Use when a designer wants to challenge their own assumptions about a product or feature, check for unconscious bias in design decisions, consider perspectives of users unlike themselves, reframe a design mistake as a learning opportunity, or practice perspective-taking and inclusive design thinking. Apply the Another Lens principle to surface personal biases, blind spots, and worldview assumptions embedded in a design or product. Trigger this skill for any mention of bias in design, inclusive design, perspective-taking, worldview assumptions, challenging design decisions, who am I designing for, representation in design, or when someone says "I'm not sure I've thought about this from enough angles." Also trigger for "another lens", "check my bias", "what am I missing", "whose perspective", or "design self-reflection".
Use when a designer needs to critique a design, flow, feature, or concept for dark patterns and anti-user values, run reverse brainstorming to expose worst-possible solutions, generate ethical concept alternatives, or facilitate ethical dialogue in a team using shared Anti-Hero / Hero language. Use the Anti-Heroes card method to surface manipulative design intentions and pair them with ethical Hero counterparts. Lean toward this skill whenever the user mentions dark patterns, manipulative design, deceptive UX, ethical review, anti-patterns, designer responsibility, or wants to "break my design" before shipping.
Use when a designer wants to stress-test a product idea for unintended negative consequences before launch, question whether a solution addresses root causes or applies band-aids, identify who is being harmed or excluded by a design, evaluate a product across cultural, social, environmental, and safety implications, or run a structured pre-launch bad design audit across 12 consequence categories. Apply the Bad Design Canvas to systematically uncover the unintended negative consequences a product or service might generate — from cultural appropriation and inequity to environmental impact and exploitation. Trigger this skill for any mention of unintended consequences, pre-launch ethical review, who does this harm, stress-testing a design, bad design audit, break my design, or when someone says "let's think about what could go wrong with this product." Also trigger for "bad design canvas", "consequence mapping", "negative impact audit", "12 consequence categories", or "what harm does this cause."
Use when a user wants to pressure-test a product, feature, or concept for ethical risk; explore "what could go wrong"; do critical/speculative design; run a Black Mirror-style brainstorm or anti-goal workshop; build a Black Mirror "episode" pitch around a design; or surface dystopian misuse scenarios before shipping. Trigger even when the user asks vaguely about "unintended consequences," "dark patterns waiting to happen," "harm anticipation," or "ethical red-teaming" of a feature. Speculative, anti-goal ideation for digital products and services in the spirit of the Black Mirror Netflix series. Take on the role of a science fiction filmmaker to imagine how a product could be misused or cause unintended harm — across economic, political, and social dimensions — and turn those stories into concrete anti-goals the team can design against.
Use when a designer wants to identify hidden assumptions about user ability, capacity, or environment, audit a design for exclusionary patterns, generate inclusive design alternatives through structured assumption-busting, facilitate a team assumption-sharing session, or grow a shared knowledge base of design biases. Apply the CIDER elicitation framework to surface implicit assumptions embedded in a design, envision how those assumptions exclude users, and generate more inclusive alternatives. Trigger this skill for any mention of inclusive design, exclusionary design, assumption auditing, accessibility assumptions, stereotype checking in design, who is being excluded, or when someone says "I want to make sure this works for everyone." Also trigger for "CIDER", "assumption audit", "who can't use this", "inclusion check", or "accessibility assumptions".
Use when a researcher or designer wants to understand the "why" behind participant responses, uncover implicit values and ethical reasoning in design teams or users, prepare interview protocols with lead-off, back-up, emergency, and follow-up questions, identify covert categories around power, ethics, or belief, or probe ethical discomfort and moral reasoning in design practice. Design and facilitate Critical Interviewing protocols that surface the normative and evaluative judgments underlying participants' behaviors, beliefs, and design decisions. Trigger this skill for any mention of interviewing for values, ethical probing in research, understanding designer beliefs, normative research, critical ethnography in design, or when someone says "I need to understand why people make the decisions they do." Also trigger for "Critical Interviewing", "values interview", "ethical probing", "normative interview", or "designer values research".
Use when a designer wants to stress-test a product idea or existing feature for negative impacts, explore the dark side of something they're building, ask "is this ethical?", check for unintended harms, reflect on design responsibility, define their design values, or articulate what kind of designer they want to be. Run a DAH (Design Against Humanity) Cards session to audit products and features for ethical harms, map hidden consequences, build a personal ethical manifesto, and draft a future design vision. Also trigger for phrases like "ethical review", "dark patterns audit", "design against humanity", "responsible design", "value alignment", or any moment when a team is uncomfortable with where a product is going.
Use when a designer, product manager, or AI practitioner wants to reflect on the ethical dimensions of data collection and use, evaluate automation and AI features for manipulation or unfairness, assess whether intentions and processes are transparent to users, apply a structured heuristic framework to data-intensive or AI-powered products, or run a broad ethical health check on a product. Apply the Digital Ethics Compass heuristics to evaluate a product or business across four ethical dimensions — Data, Avoid Manipulation, Make Intentions Transparent, and Automation — putting the human at the center of every decision. Trigger this skill for any mention of data ethics, AI ethics, automation ethics, behavioral manipulation, transparency obligations, responsible AI, or when someone asks "is our data practice ethical?" Also trigger for "Digital Ethics Compass", "data ethics audit", "AI ethics", "automation fairness", "responsible AI", or "ethical health check".