Content uploaded by Terence Fenn
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Terence Fenn on May 19, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 127
Wicked ethics in Design
Terence FENN & Jason HOBBS
University of Johannesburg, South Africa
Abstract
Wicked problems are wicked because, amongst other things, understanding problems as existing in
society, at the intersection of many possible points of views held by a variety of potential stakeholders
introduces indeterminacy. Ethical frameworks in this context may also be multiple and may exist in
harmony or dis-harmony alongside each other.
In this paper, we argue for an acknowledgement of this complexity. This acknowledgement includes
recognizing a distinction between successful and good design; that design, when considering the best
course of action in an ethical and pragmatic sense needs to look beyond the business and consumer
dichotomy; that ethical pluralism can exist across multiple stakeholders in an ecosystem; and that our
ethical judgements need to be considered within the context of socio-cultural change.
This paper concludes by suggesting a range of interventions and tools that could be incorporated into
design curriculum to assist design students with understanding and navigating ethical complexity.
Keywords: Complexity, Ethical judgement, Human-centred Design (HCD), Service Dominant Logic
Introduction
This paper discusses the many levels of ethical consideration that the designer has to account for. It
argues that ethics, like design problems to which they are inexplicably linked, exist due to their
construction within societal contexts and are thus complex, indeterminate and in need of ‘taming’.
We will discuss and argue for the position that design is required to offer the best decision that
enables positive impact for the widest range of actors and environments and it is the designer who
carries the responsibility of navigating ethical complexity because of their influence over the future,
resources, social practices, and so on.
By drawing on a range of literature generally addressing complex societal problems in design and
philosophical concerns related to moral relativism, this paper will argue a position centered around
the following:
1. The need to extend the framing of design problems beyond human-centered design (HCD’s)
common prioritization of the needs of users and businesses including managing conflicting
ethical positions as a result of actors’ prioritization of their own relative ethical positionings
2. Accounting for the affects of change that extend beyond primary actors
3. Acknowledging the challenge of operating in contexts of ethical pluralism in general.
The authors propose that affecting change through a consideration of factors beyond the immediate
and relative ethical (or other) needs of primary actors may be more effective for the sustainable
resolution of complex societal problems. Furthermore, the designer is required to engage with these
broader areas of concern if they are to meaningfully comprehend the potential impact of their design
interventions.
This is achieved by the designer understanding the frameworks and systems related to the
immediate problem space (codes of practice, policies, judicial laws, constitutional laws, acceptable
practice etc.) while recognizing and reflecting on their own ethical motives. These like other aspects
of wicked problems need to be understood ‘objectively’ before they can be acted on ‘subjectively’.
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 128
This paper will conclude by suggesting a range of interventions and tools that could be incorporated
into design curriculum to assist design students with understanding and navigating ethical
complexity.
Recognising social complexity and ethical relativism
The idea that design should be responsive to society is not new (Melles et al 2011, p. 143). Both
Whitely (1993) in Design for Society and Papeneck (1991) in Design for the Real World articulated the
need for moral and socially responsible design practice (Melles et al, p. 144) to counterbalance the
‘market-driven design’ that goes beyond the idea of meeting fundamental human needs in the
stimulation of human desires to make a profit (Thorpe & Gamman 217, p. 2011, Keinonen 2010, p.
19). However as early as 1973, Rittel and Webber (1973, p. 159) describe the resolving of design
problems as an inherently complex activity located in the subjectivity of social processes and
networks. Resolving these societal problems, they noted, was a complex act in itself as these
problems were ill-defined (ibid: 160), elusive (ibid: 165), and indeterminate having no clear solution
(ibid, p. 161). Nonetheless, Rittel and Webber contended, understanding of the characteristics of the
societal problem was critical in order to determine what action, if any, the design should engage in.
These types of problems were termed by Rittel and Webber (and are now almost pervasively
referred to in design) as wicked in the sense that before they could be solved these types of
problems needed to be tamed, defined and limited. Understanding wicked problems is akin to
understanding the problem-ecology - the complexity from which the problem emerges (Fenn &
Hobbs 2012, p. 6). Satisfying peoples’ fundamental needs is in design inextricably related to fixing
problems (Keinonen 2010, p. 19). IDEO s Three Lenses of Human-Centered Design (2008), see Figure
1, models the concept of a problem-ecology at a meta-level. The three lenses of the model, namely
Desirability, Feasibility and Viability orientate the different needs that require understanding and
fulfillment in order for a design problem to be resolved.
Identifying and objectively understanding the needs of a problem-ecology has become a key area of
practice in design particularly in human-centred design (HCD) with numerous methodologies and
methods such as Critical Design, User-Centered Design, Contextual Enquiry, Applied Ethnography,
Participatory Design (Sanders & Stappers 2012, p. 19).
