Ethics as Criterial for Design Practice
If design decisions are sensitive to interpersonal justification, they are ex hypothesi beholden to ethical criteria.
The goal of this post is to show that if I’m right so far, and our design decisions are sensitive to interpersonal criticism, then ethical considerations must be taken into account when we make them.
Two appeals
It’s a pretty straightforward fact about most design that it needs to meet two different sets of interpersonal requirements: First, a good design has to function as a successful appeal to its consumers (users), and second, it has to meet the standards and requirements of its benefactors (call these benefactors, for brevity, clients). Since, for most of us, most of our clients that don’t have some kind of de facto ethical status built-in (i.e. 501c3s, certain advocacy groups) are functionaries of their corporate stakeholders, the relevant set of values can only be those kinds of values that drive business success. In the case of almost any business I can think of, this boils down to making a successful appeal to consumers, and thus increasing profit. Since end users are the primary source of this profit, for the remainder of this thread, I’ll take it that the relevant appeal that a designed object has to make is to its end users.
I take this to mean that designed objects reflect a position (a stance) relative to the set of their possible users. Namely, they reflect a claim about the value of this object in the lives of these users: This product will make you fitter, happier, more productive, etc.
The contents of consumer appeal
Now, I’ve spent a lot of time on BlogLESS talking about what kinds of appeals (i.e. what kinds of persuasion, “This will make you happier!”) are effective. The point here, though, is that these appeals always take the form of giving reasons (even if those reasons aren’t good ones, in fact, even if they’re irrational). Since reasons are sensitive to interpersonal evaluation, they can be accepted or rejected. Now, unlike corporations, consumers are beholden to a huge plurality of values: beauty and usefulness are perhaps the most salient in design criticism.
Since I assume that this is for the most part uncontroversial, all that remains is to show that moral values must be taken — with, i.e. beauty and usefulness — to be considerations in the interpersonal evaluation of a design. I think I can do this fairly straightforwardly by example. These scenarios will be fairly extreme, but I think you’ll find as you think of your own that the point holds.
- Imagine that I design a new computer for children. Imagine that the programs I create for the computer are based on the best research in child learning, and that the computer is itself a beautiful, Apple-like object. Now imagine that when certain key combinations are entered, the computer produces a strong electrical shock. Let me stipulate that these shocks are meant to have pedagogical value, and that they hurt.
- Imagine that I design a new facility for a popular upscale restaurant in northern California. My concept is that patrons of the restaurant will take an elevator to a beautiful facility several hundred feet above the ground, nested in a majestic redwood tree. The view is magnificent, the interior and exterior are flawless. However, in order to do this, the restaurant will destroy the habitat for several indigenous species of animals.
In both of these cases, it is easy to imagine that the criteria of beauty and usefulness (educational or hedonistic value, respectively) are met, and even exceeded. I think that nonetheless, most of us would consider these design concepts to be seriously flawed. In the first case because we think that it is morally wrong to hurt children, and in the second case because we think that it is morally wrong to our trade small pleasures for the existence of populations or even species of non-human animals.
This, I suggest, is very strong evidence that design practice has an irreducibly ethical dimension, and so in order for a design to be successful in the relevant way, must account for certain ethical considerations.
| Tagged with: | Claims, Design, Design Ethics, Justification, Normativity, Obligation, Usefulness, Values |
