WHERE DO WE DRAW THE LINE? WHO HAS RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE INTENDED AND UNINTENDED USES OF A DESIGN?

In todays society, the line of people that come into contact with a design before and after its release is vast. There are multiple touch points and many decisions made by people both within its creation and its use. In this essay, I am aiming to consider and determine where the responsibility lies, if the use of the design causes harm, discomfort or offence, specifically looking at the designer, the client and the user. Where does the invisible line of responsibility lie and are we able to pin point this specifically to one aspect of the design and use process? MacAvery says “the nature of ethics is not strictly black and white” (2010, p.vi) suggesting the potential for a solid answer may be low and it will require the understanding of a range of sources and viewpoints. In the title of this essay I have used the phrase ‘intended and unintended’ in the context of how the designer envisioned the use of the work. Designers are enabling the possibility for a range of uses, but are they fully aware of the potential they are providing. Through my findings I will endeavour to demonstrate the thoughts of each group, considering the responsibility they have, in order to suggest whether this uncertainty of moral responsibility causes issues within the design process.

DRAWING THE LINE AT THE DESIGNER

The creation of a design usually starts with one person or a team of people all working towards the same brief. They are aware of the desired outcome of the client and all should aim to work in unison to create a cohesive outcome. However, if the aim is to produce work for a client, does an opportunity ever arise that allows the designers moral responsibility to make a judgement on what the client has asked. In the case of visual communication MacAvery offers the idea that “Like an attorney, it’s graphic designers’ responsibility to represent each client without being influenced by their own personal beliefs.” (2010, p.31) This suggests that there is another layer of responsibility embedded in the field of design, not only a moral one but also one of consistency towards a client as they are the buyer of the work. This raises questions of what the actual job of a designers is, as discussed in ‘The Debate’ by Jan Van Toorn and Wim Crouwel. Margolin’s review article (2016) says “Crouwel claims that he can distance himself from a client’s message and present it without injecting his own personality into its presentation, while van Toorn counters that Crouwel cannot escape his own subjectivity” Crouwel took the stance that it is a designers responsibility to meet the needs of a client without inputting personal messages. Whilst this would appear the correct way of working to achieve payment and success, does it shroud listening to your morals? As humans we are subjective (as suggested by Toorn) and ,therefore, by simply working directly to a clients specifications are we ignoring the fundamental ability we have as intuitive beings to make decisions for the benefit of the wider world. If a designer simply carries out the brief to the clients specifics what is the need for a designer in the first place as they provide the creative input and alternative view point. A primary example of this type of work would be designs for a fast food company. It would be a designers job to promote these products, however, it is widely culturally known that fast food is bad for the consumers health, therefore, is the designer left doing work that goes against their moral values of helping and doing good or can they use their creative input to tackle both issues in one design. Sigga Heimis at her TEDX talk in Reykjavik (2013) stated “can I do something better with my ability as a designer?” Is it a designers responsibility to use their cultural knowledge and design skills to not only carry out, but also better, the vision of the client?

Furthermore, what does doing good truly mean? The idea of utilitarianism suggests that morality is “to make life better by increasing the amount of good things (such as pleasure and happiness) in the world and decreasing the amount of bad things (such as pain and unhappiness).” (Nathanson, no date). This poses the question of what the parameters of good are; good in what context? An example of context specific goodness would be euthanasia where, to the family of the ill, the prospect of a helped death may be viewed as murderous. Whereas, to the ill member, a helped death would end suffering and be seen to be good as through death, peace is achieved. One such view that aims to define what is and isn’t good is hedonism. “the only thing that is good in itself is pleasure (or happiness).” (Nathanson, no date) This idea would suggest that any physical thing cannot be determined as good meaning a design itself cannot be considered to do/be good. The moral responsibility of a designer goes beyond simply ensuring that the design does good but that they themselves had good intentions and aim to stay within the lines of morality.

