Developing a Framework for Ethics in Product Design
Liam Arbeiter with mentor Carlye Lauff
Ethics refers to the moral principles that govern a person's behavior when conducting an activity or job. Many fields, like medicine and some disciplines of engineering, have codes of ethics for practitioners to follow. However, the field of product design currently does not have a universal code of ethics, which can result in significant sociological, ecological, and economic impact from the designs created. This research study focuses on the development of a framework of ethical considerations for product designers, and attempts to better understand designers’ perceptions of ethics in this field. An extensive literature review was conducted to gain understanding of ethics and how it is currently embodied in design work. From the literature, a draft of an ethical considerations framework was created. This initial framework was tested during in-depth interviews with eight product designers to further evolve and refine the considerations. Six of the interviews were with undergraduate product design students: two sophomores, two juniors, and two seniors, and the other two interviews were with industry experts in the design field. Themes from these interviews were then extracted: how product designers perceive and apply ethics throughout stages of the design process, and what ethical considerations should be included at each stage. In summary, this research developed an initial framework of ethical considerations for product designers during the design process, and began to understand the perceptions of ethics from various educational levels. Future work will continue to test the validity of this framework and perceptions across a wider sample size.