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)

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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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