The Ethical Design Education article is interesting and compliments the Story of Stuff video very nicely. The video, in an organized and simple fashion- walks the viewers through the ideas behind ethical designing, and why its necessary today based off the present consumer culture that rules our lives. A few interesting notes: the idea of a “linear consumption process in a finite world” relates immensely with design. Rather than think of producing designs that respond to a single dimension of ‘need’, we should consider the life-cycle of everything involved. Also the entire concept of consumer culture as a primary function of humans in the 21st century blew my mind. It’s so true: we have extinguished our evolutionary role to reproduce (the world is technically over-populated) and our new role as humans is to perpetuate the buy / spend cycle. This coincides with ideas from the article, in that we need to reestablish our ethical role to our world and offspring. The article plainly defines this as “ethical to choose fresh water, clean air, nutritious food- the bounties our home planet provides for us – and safeguard these for future generations.” The article also states that “acting on our obligation to our human family can result in rewards far beyond our expectations”. This concept is extremely important and can be elaborated on. We envision “reward” a lot of the time as a monetary value, or for design, something that simply looks good and is popular among the public spectator, but as part of a solution to this problem a sense of ‘value’ needs to be redefined in terms of its ethical impact on the world.
Discussion Questions:
1. As a designer, this weeks material resonates highly with me. I quite often find myself pissed off and admitting that it’s the wrong time-period to be an architect. Everything is so economically driven! I currently work at a landscaping / pool design firm in town (I won’t name names), and the entire design process is so grueling – the client wants a pool for AS CHEAP AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE, while we do everything we can to make a maximum profit. This system has nothing to do with design ethics at all and I’m not exactly chomping at the bit to go find another job that does the same thing on a larger scale. I feel, the entire architect / design profession needs to be reevaluated.
A lot of viable guidelines can be extracted from this weeks material. As I mentioned above, the article defines design ethics as using fresh “bounties of our home planet” while ensuring its survival for future generations. This is addressed in the video as well as – paying more attention to the complete cycle of production.
2. I think the website holds true to its mission. The first thing I thought when considering how change could be implemented is: designers everywhere need to feel a sense of belonging to a new and different phenomenon. It’s a change that we’re not going to find in the modern workplace. So “The Story of Stuff” website accomplishes this implementation, starting from the home page. It’s design isn’t bad… I think they could definitely start getting away from the whole cartoon-vibe, and take their graphics a little more seriously. But its not bad for now. It encourages you to sign up and to instantly get involved with the program: not only with resources to gain education and insight – but also starts you off with “ways to get involved”- with the ChangeMaker Quiz. This is a step in the right direction for sure- but it needs to be taken further. A program like this could integrate into universities, or even the professional sphere as soon as someone catches on to its importance. I think once this initiative finds a way to involve the real world beyond a simple e-newsletter or interactive quiz, it will be well on its way. For example- they could put together some kind of award to give sustainable buildings or products (similar to L.E.E.D. Awards – but this would be for any kind of design product that addresses all the dimensions of its presence in the world.
Response by Henry:
I enjoyed you saying,
“ I think once this initiative finds a way to involve the real world beyond a simple e-newsletter or interactive quiz, it will be well on its way.”
This is EXACTLY how I felt about the website. The ideas being presented were great, the formate wasnt all that bad, but who were they trying to talk to. It seemed that the only people posting were individuals like us who were aware of the problem and wanted to fin more. They were just preaching to the choir. It did a terrible job of trying to spread the word to people not in the know. They need to do a better job breaking from this bubble. But how?
I would be interested to see (maybe your blog post for Monday) what you think would be am effective means of spreading the word out into the “real” world. You mention universities, which is a great start. But what about facebook, twitter? How can they get more people to open there eyes to the problem at hand.
Response by Andrew:
I liked your point of view of the website, even though it was quite different from mine. I too think the layout and quiz are great but I just felt like it was plain, and not very visually apealing and thats what I focused my post on. I just saying how I found it interesting how you were able to note all the good things about the site while I mostly focused on what in my opinion needed improvments. I also agree with Henry’s responce, I think that they should implement social networks into their website to get the visitors to the site sharing the ideas. What about having a Pintrest account where people can post pictures of how they are helping. Or a twitter where they can tweet what they are doing to help and see who is doing the same things. And this one might be a little bit of a long shot but, a game? They have to find all the reusable parts in places? I don’t know something like that.
Response by Barry:
When would you say the right time to be a designer was? I don’t disagree that this the wrong time, I’m just asking the question. I don’t know. Some interesting things are happening. I think 3d printing is going to be a revolution. With it being an additive process, it should eventually decrease how much we waste. I don’ think its impact can be overstated. That said, I don’t think it’ll reverse the attitude that you’re lamenting. We’ll just have to build things cheaper with less fee.
Which leads me to something I do care deeply about: beautiful spaces. If designers can maintain their status as technicians, while enhancing their status as artists (creators of meaningful objects/spaces), we may be able to reverse the problems we’re seeing. We need to tout the intrinsics of the beautiful. To do that, well, I don’t know. We’ll, first have to go back to the old fashioned notion that there is such a thing as intrinsics, rightness, goodness, universal ethics. Kant maintained that aesthetics judgement, understanding of our world, and moral judgement were interrelated. When designers skimp on aesthetics for the sake of economy, we discredit our mission entirely and reveal our ethical dilemma. This may have started with modernism, and it certainly existed when Modernism showed it couldn’t fulfill its mission.
Nate Kaylor: Design Thinking 