An/Aesth/Ethics: the ethical potential of design

Chapter three began by setting out one particular way of thinking about the complex realm of the ethical.

Design is often thought of as an activity seeking to change existing situations into preferred ones, which might suggest that it is ideally situated as a tool for responsible and active socially engaged citizenship. However designers often inhabit a conflicted ethical space, expressing a desire for responsible citizenship while often behaving in ways they themselves acknowledge do not live up to this standard. Understanding of the nature of these phenomena is of vital importance to attempts to support the socially responsible citizenship of designers. This paper briefly touches on some coping-strategies used by those caught in ethical conflict, before proposing a further suggestion of specific relevance to design, a concept of an/aesth/ethics: by which we anaesthetise ourselves to ethical pain by aestheticising ethics. This paper presents the case that there is hope for genuinely ethical design in an increasingly aestheticised world by drawing on Wolfgang Welsch’s suggestion that the root of ethics emerges from within the aesthetic itself. Design, which for so long has been a principal contributor to an/aestheticisation, contains within itself - precisely due its aesthetic nature - the potential to return feeling to a society which finds itself constantly numbed to true ethical being.

Proceedings of DRS

2016

The central original contribution to knowledge proposed by this thesis is the setting forth of a conceptualisation of ethical theory specifically in relation to design, with a focus on visual communication design. Building on earlier work by design theorist Clive Dilnot in the area of design ethics and on philosopher Giorgio Agamben's formulation of the philosophical concept of potentiality, a way of thinking about the relationship between design and ethics is proposed which concludes that design is in fact always inherently ethical. However, this conception of ethical design purposefully leaves questions of the qualification of good and bad unresolved, stating only that the ethical is the prerequisite condition in which both good and bad become possibilities. Design's significantly unethical capability to suppress and anaesthetise individuals' ethical experience is highlighted through a proposal of a process of an/aesth/ethics. Observation of the relationship between design and ethics in the real world through a series of interviews demonstrates something of the complexity of design's relationship with ethics and the diverse range of positions, beliefs, attitudes and paradoxes abounding within the design profession when it comes to addressing the question of "good" design practice. Six "sites" of ethics within contemporary design discourse are introduced and discussed. The ethicality of design practices in relation to these sites are then analysed through the lens of the proposed ethical framework: identifying strengths, weaknesses and potentials within these observed strategies. The way of thinking about ethical design proposed here demonstrates potential in contributing to designers' ability to critically consider the ethicality of their own practices. From this foundation they may be better equipped to begin addressing the question of the qualification of the "goodness" of design. In conclusion, proposals are made for how this framework could be practically developed and used to support and encourage ethical design in the real world.

Design is undergoing a re-conceptualisation triggered by debates about its potential to instigate meaningful social, cultural and environmental change. Simultaneously, design and the allied designbased industries are experiencing a vigorous ascendancy across many spheres of life. While our collective aesthetic is finely tuned to contemplate and consume all things designer, innovations in digital media are generating new dimensions in the design realms -spawning new industries and aesthetic developments. From designer kitchens and clothes to technology and landscapes, our senses have become hard wired to appreciate the nuances and aesthetics of the visual. At the same time, a growing consensus about environmental fragility and how practices of production and consumption are contributing to an unsustainable future, underpin a discourse which sees the potential of design to be transformative, or "redirective" (Fry 2008). There is little disagreement that we are witnessing an 'ethical turn' occurring in professional and allied practices, including the design fields. This re-conceptualisation extends design's role -and the of practitioners responsibility -beyond stylistic enhancement or the quest for optimal product solutions, to account for the aesthetic dimensions of human experience and consequences of creative decision-making underpinning design processes. The traditional roles of design, designer and designed object are thus redefined through new understandings of the relationship between the material and immaterial aspects of design, where the design product and process are understood as embodiments of ideas, values and beliefs. This notion brings to the fore central questions around ethics, social

Our understanding of design has been evolving steadily over the past 100 years and in recent years there has been a rush of new research into a variety of dimensions and Ethics is one the many dimensions that have received research attention. In this paper we look at the various dimensions of design and at current and past definitions to see the contemporary understanding of the subject as we see it today with the aid of models that the author has evolved over several years of reflection and research. We then trace the evolution of design as a natural human activity and restate this history in terms of the major stages of evolution from its origins in the use of fire and tools through the development of mobility, agriculture, symbolic expression, crafts production and on to industrial production and beyond to the information and knowledge products of the day. This sets the stage to ponder about the future of the activity and of the discipline as we see it today.

