Event: SIGDOC Workshop Highlight – From Ethic to Interface: Designing Without Harm Using Critical Race and Trauma-Informed Ethics in Technical Communication

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As you’re registering for SIGDOC 2026 (early bird rate expires Sep. 23!), consider adding one of the four workshops offered on the morning of Oct. 23. I’m highlighting one of the workshops below. Hope to see you in St. Paul!

From Ethic to Interface: Designing Without Harm Using Critical Race and Trauma-Informed Ethics in Technical Communication

Presenter: Codi Renee Blackmon

Technical communicators and UX designers are increasingly called upon to address equity, accessibility, and care in digital systems. Yet ethical commitments often remain abstract, aspirational, or disconnected from everyday design decisions.

This workshop introduces Critical Race, Trauma-Informed Ethical Technical Communication as a practical design methodology that translates ethical principles into concrete, replicable practices. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in technical communication, rhetoric of health and medicine, critical race theory, and trauma-informed practice, the session demonstrates how ethics can function not as a constraint on design, but as an enabling framework for more just, humane, and effective communication systems.

This workshop reframes ethics as design infrastructure. The Critical Race, Trauma-Informed Ethic centers the lived experiences of marginalized users (particularly Black, Indigenous, and other people of color and multiply marginalized communities) and prioritizes harm reduction, choice, agency, and accountability. It contributes a novel, actionable framework to SIGDOC’s conversations on socially just technical communication and ethical design.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

  • Apply trauma-informed and critical race principles to technical communication and UX design
  • Identify potential points of harm in interfaces, onboarding, and documentation
  • Design communication artifacts that prioritize user agency, consent, and care
  • Adapt the Critical Race, Trauma-Informed Ethic to their own professional, research, or pedagogical contexts

Workshop Structure and Activities

The session is organized around four key design practices, each including brief examples, guided discussion, and hands-on activities:

  • Trauma-Informed Onboarding Language. Examine how tone, assumptions, and directives affect users’ sense of safety and belonging. Practice revising onboarding text to emphasize transparency, choice, and respect for diverse backgrounds.
  • Content Warnings as Design Features. Reframe content warnings as intentional elements supporting user autonomy. Design warning systems that are informative without being prescriptive.
  • Pacing, Choice, and Refusal in User Flows. Explore how interaction pacing and optionality are ethical decisions. Use flow-mapping exercises to redesign moments where users may feel forced or constrained, supporting consent and agency.
  • Documentation That Anticipates Harm. Revise documentation to acknowledge misuse, failure, and emotional impact without blaming users, while offering supportive guidance.

Methods and Pedagogical Approach

The workshop employs a participatory, design-centered approach blending short lectures, small-group discussion, artifact analysis, and hands-on redesign. No prior expertise in trauma-informed theory or critical race studies is required. All materials are provided; participants may work with samples or their own projects.

Takeaways and Replicability

Participants will leave with:

  • A Critical Race, Trauma-Informed Design Checklist
  • Guiding questions for ethical decision-making
  • Sample language and adaptable design patterns
  • A modular framework for integrating ethics into technical communication practice, research, and teaching

These tools are scalable for professional teams, classrooms, and community projects. The workshop aligns with SIGDOC’s mission by offering concrete methods for advancing socially just, ethical, and community-centered approaches to technical communication and UX design.

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Abi

Abigail Bakke, PhD
Communications Manager, SIGDOC

Abigail Bakke, PhD

Associate Professor, Technical Communication

Graduate Director, Department of English

Minnesota State University, Mankato

Armstrong 307D