Ethics Video (Star Trek ‘Ethics’ episode)
As Dr. Chris Thornton says, “The problem is that reducing what may be considered ‘right’ and ‘good’ to objective, quantitative terms can often lose sight of reality as a subjective, quantitative experience—one in which complications and exceptions to general rules will always arise.” And so, you need to find a way to determine your own ethical judgements. In this class, we’re trying to provide you with a way to understand them.
We have three theories of good design and ethical practice proposed by three great designers and critical thinkers:
Papnek argues for a Designers responsibility.
Van Toorn argues that designers should address the public as citizens and not consumers as often prompted by business orientated clients.
Frampton (an architect and environmental designer) argues we should Infuse “humane intelligence” into the made environment.
A designer and good design should
- against the capitulation of human interests to those of the market (what we’re seeing now where economics holds greater value than humanity (Trumpian ethics))
- opposed to the destructiveness of what is and to the catastrophe-inducing economic rapacity that global capitalism is now inducing
- an interruption of the processes of economic “errancy” and therefore a way of helping contend with consequences of negative globalisation (interesting term here—globalisation can have positive effects in addition to negative).
- refuses resignation in the face of the given and refuses to acquiesce to the current domination of modes of reactive, negative, and destructive actions (or the ability to stand up and take action against those issues which might contribute to suffering, either of people, or the environment).
Personal Anecdote
I was requested to photograph the French Film Festival when I knew that it would mean 450 people (revised down from 500) just as the coronavirus restrictions were coming into play. I had to weigh up the income ($675) and the prospect of not having future employment or income for the next few months with the moral and ethical duty to a large group of people and more personally to my parents whom I live with and who are both within an at-risk bracket. However, in passing on the work to others, I’m also essentially promoting the job and putting someone else at risk.
Warm up with quick ten minute discussion regarding Milton Glaser’s Road to Hell
In small groups, quickly discuss (5 minutes) the following items. There is no right or wrong answer and the value is in your discussion.
- Design a package to look larger on the shelf?
- Design a package for a cereal aimed at children, which has low nutritional value and high sugar content?
- Design a line of t-shirts for a manufacturer who employs child labor?
Four Key Roles of Ethical Design
1. Persons
Reconnection of design to the solving of problems which affect humanity from a human perspective. For example, relieving the discomfort of standing by designing a chair. This could also relate to, perhaps, the designing of a phone in order to establish communication between persons.
Question: is relieving “boredom” a problem to be solved?
2. Relations
Design is about relations and “design designs relations between things and persons and things and nature”. The goal is to establish a design ethics which doesn’t treat these relations as a commodity of time, money, function, interaction. “Nonethical design reduces these to commodity relations (reduces all that a thing can be for us to the imaginary of the act of its purchase) or a utilitarian operative relations” explained by Adorno as technology removing the civil interaction of people to “gestures precise and brutal and with them men.” Design will be good when it serves the “enhancement of relations. Ethics, we might say, works to proliferate relations.”
Question: how does this idea of relations equate to the way that modern social media is often designed and employed to create connection, or to expedite connections?
3. Situations
“Design is the process…of seizing and realising the potential of situations (a) to be transformed; (b) to be so on behalf of or in the interests of or the project of, persons.” This emphasises “that what matters in situations is not their market value, not the capacity to be exploited and reduced for profit, but the human implications of the situations: its capacity to hold promise for how we can better—which today means more sustainably—live our lives.” In other words, we need to use design to improves the way we live our lives within a sustainable means, valuing people and relations, and creating situations in which these are emphasised.
4. Contexts
Mobile phones group discussion
Mobile phones are part of our day to day interactions. They’re a part of almost everything we do. I’d like you to look at the mobile phones and their associated technologies (camera, phone, software and apps, social media enablement) in relation to the above concepts of persons, relations, situations and contexts (use what you know so far about design in context and how it responds to different circumstances).
Prompts both positive and negative.
Topics to discuss
- technology and the environment
- personal communications and social media
- personal and work life balance
- applications and games for pleasure and distraction
Additional informaiton
- Unknown Fields Division: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth
- Phone Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSMSFLAsNzc
- iPod Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHUz99l-eo
- iPhone FaceTime: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKoLp_lGo14
- Pokemon GO benefits: https://vancouvertours.com/blog/five-benefits-of-playing-pokemon-go/
- Health applications: https://www.health.gov.au/resources/apps-and-tools/covidsafe-app
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