Being Led or Finding the Way?

volume 3 | no. 1 | 12,80 euro

May 2011

Learning, Changing, Growing • Being Led or Finding the Way? Mary Cook and Joseph Harrington

• Better Services for the People Sylvia Harris and Chelsea Mauldin

• Using Service Design Education

to Design University Services Jürgen Faust

Being Led or Finding the Way?

flickr.com/photos/thomashawk/52368779/sizes/o/in/photostream/

Understanding the Role of Ethics in Design Practice

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By Mary Cook and Joseph Harrington

What we do is evolving. There can be very little argument that service design is finding itself in some odd places these days, from working to reduce crime, to supporting disarmament processes, to actively shaping public policy. We are finding ourselves enacting new roles and slipping over the boundaries and borders of traditional disciplines. These strange new worlds, full of the weird and wonderful, abundant with glittering opportunities to show off how creative and positive thinking can really get to grips with the stuff that matters. But with these opportunities come new and unchartered challenges that question our practice, our behaviours and our ethics.

Surely we have no excuse. There are growing lists of ethical guidelines, and with a quick search we can have hundreds of them printed out and plastered across the walls of our studios.

But what is the value of these guidelines and how do they help us do our work better and more responsibly?

If we look to other disciplines, such as the social sciences, law and medicine, and examine their approach to ethics, at the forefront we encounter complex and statutory regulations upheld by large governing bodies. These organisations, with their oak doors and annual reports on heavyweight paper, play the role of describing and detailing sets of requirements to ensure the ethical conduct of their members.

For the practitioners and organisations within these fields, conforming to these sets of requirements is often the

only legal option, as breaking the code comes with the promise of expulsion and institutional exclusion.

Although design has a handful of organisations that advocate ethical standards, they exist exclusively as membership groups, where subscribers sign up to just consider a set of ethical principles. These are not regulatory bodies, and there is no legal imperative to subscribe to them. Instead they offer association in return for affiliation and membership with the promise of logos and other superficial designations.

The threat of legal action is rarely necessary to enforce ethical conduct, but the current incentives seem woefully inadequate.

These organisations often promote ethical conduct through a series of highlevel principles or ‘codes of conduct’.

A good example would be this extract

Mary Cook is a director and the cofounder of Uscreates. Mary’s role involves overseeing the strategic direction and development of the company.

Joseph Harrington is an associate of Uscreates.

He has a background in service design in the public sector and is the co-founder of the organisation Katz & Harrington.

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By Mary Cook and Joseph Harrington

from the Chartered Society of Designers: “… cause as little harm as possible either directly or indirectly to … living creatures, endangered species of plant or fauna, the atmosphere, rivers, seas and the land.”

Although there is very little argument to be made against statements such as these, how do they actually help us to do our work better and more responsibly?

“In 2010, Uscreates started a programme to investigate this question and to further understand the role of ethics in commercial and academic organisations.”

A core principal for this programme was to work closely and in collaboration with practitioners and academics and not to perpetuate the closed-loop nature of the current review process of ethical conduct. So, from the early stages of the programme, we hosted a number of ‘ethics breakfasts’, all fairtrade coffee and organic toast. Sessions brought together groups of service design practitioners and academics from a range of organisations and institutions to share stories of narrowly averted disaster and to openly discuss how day-to-day practice could engage with notions of ethics.

The sessions revealed a clear issue: ethics as a component of design practice is lacking any understood value. Instead, current rhetoric focuses on formalising ethics in practice to ensure that mechanisms are in place to legally protect an individual or organisation. Participants of the ethics-breakfast sessions identified the problematic nature of the exchange

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these institutions exist to enact: that of value through association. The central concern aired was that they do not afford any sustained or meaningful interaction: any opportunity for reciprocal action or influence. Participants argued that although these often-protectionist structures are necessary, there is a need for something a bit more meaningful: a further and sustained type of engagement in order to really examine and engage with the key issues faced by the industry.

The call from these sessions was that no longer should ethics be a box we tick in order to cover our backs, but instead an opportunity to actively reflect on and develop our practice.

But making this case is relatively easy from the safe confines of a studio in South London, drinking free coffee with designers wearing colourful socks. The challenge described by participants involved making the case in the c­ ommercial world. Even for the academics in the sessions, it was apparent that their direct affiliation with more commercial enterprise meant the amount of time available for investigation

1.

learning, changing, growing

of issues such as ethics was rapidly diminishing. However, for those who took part, the value of the interactions afforded by the breakfast sessions lingered: the reflections captured had been productive and meaningful, even during those stolen hours of the early morning.

Beyond this value, another chal­ lenge became clear: any conversational investigation of ethics was very unpractised. There was a lack of a useful shared vocabulary or discourse, with both practitioners and academics struggling to settle on a useful dialogue to penetrate the flabby exterior of ethics. It became evident that, in order to continue to investigate ethics as a meaningful component of practice and to make a decent case for its value, there was a need to have a useful and

shared ethics discourse to support more productive debate.

