Are Designers Ethical? by Peter Saunders

WHAT SHOULD I DO?

Why should we care?

What role does ethics play in design? How do financial pressures influence designer ethics? Have designer ethics changed in recent times? This book invited design practitioners, teachers, students and other industry professionals to respond to the above questions; to really contemplate what ethics means in the design industry. This is a collection of their responses. Peter Saunders MVC Candidate University of Tasmania

Pete Saunders has asked if I could write an introduction to ethics for non-ethicists, including an outsider’s reflection on why ethics is important in design. What should I do? That question is actually the most succinct introduction to ethics I can think of, even though it might cause a few ethicists to reach for their smelling salts. It’s a bit blunt, is the thing — not nearly as noble-sounding as the cultivation of a virtuous character and far more down to earth than agonising, in the comfort of one’s office, over how to live a good life. But there it is. What should I do? Which is to say, what should I do in relation to this particular situation and these particular people? We are all confronted with (various forms of) this question numerous times every day. It’s an ordinary, mundane occurrence. Most often we do not even stop and consciously formulate the question in our minds. “Should I say thank you to the bus driver?” “Should I let that mother with the unhappy child and three items in her shopping basket go before me in the queue?” No, we don’t usually ask ourselves in so many words “what should I do,” but somehow it happens that we do decide on a specific course of action, that we do X rather than Y, A rather than B, this rather than that. And each decision, each course of action is a living enactment, a flesh and blood example of ethics in practice.

Why does it matter? Well, what sort of people do you like to hang out with? Trustworthy ones, who most often do what they say they are going to do? Generous ones, who have a habit of discerning when a helping hand, or a bunch of flowers, or a cup of tea would be most useful? Selfish ones, who can be counted on always to act in such a way as to maximise their personal benefit? Rude ones, who will always be ready with a scathing remark but will never help out with the washing up? Plainly put, our specific actions do tend to accumulate over time, sedimenting into enduring character traits and even, dare I say it, providing the very stuff of a good, or not so good, life. Of course, in the grand scheme of things one decision doesn’t seem to matter too much. Everyone has bad days, after all. While this is doubtless true, I would suggest that all our little decisions, our everyday “what should I do-s,” in fact matter greatly. How we answer those mundane questions will influence how we answer the great big disturbing “what should I do” occurrences in our lives — the ones that crash in so unpredictably, so uncomfortably, yet so inevitably. These are the ones that impact hugely upon the very fabric of our lives, or upon all those relations which, woven together, constitute our lives in the world. It is a banal point, and perhaps because of this sometimes overlooked, but ethics matters because we

are all enmeshed in so many overlapping and sometimes conflicting webs of relationships. In other words, we never pose the question “what should I do?” in a vacuum. It only makes sense as a question in relation to the (myriad) specific contours of each particular situation in which we are bound up. In a public talk entitled “Making Sense of Ethics in the Everyday,” Professor Jeff Malpas put it this way: Ethics is not underpinned by some notion of the autonomous, ‘rational’ subject, but rather by the essential interconnectedness of subjects within a larger world. Such a ‘relational’ conception of the human being derives […] from the very nature of human identity as well as human meaning as based in our necessary relatedness to the things, persons and environmental circumstances in which our lives are embedded, and that provide the very substance and fabric of those lives. What we do and do not do affects others, literally contributes to shaping the world around them, just as others’ actions affect our lives and shape the world in which we dwell together. It’s frightfully simple, really, but also rather awe-full when you stop and think about it for a bit.

So why might ethics be especially important for designers? If I understood what ‘design’ meant I’d feel better about attempting an answer. As it is I can only hazard a guess from behind a glass darkly. Most broadly it seems to me that designers are continually contributing material artefacts to the world in common. Whether these are in the form of an architect-designed building, a poster, a website, a better mousetrap, or the packaging for some plastic widget, all of these artefacts contribute for a time to the larger environment in which we live. What sort of environment is conducive to, or perhaps even enables, decent relations among a dizzying plurality of earth creatures? I think that designers’ contributions to the fabricated aspects of our environments, to the worldly situations in which we dwell, are immense. From an outsider’s perspective this would seem to be a weighty responsibility, replete with potentially conflicting values and commitments. In other words, design is itself the response to a question as to what should be done, but it also shapes possibilities for choice and for action, sometimes opening up new choices and foreclosing others. Design is thus a response to the demands of a situation that also conditions other such responses. What should you do? There is also the sad fact that designers do not generally get to engage in design purely for its own sake. You are

instead being paid by someone to produce a something which makes that someone happy. Often enough such happiness is linked directly to the increased consumption, by the public, of some product or other. In short, I suspect that designers are sometimes under financial pressure to put lipstick on a pig. What should you do? I cannot answer this question for you. Some pigs are in fact adorable, and their presence adds delight to the world. Which is to say, the practice of thoughtful discernment is inseparable from the practice of ethics. No one else can do it for you, yet it seems to me that we do it, when we do it, not so much for our own sake, but for the sake of the world we share with others, a world which gives all our lives meaning. Our contributions to that world matter. What should we do? Dr. Lucy Tatman School of Philosophy University of Tasmania