An array of literature related to recognising needs in a problem-ecology has been devoted to
dialogue between designers and people (Sanders & Stappers 2012, Buur & Larsen 2010, Wright and
McCarthy 2010) and participatory processes in general (Visser et al 2005, Sanders 2000, Sanders &
Stappers 2008, Steen 2010). While there is value in addressing needs in terms of human desires, it is
necessary to recognise that need is not purely subjective to the needing individuals alone (Keinonen
2010: p19). What is needed, Keinonen argues (ibid), becomes a question of appreciation, values,
power and resources and includes numerous other stakeholders such as political decision makers,
authorities, business owners, employees, community leaders etc.
Actors of these types, the individuals in need (who themselves may offer contrasting views) as well
as designers, themselves, ensure that resolving complex societal problems is always a ‘political
process’ that involves multi-stakeholder engagement and during which stakeholders reveal “different
intentions, frequently subversively expressed and very often conflictual towards each other, and that
is an unavoidable part of human interaction” (Buur & Larsen 2010, p. 122).
The challenge for design is negotiating the various stakeholders’ points of view and achieving a
commonly agreed end result (Mattelmäki 2008, p. 65). The dilemma that this paper speaks to is that
of the final responsibility for decision-making in the design process. Design is an act of envisioning
the future and as such, as noted by Tony Fry (2009), has a responsibility for ensuring there is one.
While participatory design claims to negate much of the bias of the designer and instead place it on
the end-user community, does it also therefore shift the responsibility of the outcome of the design
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 129
as well? If so, is this naivety at its most callous? As described earlier there are many other
stakeholders that wield power and influence over what is ‘needed’. Additionally larger macro-forces
such as economic and broader socio-cultural objectives such as environmental concerns, the need for
employment and gender equity may also influence thinking. Lastly, there is also of course, no
guarantee that those directly affected by the problem will act with any concern for anybody else but
themselves.
The ethical concerns emerge as such. Firstly, focusing overwhelmingly on users’ needs in resolving
complex problems implies that the designer suspends their own assumptions and judgments in line
with a relativist approach. Moral relativism at first appears a suitable approach for HCD as it
accommodates the diversity of beliefs (Dupré 2013, p. 24, Westacott) of multiple stakeholders,
however as relativism approaches each belief system as equally valuable, the corollary suggests that
each belief system is equally valueless. The outcome of such an ethical stance is the suspension of
judgment due to the inability to identify and prioritise the needs which require resolution. Secondly,
this crisis of value is further impacted by the likelihood of many of the stakeholders acting in their
own self-interest, in an egoistic manner. Therefore in addition to not knowing what needs to be
solved it is also unclear as to who should be preferenced in terms of need satisfaction.
The danger of making an appeal to as many ethical principles as possible is that sometimes they
conflict. In analysing an action, the course of action that is suggested by one ethical philosophy might
contradict the course of action that is suggested by another.
For example, Egoism focuses on self-interest. This ethical principle is used as justification when
something is done to further an individual's own welfare. The principle of Utilitarianism embodies
the notion of operating in the public interest rather than for personal benefit. However, an
appreciation of ethics allows individuals to be aware of all possible ethical resolutions and their
respective implications.
In terms of ascertaining a constructive way forward for the designer perhaps Kallman and Grillo
express it best when they note:
An appropriate course of action for an individual should only be arrived at after thinking
through all the implications. The intention behind an ethical analysis should not be to
prescribe a particular set of ethical values for resolving ethical issues invoked by
computers. But allow an individual to appreciate all the possible course(s) of action that
can be taken according to the differing, and often conflicting, sets of ethical values and
then make a judgement as to which is applicable for them in the real world (Kallman &
Grillo 1996, p.6).
Good design and successful design
‘Good’ can be understood as suitable, agreeable, pleasant, well-founded, cogent and satisfactory; or
as virtuous, right or commendable (Merriam-Webster online-dictionary). In the context of this paper
we use the term ‘good’ in the sense of the latter where it carries a moral or ethical judgement. On
the other hand, the term ‘successful’ is applied in the prior sense of ‘good’ where it could also be
described as successfully accomplishing the goals set out for the intended intervention, which the
design facilitates.
This distinction allows an important question to be posed: is it possible that a design could be
successful but not good?
Dark patterns
1
(a term that has arisen in the field of interface design) describe the design of elements
in an interface intended to deceive users into agreeing to things that they would otherwise have
1
For more information on dark patterns see: http://darkpatterns.org/
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 130
potentially disagreed to (Brignull et al n.d). This includes ambiguous phraseology and hiding detail
(amongst other things) (Brignull et al n.d).
A design that employs such patterns and, as a result, successfully achieves certain business goals can
be understood to be successful (in that it answers the business’s goals) but not, good
2
(in the sense
that it misleads users and removes their right to informed choice).
This distinction between successful and good, is important because it raises three perspectives from
which ethical considerations operate in relation to design:
1. Is it the design that is un-ethical or the choices made by the individual (responsible for the
design) and the commissioning agent who are being un-ethical?
