Posts tagged Deontology.

Accountability in design ethics

If design is "taking into account," then designers are on the line for the effects of our design choices.

Written by Paul Tulipana on October 22, 2008

Some years back in my professional association with Nick, before BlogLESS, before DLB, we wrote a few posts together on a blog for the company where we worked at the time. It never really got its sea legs content-wise (quite unlike the uniformly polished gems you're used to dealing with here) but Nick wrote a post there that I've thought about several times since, and today it's finally time to rep it.

What he wrote was this: Design is "taking into account." What I think he meant by this is that a maximally good design takes into account and provides answers to a maximal number of factors (usability, ergonomics, ecology, aesthetics, performance, and so on).

Wylie High School by Esther Pearl Watson (via)

Are you a Punisher or a Daredevil?

In a supplemental to the design ethics dictionary, learn your ethical theory with the help of two comic book heroes (with not so great movies). What’s your ethical compass set to?

Written by Nick Senske on October 21, 2008

Yesterday, Paul began constructing an ethical framework for design, starting with the theoretical positions of consequentialism and deontologicalism. While I thought Paul’s explanation was a good one, in my studies, I often find it easier to remember abstract principles through examples. At the risk of redundancy, I’d like to share some pop culture analogies that might be helpful for understanding these important concepts.

The Punisher (left) and Daredevil (right)

Two ethical frameworks for design

Trying hard to get its act together, DLB is proud to produce the first entry in its new design ethics dictionary. Up first, consequentialist and deontological ethical theories.

Written by Paul Tulipana on October 20, 2008

Introduction

In the past few months, Nick and I have progressively begun to investigate design ethics. So far, we've been picking out instances where you can see (or significantly fail to see) ethical concerns being addressed by designed objects, and drawing a handful of platitude-like design maxims out of these particulars.

However, it has long been our goal to start systematizing some of this Internet research into a slightly more formal framework for a design ethics, and, I realized, there's no time like the present to get started.

While Nick is working on his PhD in design and architecture, I come from an academic background in philosophy. This means that our vocabularies aren't precisely in sync, which is what motivated this, the first in an ongoing series of posts where we attempt to define our terms. End introduction; caveat lector.

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