And so the aim of our programme resolved to support the development of a shared ethics discourse for design.

A key starting point was easy: more conversations. We wanted to explore the h ­ ypothesis that practitioners simply taking the time to discuss ethics, ranging from perceived issues within their work to broad concepts of ethics in practice, would support the development of d ­ iscourse. At the end of 2010, we launched a short pilot programme called Ethics Buddy to bring design practitioners and academics together to explore how c­ reating opportunities for more conversations would develop a shared discourse. Four academics met four practitioners for two conversations lasting around an hour

Mary during an ethics interview with a service design researcher, Alan Boyles 2. Ethics breakfast session with service design pratctioners | 3. Co-creation sessions with front-line staff and discussing ethics in practice.

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2.

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By Mary Cook and Joseph Harrington

The “ethics guide booklet” includes an overview of the project, plus profiling and discussion tools and topic guides to support participants of the ethics buddy programme.

each. We acted as broker and facilitator, matchmaking participants and providing each buddy with a Buddy Guide. These guides provided participants with some prompts, along with simple profiling and reflection tools to support and capture conversations.

To examine the outcomes of the conversations between participants, Uscreates either observed them directly, taking notes in the corners of cafés, or conducted phone interviews with buddies after their meetings. All conversations uncovered a similar set of shared qualities: there was an apparent need to find safe space. All buddies sought to find de-institutionalised arenas to stage their conversations,

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opting for cosy cafés or pubs instead of offices, meeting rooms or academic buildings. This need for safety was further articulated by the nature of the first conversations. Diving straight into the perceived murky depths of ethics was a daunting task and so most buddies circled around the subject, testing the water before revealing any opinion or stance. One buddy reflected on this preamble by saying “you have to expose yourself in many ways.” Once trust was determined – often prompted by the finding of shared experience or connection – conversations quickly became open and frank exchanges.

Some buddies found the experience to be a form of ‘therapy’ with one stating “when you talk about ethics it’s quite a negative conversation and difficult … but I could vent my inner conflicts.” The shared goal of ethics became a strong and explicit binder, overcoming issues of confidentiality and supporting a feeling of shared interest and ‘community,’ with a buddy explaining, “for me, the ethics conversation was of most value because of the sense of honesty I felt.”

These brief meetings and exchanges had a powerful outcome. It was very clear that they enabled buddies to co-evolve shared definitions of value for ethics in their practice, building their confidence for making the case to their organisations or academic communities. One academic reflected, “these conversations make justifying value easy.” Each buddy pairing’s definition had a clear relationship to their fellow buddy pairings, and, more than anything, the consensus was that of the need for more of the same. What buddies

learning, changing, growing

described was the need to continue and expand these types of interactions. On a basic level, our hypothesis felt right.

These sessions made clear that the nature of design practice is not wholly appropriate to standard ethical guidelines and support. What was problematic was the need for ethics to be in constant negotiation to remain relevant and meaningful. The inherent qualities of the practice of service design described by buddies was that of a formative process: a kind of ‘work-it-outas-we-go-along’ mentality that, although challenging, was inherently valuable. So rather than attempt to reflect and define the principles of a good and ethical interaction at the outset, there was a need to work to assess and define them in action. Practice can often be a shapeshifting peg, and fitting it into a square hole just will not work.

1. volunteer

5. meet

with buddy

2. create

profile

6. have

a

con­ versation

At the heart of our experiment at Uscreates was the apparent need to approach ethics as a community. One buddy described the need for ethics to be a “ground-up thing, based on discourse and dialogue in a community of practitioners.” The value of a shared discourse is clear, but this will only be possible if designers come together to examine ethics collaboratively and in an honest and open manner. We know that we are finding ourselves in increasingly fraught situations: no longer can ethics remain an afterthought; the risk is just too high. But beyond the risk is the reward that we can together find in actively seeking to examine and reflect on our ethical impact; the reward of doing what we do better and more responsibly.

To continue developing a shared discourse, Uscreates are dedicated to creating opportunities for designers and academics to come together.

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buddy selection process

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try out the tools

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use guide to prepare

report back to the network

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SAN FRANCISCO This year’s Service Design Conference will take place at San Francisco, California, USA. The topic From Sketchbook to Spreadsheet is about exploring the critical relationship between service design and business. The call for contribution is open now! Watch the SDN website to stay updated!

About Service Design Network The Service Design Network is a forum for practitioners and academics to advance the nascent field of service design. Our purpose is to develop and strengthen the knowledge and expertise in the science and practise of innovation.

Service Design Network Office | Ubierring 40 | 50678 Cologne | Germany | www.service-design-network.org

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