DRAWING THE LINE WITH THE CLIENT

In the AIGA’s ‘A Clients Guide to Design’ a point of professional practice for a designer is stated as “a professional designer who accepts instructions from a client or employer that involve violation of the designer’s ethical standards should be corrected by the designer, or the designer should refuse the assignment.”(AIGA, 2001, p. 21) This would suggest that the responsibility of preventing an ethically unjust brief should be that of the designer. The client has written the brief in the first place, therefore, is it wrong to apply this duty to the designer when (if we follow the theories of Crouwel) a designers job is simply to complete the work desired by the client. As the implementer of a design, a client should be aware of the content they are putting out. They go to a designer for (in most cases) a visual representation of the problem they have, so they should already be ethically aware of the content they are asking the designer to visually represent and intend to release. Whilst the intent of a design is usually envisaged by the designer, a brief is formulated in a two way system where the discussion of intent is thrown back and forth between the designer and the client. Would this suggest that the intended use of a design is determined by both parties and ,therefore, both have equal responsibility.

Unfortunately for most designers the work they do is rarely publicly attributed to them. In most cases, work done for a client from a major corporation, is attributed to that brand, rather than the designer and, therefore, the ethical and moral questions against the work are raised directly to that brand. A case study that identifies this type of behaviour would be the H&M scandal of 2018, surrounding the casting and styling of a children’s jumper. The release of the images caused extensive controversy across social media with the suggestion that H&M were exploiting the idea of black people being labelled as monkey’s on innocent items of children’s clothing. However, if we consider the number of people working on this release, can we really blame the whole of H&M as a brand? The brand is the public face of all the people who work behind the scenes on every aspect of the content; this means, in the face of public scrutiny, only they can take the backlash as the name of the creators are usually completely unknown. As this was undoubtably an internal brief, do we draw the line with the client who commissioned this work? This piece would have been one of many created for the constant world of online shopping. The creators would have taken this image amongst many others, suggesting that taking a moment to reflect on the content would have been an after thought. Is there something to be learnt, therefore, about the design process and the way work is evaluated before it hits the market. Mhaka for the HuffPost (2018) spoke after the scandal and said ‘So H&M should face serious commercial ramifications and then step into the free world with an appreciation of how life in 2018 demands an all-inclusive form of brand communication and responsibility.’ highlighting how important it is to learn from the consequences of ignoring morals and perhaps, how internally the whole of the corporation needs to reconsider the way the message of moral responsibility is communicated.

The problem large corporations would face with moral responsibility, is that in a working environment of many different people, views, cultural and ethnical backgrounds etc. how do you determine this moral responsibility as a singular idea. This is where moral relativism comes into play ‘the idea that there is no universal or absolute set of moral principles’ (Ethics Unwrapped, 2018). Moral relativism, allows each individual to have their own ideas on what is morally just. Is it even possible for a highly populated corporation to define one set of moral principles. On the other hand, if some form of agreement could be reached, as Velleman (2015, p. 24) says, ‘arriving at a new socially defined reality which will allow social life to go on with minimal disruption’ this may ultimately result in a client obtaining work that cannot be questioned against its morality.

DRAWING THE LINE WITH THE USER

The intended and unintended use of a design tends to appear once the design has come into contact with the end user. No matter how much mapping, feedback, affordances and constraints (Norman, 1988) a designers puts into a design a user will always find other ways of interacting with a design and the manner in which they use it. This would suggest that the responsibility for the use of a design falls solely onto the user, as the identifiers a designer includes can simply be ignored. However, Cassium, Coleman, Clarkson and Dong (2007, p. 13) suggest ‘a transference of responsibility from the user of design’ and they go on to say that with the rise of laws and standards of practice for the outcome of a design, the designer or organisation must be responsible for the features of that design since consumer has multiple grounds to claim upon is moral code is ignored.

