awkward to use The radio has time outs flashing indicators which make it harder to use should the driver be distracted away from giving it full attention These are standard egonomic issues Murrell 1965 The user interface of the radio is intrinsically confusing as well has having numerous features that are not mnemonic The radio has an attractive front panel whose colours can be changed We conclude the radio is designed to be sold not used This implies an ethical judgement poor business ethics applied b
13. gned for driving conditions The radio has various time outs so if any distraction takes more than a second or so times seem to vary in different parts of the radio s interface or requires both hands of the driver the radio will not be in the intended mode after the radio times out and the driver will have to start over and almost certainly look at the radio again Alternatively the driver may rush their other task so that they can resume using the radio before it times out and loses what they were doing We noted above A2 that the radio s display has some flashing indicators These cannot be seen by a short glance at the radio they may be flashed off at that moment Possible alternative design Remove the timeouts Timeouts are a heavy handed way of providing UNDO and CLEAR functions Other design related comments The Appendix gives a range of driver tasks and explains the problems they cause for driver attention Lest the impression is created that that is an exhaustive summary of the design problems here are a few more in outline The radio has a remote control with a different user interface The radio has a programmable key with different meanings The radio has some buttons do nothing for 2 seconds have to be held continuously before they work The radio has numerous features such as FIE whose meaning is not obvious The radio has a user manual 76 pages long e g not easy to read when driving The s
14. hed and their heating our brains is easy to understand in fact it is practically what they are for so there is no concealed surprise On the other hand unlike mobile phones hairdryers don t produce ionising radiation so the arguments for and against are not so obvious as they might appear at first sight In their article Toward an Ethics of Persuasive Technology Berdichevsky and Neunschwander 1999 give a framework for clarifying the levels of ethical professional Figure 2 Rover75 view of display console reproduced from Rover s web site http Awww rover75 co uk 1999 responsibility based on predictable outcomes Although their work is concerned with the domain of persuasive technologies the principles are relevant to the issues being discussed here Only when the outcome of the technology is unintended and not reasonably predictable can the professional be absolved from all responsibility In the case of in car devices such as our example of the radio the outcome of non usability in the form of user distraction is easy to predict and there are standard usability guides widely available Manufacturers might respond in three ways In the first instance they may say that complex design is not an issue they might say they are responding to consumer demand people like buttons and features so that is what they get or they might decide that there are ethical issues that need addressing Representatives
15. ised as such Our position can be set out Facts preservation of human life on the road requires driver attention attention as a human cognitive resource is limited complex interactive devices require attention road safety requires driver attention Evidence of this paper in car devices are complex and divert driver attention the complexity is unnecessary for the manifest purpose of the devices Argument preservation of human life in these circumstances is an ethical priority human life is unnecessarily at risk hence the design of consumer electronics for cars is unethical This reasoning is we think obvious Ignorance of issues is not an excuse indeed under law it is not a valid excuse and we would argue that in car devices and their safety issues have been obvious to reasonable people for many years Newspapers report accidents and car safety has a high profile in most Western countries With such an argument it is important to use an explicit framework We take the UK Road Traffic Act as interpreted in the Highway Code This is a public document with legislative status for driving For example to pass the UK driving test substantial theoretical Figure 1 AutoPC a car radio sized PC reproduced from Clarion s web site http autopc com 1999 and practical knowledge of the Highway Code is tested Ignorance of the Highway Code can be used as evidence in court pr
16. oceedings to establish liabilities As it puts it Knowing and applying the rules contained in the Highway Code could significantly reduce road accident casualties Cutting the number of deaths and injuries that occur on our roads every day is a responsibility we all share The Highway Code summarises the rules thus expressing a rule based ethical framework for people who wish to be part of the community of road users This paper argues that somehow but quite clearly the design of electronic in car devices such as car radios has circumvented the explicit ethical assumptions of the Highway Code and indeed of common sense driving safety Overview of the context The British Highway Code the definitive guide to safe and legal driving in Britain has recently been updated and now interprets the Road Traffic Act 1988 sections 2 amp 3 more strictly You MUST exercise proper control of your vehicle at all times Never use a hand held mobile phone or microphone while driving Using hands free equipment is also likely to distract your attention from the road It is far safer not to use any telephone while you are driving find a safe place to stop first Highway Code Section 127 There is a danger of driver distraction being caused by in vehicle systems such as route guidance and navigation systems congestion warning systems PCs multi media etc Do not operate adjust or view any such system if it will distract your
