Reimagining Moralities of Digital Healthcare Systems: Heuristics as Cognitive Boundary Spanning Arrangements

While our digital systems keep developing and new technologies emerging, it is vital to keep in mind the limitations of our humanness. Our cognitive capacities have not changed as our technology has upgraded. This raises issues concerning design strategies and the principles of evolved moral cognition that organise the world around us. We investigate potential moral hazards related to designing systems in exceptional situations.

As heuristics have become an essential part of the design process, we present four scientifically informed design heuristics based on the latest studies of moral and evolutionary psychology. First, we introduce the “new ontological category”; second, we reflect on how the behavioral immune system affects our perceptions; third, we inspect beliefs in conspiracy theories; and fourth, cultural diversity in the morality of technology. Finally, we suggest these heuristics combined with design thinking can facilitate boundary spanning arrangements in multidisciplinary teams when designing digital healthcare systems for a morally informed user experience.