Despite all this, there is one fundamental concept that juxtaposes this theory, who pulled the trigger. In a murder trial, with a gun as the weapon, whoever pulls the trigger (if found guilty) does the jail time. Whilst the intent to cause death was had by the perpetrator the act was only made fully possible, by the intended use of the products design. The true nature of the intent for the design of a gun is to kill. To consider this idea further we can look to concepts of ‘the mediation of action’ by Bruno Latour. In Verbeek’s (2006 p. 10) journal he mentions that ‘Latour points out that what humans do is in many cases co-shaped by the things they use’ and ‘the influence of artifacts on human actions is ‘script’…artifacts prescribe their users how to act when they use them.’ Whilst, in the case of a gun, the user pulls the trigger and aims it at the target, the gun itself is set up to promote this action. Therefore, could we go as far as to say it encourages this action. Verbreek suggests that ‘when an entity enters a in relationship with another entity, the original programs of action of both are translated into a new one.’ (2006, p. 11) is this inferring that when the user and product come together a new sense of action is created, ultimately disturbing the weight of responsibility evenly once again.

Throughout this essay I have considered the potential of drawing the line in three places as to who has the responsibility for the use of a product and its moral judgment, in the hope of being able to pin point the responsibility at one group of engagers within the design process. After considering each stage and looking into the parameters taken and their effect on the end use of a design, I have begun to understand that the idea of labelling the moral obligation on one group is actually a lot more complex, simply because each group is intertwined with one another and the actions of one engager influence the actions of another. With the research I have been able to carry out, in the time frame and word count I had, I feel the outcome of the essay at this point is that the heaviest responsibility falls onto the designer as their input is seen throughout each stage of the designs use. However, across all three, it would be wrong to suggest that there isn’t partial responsibility that falls on all. Unfortunately I feel that this is a question that requires more extensive reading and understanding, particularly into the concepts of Latour around the meditation of actions, as this would seem to hold the key to understanding the connection between the responsibility of designer and the user.

Reference List:

AIGA. (2001) A Clients Guide to Design: How to Get the Most Out of the Process. New York: AIGA

Cassim, J., Coleman, R., Clarkson, J., Dong, H. (2007) Design For Inclusivity. Farnham: Gower

Ethics Unwrapped (2018) Moral Relativism. Available at: http://ethicsunwrapped.utexas.edu/glossary/moral-relativism (Accessed: 10th March 2018).

H&M. (no date) An undated photo of an advert for a hoodie by H&M. Available at: https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/retail/2018/01/17/after-monkey-hoodie-scandal-h-m-hires-diversity-leader/1039748001/ (Accessed: 9th March 2018)

Kane, E. M. (2010) Ethics: A Graphic Designers Field Guide. New York: Campbell Hall.

Margolin, V. (2016) ‘The Debate: The Legendary Contest of Two Giants of Graphic Design’, Journal of Design History, 1, pp. 90-92. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/jdh/epv033

Mhaka, T. (2018) ‘H&M- Everyone Is To Blame For This Monkey On Our Back’, Huffpost The Blog, 15th January. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.za/tafi-mhaka/h-and-m-everyone-is-to-blame-for-this-monkey-on-our-back_a_23333131/ (Accessed: 10th March 2018)

Nathanson, S. (no date) Act and Rule Utilitarianism. Available at: https://www.iep.utm.edu/util-a-r/ (Accessed: 6 March 2018)

Norman, D. A. (1988) The Design of Everyday Things. New York: Basic Books.

TEDx Talks (2013) Design and Social Responsibility: Sigga Heimis at TEDxReykjavik. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pzKMNaJnt0&t=555s (Accessed: 9th March 2018)

Velleman, D. J. (2015) Foundations for Moral Relativism: Second Expanded Edition. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers.

Verbeek, P. P. (2006) ‘Materializing Morality- Design Ethics and Technological Mediation’, Science, Technology & Human Values, pp. 10-11. Available at: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.126.7546&rep=rep1&type=pdf (Accessed: 10th March 2018)

Bibliography:

AIGA. (2001) A Clients Guide to Design: How to Get the Most Out of the Process. New York: AIGA

Allanwood, G. Beare, P. (2014) User Experience Design: Creating Designs Users Really Love. London & New York: Bloomsbury.