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Why Speculation Hurts By Robert Wurth, Creative Director, Freshly Squeezed Design When your company seeks out a new logo design, advertisement, brochure, or any other marketing collateral, what you’re really looking for is a solution to a problem. For example, you have just made a new product. Your problem is that no one knows about it, so you require a means to alert potential customers. You might conclude that an advertisement is the solution. In reality, the advertisement is merely the vehicle that delivers the solution, but the concept is similar enough. Some companies advocate the practice of gathering a number of different designers or agencies to pitch ideas for a project. The way it works is that the company calls up several different designers and says, “We need a new ad. Come up with an idea to show us and if we like it, we’ll hire you.” If the designer is lucky, the company will at least have a creative brief, a short document explaining the problem, to send. In the design community, we refer to this practice as speculative work. It requires a designer to put forth work on behalf of the company without any promises or guarantees of getting paid. This practice has become popular because many companies erroneously view it as a quick and easy way to get the best ideas from designers. Unfortunately, requesting speculative design is a poor business decision because it caters to the lowest common denominator of design. It also forces designers to engage in the poor design practice of making snap decisions. Currently, one of the hot books in the world of business and marketing is “Blink: The power of thinking without thinking” by Malcolm Gladwell. In Blink, Gladwell advocates for the inherent quality of decisions that are made in an instant, citing that often these decisions are just as accurate (if not more accurate) than decisions made after careful, conscientious deliberation. However, within the book Gladwell also cautions that the process of snap decisions can backfire, sometimes drastically. The difference, he says, seems to be one of

knowledge and experience. For example, you might come to me doubled over and complaining that your stomach hurts. I might make the wrong snap decision that it must have been something you ate and that you’ll be fine. A doctor, on the other hand, might make the correct instant conclusion that you have appendicitis and then examine you more thoroughly. Gladwell’s explanation for this would be that the doctor’s experience allows him to instantly take in all of the subtle clues about your condition, allowing his mind to make a correct conclusion based upon very little data. Of course he would order more tests to be sure, but that’s not the point. Rather, the point is that I lack the experience and knowledge to give me a chance to make the same sort of correct diagnosis. I might have been able to guess right, but that would simply have been a matter of chance. Instead, my snap decision is based solely on my personal experiences — maybe I ate something bad once, and it gave me a severe stomach ache. This is important because it relates directly to speculative work. Inspiration never comes from just nowhere. It is the culmination of experiences stored subconsciously for the right moment to all click together. Speculative design work is an attempt to force inspiration without the benefit of experience. None of the designers are allowed the opportunity to get to know you and your business. They aren’t allowed the time to examine your market and industry. They simply lack the necessary data too allow them to make good, informed decisions about your marketing. The result is that the designers are forced to develop ideas based upon their own personal experiences and preconceptions about you and your company. Without any research, or discussions with you to guide them, their ideas become less about substance and more about style. If the designers are talented, they will certainly be able to come up with appealing designs. It’s even possible that one of them, through sheer chance, might hit upon a perfect solution to your problem, but that’s a gamble. In fact, it’s a gamble on two levels: first that at least one of the designers comes up with the right solution, and two, that you happen to choose that design.

Many business owners tend to distrust designers. They will hop from designer to designer, never satisfied with the work and becoming more and more jaded to the process. Often this is a result of poorly executed ideas that come from the speculative process. The kneejerk reaction is to blame the designers for not hitting the right message, without ever considering that their own process might be flawed. So, going back to the beginning, you still need an ad. Having read all of this, you decide not to put out a call for pitches, but rather you decide to choose one designer or agency and work more closely with them. Now, the process is different. Before the designer ever gets to the idea stage, he or she comes in and talks with you to get to know you and your business. The designer is armed with materials you’ve done in the past, information about who your customers are, about who the competition is, and what the industry is like. As the designer absorbs more and more information about your company, preconceptions are replaced with meaningful knowledge. When inspiration strikes, it has context that is relevant to your business and your needs, and that makes for a better design that caters more to your needs, and less to the whims of the designer.

Same as in any other industry, except that its importance is probably stronger in design. Designers are generally less aggressive business people than say, property developers, so it is more important for the industry to maintain a co-operative stance on key issues than to have a purely competitive environment (which is suitable for business people who thrive on aggressive negotiation).

The interesting thing is that ethics and morals are not set in stone. Concepts of social norms have moved drastically. An industry example would be the advertising companies and designers involved in the in-store and package designs for cigarettes.

Go back 20 years and the tobacco company would have been ‘A’ list clients. Personally, I feel that I need to be proud of the work I do, if I don’t I shouldn’t do it.

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