17. pacing of the radio s front panel buttons is about 0 8cm less than any other in car controls
18. tation We conclude that the radio provides confusing sound feedback to the driver Find the gt button and press it for between 0 2 to 3 seconds Pressing it less that 0 2 seconds causes the frequency to step pressing it for more than 3 seconds causes it to increase continuously while the button is held down Unfortunately the radio beeps at 0 2 seconds on releasing the button and at 3 seconds Thus a brief press of 0 5 seconds gets two beeps which we ve found confusing because if you wait for two beeps the radio does not seek another station but changes the frequency continuously while the button is held down Possible alternative design The confusion is caused by a single sound having more than one meaning The problem could be solved by using different pitches of beep 2 A reasonable task is I want to listen to a music programme We conclude that simple tasks with the radio are distracting for long periods of time RDS is an scheme to make radio stations more informative it allows a radio transmission to send data that the radio itself can make use of For example RDS can be used to find radio programmes that are transmitting music Imagine a driver is listening to some music but wishes to listen to some other music The driver may use RDS to find some as follows Press the PT button why is it called PT The radio then seeks for an RDS channel that is a radio programme that has the additional RDS information
19. the radio understands not all programmes have RDS information The RDS category the driver is searching for flashes on the front panel of the radio so may be very difficult to read unless the driver glances for several seconds at the radio if the driver glances down the category may be flashed off and the display will look as though there is nothing there The driver needs to check because the current RDS category may be NEWS say not music A category search for a suitable radio station takes up to 15 seconds To change the RDS category the driver must press PT for 2 seconds then press gt then press This changes the category then the driver must press PT as before to search for the newly selected category This sequence of actions takes a driver 10 seconds of full concentration on the radio There are two choices open to the driver 1 the driver looks down to check which category is chosen some are SOCIAL RELIGION and we are assuming the driver wants music and keeps on changing category until a music category is selected or 2 the driver selects each category and scans it until the radio finds some music This does not require the driver to look at the radio but it takes longer since the radio will spend 15 seconds on each search 15 seconds for SOCIAL 15 seconds for RELIGION etc How long does each choice take 1 The driver chooses music categories This takes 15 seconds of full attention plus the radio
20. ver has to listen to a channel the radio cannot be searching for another channel Two tuners would remove 15 second delays from the interaction Having no timeouts would make it easier for the driver to pay attention to driving tasks without risk of losing their place in the interaction 3 A reasonable task is I want to read the radio s display We conclude the radio s display is not intended to be read by the driver The modes the radio is in can be seen from the radio s display Some of the indicators are text about 1 5mm high and which can only be viewed if the eyes are greater than 45 degrees below the panel plane Some of these indicators are merely information say whether the sub woofer is on or off others are relevant to what the user may want to do say whether the radio broadcast may or may not be interrupted with traffic announcements the TA 2mm symbol In a Peugeot 505 the radio to eye angle is 70 degrees the ideal might would be 90 degrees since the radio is tilted 15 degrees away from vertical towards the driver the angle of view is less than the angle to the dashboard and my eyes are 80cm from the panel in a normal driving position The highway code requires that a driver can at a minimum read a vehicle number plate at a distance of 20 5 metres in good daylight Lighting as in driving at night affects visual acuity but let us generously ignore that as well as the change in distance which requires
21. y the manufacturers It is well to spell out our reasoning Cupit op cit argues that notions of justice hinge on status and acting justly is acting in accordance with status To act unjustly is to treat people as either less than they are or as more than they are Cupit writes Justice is a practical virtue it is concerned with how we should act He locates the notion of justice in our moral thinking by placing it in a system of ideas the status system To accept justice as fittingness i e in the status system is to view actions as primary Treating fittingly we treat by acting or failing to act Reasons for action include raising or lowering of beings or entities and the treating of beings or entities as if they have a status other than that which in fact they have Thus there is a distinction between degrading actions which make or tend to make less acts which make someone less than human make someone unreliable acts of desecration and so on and unfitting actions which treat as less acts which treat someone as less than human treat someone as unreliable acts of irreverence and so on In the case of in car devices then the manufacturers know in principle they know precisely what they are selling A driver either has little choice as when they buy a car with an installed system or they do not have an informed choice as when they buy after a visit to a shop with inadequate time to test out the entire system
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