The Moral-IT Deck: a tool for ethics by design

This paper presents a new ethics by design tool: The Moral-IT Deck. The deck is a set of physical cards that prompt reflection on normative aspects of technology development. Coupled with our Moral-IT Impact Assessment Board, they help technologists to reflect on how to address emerging ethical risks and implement appropriate safeguards. We present the card deck, their development and our empirical evaluation. The cards and board enable designers to reflect on challenges posed by their system and plan how to act in response. Our key findings relate to three themes, namely: the value of our cards as a tool, their impact on the technology design process, and how they structure ethical reflection. Key lessons and concepts conclude the paper, documenting how the cards level the playing field for debate; enable ethical clustering, sorting and comparison; provide appropriate anchors for discussion, and highlight the intertwined nature of ethics