Anti-Hero Cards and Design Activities

Anti-Hero card deck intended to expose manipulative and value-centered designer intentions and decision-making as a designer strategizes, generates, and rationalizes solutions. It prompts practitioners and teams with multiple roles involved to critically evaluate trade-offs, ethical considerations, and the potential impact of their decisions on users.

The definitions and types include not just a focus on the final solution, but also the user paths, task flows, and user journeys. Though represented through a playful lens, the roles indicate designer behaviors that can surface during the framing, generation, and evaluation of design artifacts.

The deck is intended to spark discussion, reveal hidden intentions, and challenge norms, making it valuable for design students, professionals, and teams seeking to balance user-centered approaches with business goals.

The Miro board contains five activities to use the Anti-Hero card deck throughout your design process:

1. Trade-Off Proactive: List and prioritize a balance between user and business trade-offs.

2. Anti-Hero and Hero Flows: Generate and analyze contradictory user flows for the same scenario.

3. A Value Switcheroo: Analyze a user flow from a different value perspective.

4. Raising the Red Flags: Anticipate ethical pitfalls in design and draft mitigation strategies.

5. Being an Ethical Investigator: Analyze design issues and iterate solutions based on user needs.