Abstract
Despite recognizing that ethics is integral to design, and despite awareness that design brings about risks and undesirable side and after-effects, design ethics remains critically under-developed. What is design ethics? How should one broach an area as vast as design ethics? In this article, I examine three discourses that have been commonly used to engage—and to provoke—moral reasoning, awareness, and action in design. They are namely, technology, sustainability, and responsibility. Within the defined area of each discourse, I examine a limited set of debates and issues that are relevant to design ethics today. Through this critical analysis, I raise new questions and issues for design ethics. Subsequently, I suggest how a theoretically robust design ethics ought to engage with the concepts and categories of applied ethics on the one hand, and on the other, to condition this engagement with the domain-specific interests, concerns and experiences of design.
Keywords
Design; Ethics; Technology; Responsibility
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.208
Citation
Chan, J. (2016) From Afterthought to Precondition: re-engaging Design Ethics from Technology, Sustainability, and Responsibility, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.208
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
From Afterthought to Precondition: re-engaging Design Ethics from Technology, Sustainability, and Responsibility
Despite recognizing that ethics is integral to design, and despite awareness that design brings about risks and undesirable side and after-effects, design ethics remains critically under-developed. What is design ethics? How should one broach an area as vast as design ethics? In this article, I examine three discourses that have been commonly used to engage—and to provoke—moral reasoning, awareness, and action in design. They are namely, technology, sustainability, and responsibility. Within the defined area of each discourse, I examine a limited set of debates and issues that are relevant to design ethics today. Through this critical analysis, I raise new questions and issues for design ethics. Subsequently, I suggest how a theoretically robust design ethics ought to engage with the concepts and categories of applied ethics on the one hand, and on the other, to condition this engagement with the domain-specific interests, concerns and experiences of design.