2015

Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, 2007

1 Hermann Broch, deploring the collapse of values in his time and writing about how the kitsch arts emerge in such a value-lost society, writes : « Das Wesen des Kitsches ist die Verwechslung der ethischen mit der ästhetischen Kategorie, er will nicht >gut<, sondern >schön< arbeiten, es kommt ihm auf den schönen Effekt an » (Broch, 150).

Proceedings of Relating Systems Thinking and Design (RSD4) 2015 Symposium. Banff, Canada, September 1-3, 2015., 2015

The relationship between ethics and design is most usually thought of in terms of applied ethics. There are, however, difficulties with this: for instance, conventional ethical stances such as deontology or consequentialism depend on procedures (predefined rules, optimisation) that are inapplicable in the sorts of complex situations which designers commonly face. In any case, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can act as an authority with which to guide practice. Depending on which theories we refer to, we receive different, and often directly conflicting, guidance. Paralleling the idea that design has its own epistemological foundations, rather than needing to import ideas from science, I propose an alternative way to think of the relation between design and ethics, looking to (1) the ethical questioning implicit in what designers do, and (2) the similarities between those situations which they encounter as a matter of course and those questions with which normative ethics is both most concerned and confused. I suggest that we might reason about ethical questions in design in design's own terms and, also, that rather than apply ethical theory to design we explore what design can contribute to ethics, inverting the more usual hierarchy. Design and ethics The relationship between ethics and design is most usually thought of in terms of applied ethics—as the application of normative ethical theories to design practice, for instance in terms of questions about agency, professional ethics or our relationship to technology or the environment. There are, however, difficulties with this. Firstly, as with any instance of applying theories to design that are external to it, what is special about design itself can become obscured. Secondly, it implies that ethical considerations are external to design questions, a view that can lead to seeing ethics as conflicting with design, either as an amelioration of design ideas or a radical innovation. In any case, it is not as if ethics is a settled body of theory that can be straightforwardly treated as an authority with which to guide practice: depending which theories or ideas we refer to, we receive different, and often directly conflicting, guidance as to what to do. There are parallels between this and the relationship between design and science. With the exhaustion of the attempt to provide a rational basis for design through the application of the scientific method, usually referred to as the Design Methods Movement, Nigel Cross, John Naughton and David Walker (1981) argued that, given what they identified as a state of epistemological chaos in science at that time (following critiques such as those of Paul Feyerabend, 1975/1993), scientific method was not a fruitful basis for design. Similarly, while we may wish to treat ethical philosophy as authoritative, it is unstable as a point of reference. As Terry Eagleton (2003, p. 229) has noted, we might expect to agree on general principles and diverge on particulars, yet we have no common view on many everyday ethical questions. Even with those questions where we have widespread agreement over an action being ethically good or bad, there is little agreement on why this is the case. Whether this state of disagreement is understood as a conflict between objective goods (Berlin, 1958/1998), an inevitable property of our subjectivity (Sartre, 1948) or as resulting from the dissipation of any overall idea of the good life with which to make different goods commensurable (MacIntyre, 1981/1985), the situation in which we find ourselves is that anything to which we refer to help clarify an ethical

Proceedings of DRS

In the context of the designers responsibility for the impact of technology, ethical considerations are important. However, these considerations are often seen as limiting innovation and the freedom of the designer. Is it possible, on the contrary, that ethics can also foster creativity in design? The research project Tech-Wise is about a practice oriented approach in ethics; developing tools to engage people with ethical deliberation on the impact of technology. One result of the project is a workshop format for stimulating ethical deliberation that can be tailored to particular technologies and design disciplines. We argue from the results of one particular instance of this workshop format that such an approach to ethics has a fruitful reciprocal effect. It can stimulate creativity in design by enriching the question about the purpose of an innovation, and the other way around enrich ethical reasoning by opening up to often surprising impacts of technologies.