Situational Ethics: Re-thinking Approaches to Formal Ethics Requirements for Human-Computer Interaction

Most Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers are accustomed to the process of formal ethics review for their evaluation or field trial protocol. Although this process varies by country, the underlying principles are universal. While this process is often a formality, for field research or lab-based studies with vulnerable users, formal ethics requirements can be challenging to navigate - a common occurrence in the social sciences; yet, in many cases, foreign to HCI researchers. Nevertheless, with the increase in new areas of research such as mobile technologies for marginalized populations or assistive technologies, this is a current reality. In this paper we present our experiences and challenges in conducting several studies that evaluate interactive systems in difficult settings, from the perspective of the ethics process. Based on these, we draft recommendations for mitigating the effect of such challenges to the ethical conduct of research. We then issue a call for interaction researchers, together with policy makers, to refine existing ethics guidelines and protocols in order to more accurately capture the particularities of such field-based evaluations, qualitative studies, challenging labbased evaluations, and ethnographic observations.

大多数人机交互（HCI）研究人员已习惯为其评估或实地试验方案开展正式的伦理审查流程。尽管这一流程因国家而异，但其基本原则具有普遍性。虽然该流程往往只是一种形式，但对于涉及弱势群体用户的实地研究或实验室研究而言，正式的伦理要求可能难以应对——这在社会科学领域屡见不鲜；然而，在很多情况下，人机交互研究人员对此却并不熟悉。尽管如此，随着诸如针对边缘化群体的移动技术或辅助技术等新研究领域的不断涌现，这已成为当下的现实。在本文中，我们从伦理审查流程的角度，介绍了在艰难环境下开展多项交互式系统评估研究时所积累的经验及遇到的挑战。基于这些内容，我们草拟了相关建议，以减轻此类挑战对研究伦理行为的影响。随后，我们呼吁交互研究人员与政策制定者携手，完善现有的伦理准则和规程，以便更准确地把握此类基于实地的评估、定性研究、具有挑战性的实验室评估以及人种学观察的特殊性。