2. How can (and should?) design resolve conflicting ethical positions between players in an
ecosystem?
3. Given moral and ethical pluralism and the fact that both morals and ethics and the
condition of the world change over time (Dupre 2013, p.25), what are the limits to ethical
judgement?
Who, or what, is ethical or un-ethical in design?
A designer that conceives of and/or agrees to a design that, for example, is understood to deceive an
end user, would be described as acting un-ethically if they are either acting contrary to their personal
ethic (that deception is wrong) or within a socio-cultural framework that deems deception to be
wrong. The same would be true of a commissioning agent of such a piece of design (in this case both
the commissioning agent and the designer could be said to have crossed some ethical line).
As previously noted, the design may be successful (in its use of deception) however we are unlikely
to describe it as good.
But what if we could magically
3
alter the ethical context in which a design exists? If the same work of
design that involved deceiving users was operating in a context where deceiving users was not
unethical, would it make sense to then say that the work of design had become ethical? It seems that
the ethical judgement is relative rather to the individual/s responsible for the design and the
contexts in which they are operating rather than the work of design, itself.
At the fear of becoming overly obtuse, the authors contend that:
a) It is the individual doing the design (and where relevant the commissioning agent of the
design) that carries the ethical responsibility
b) However, the work of design itself cannot be said to be, in-and-of-itself ethical or un-
ethical. The significance of this distinction will become clear when we discuss the limits of
ethical judgements of design later.
In this view the issue of ethics in relation to design is fairly clear: the individual’s responsible for a
design are either acting ethically or un-ethically in relation to their own personal (or organizational)
code or those which exist in their given socio-cultural context.
Resolving conflicting ethical positions
The ethically-relative position that an individual or organization behind a design may hold is not
where the discussion ends. It may well be the case that conflicting ethical positions exist between
any number of stakeholders in a given ecosystem in which the design operates.
2
‘Not good’ if misleading users and removing their right to informed choice are ethical boundaries within a socio-cultural
context
3
Time is an example of such a magical event
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 131
For example, an ethical conflict may exist between the need for a business to honour its profit
obligations to shareholders where the means for achieving this involve deceiving customers.
The authors have observed that in many conversations, presentations and student project briefs with
HCD, it is implied that by placing an emphasis on the end user, the ‘exploitative’ nature of the
business or organization will be checked. This line of whimsical discourse is often compounded by the
belief that if the organization was ‘to only listen to the user’, both parties would enter some type of
fairy tale win-win situation. Thus, it is often tacitly implied that ethical considerations of a design
engagement can be met by managing this tension. While valid ethical conflicts may exist in this
business / customer dichotomy they often extend further to other stakeholders in any given
ecosystem.
The oversimplification of the complexity of relationships in a given ecosystem, and the number and
variety of relative ethical positions, in HCD practice and models is of concern. Consider for example
IDEO’s model for desirability, feasibility and viability in HCD.
Figure 1: IDEO’s Desirability, Feasibility and Viability model. (Based on, IDEO 2008 p. 8)
In this model ‘desirability’ is defined as what people (end-users) desire, ‘feasibility’ as what is
technically and organizationally feasible and ‘viability’ as what is financially viable for the business.
The business / customer (or organization / user) dichotomy can be observed at play here where
feasibility and viability are largely representative of business or organizational concerns and
desirability of user concerns. In this model, technology, is the only area of concern beyond the
organization / user dichotomy that is acknowledged.
Consider then that a business may believe that it is acting ethically to it’s shareholders by reducing
costs in production of a product by using a certain material however it may be considered un-ethical
if that material contributes to environmental unsustainability.
And what of the potential ethical conflicts to society at large, not just niche groups within the scope
of a design project (especially in heterogeneous societies)? What of economic considerations,
cultural and political considerations? What of the needs of the marketplace, competitors and both
the physical and technological environment?
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 132
Service Dominant Logic
4
(SDL) theory could offer help here: “For service systems, we define value
simply in terms of an improvement in system well being and we can measure value in terms of a
system’s adaptiveness or ability to fit in its environment…A service system is an arrangement of
resources connected to other systems by value propositions, and its function is to make use of its
own resources and the resources of others to improve its circumstances and that of others”
5
(Vargo
et al 2008 p.149).
In this view, creating harmonies from conflicts across the ecosystem is a key driver for the success
(and sustainability) of the resultant design solution
6
. We would further argue that value propositions
between stakeholders in a service system would necessarily resolve ethical conflicts in order to be
meaningful.
Furthermore, the business / consumer dichotomy is also challenged as being short sighted in SDL:
“The dominant paradigm in marketing separates the producer from the consumer in order to
maximise production efficiency, but this production efficiency comes at the expense of marketing
effectiveness. By pursuing a division of labour that led to the separation of parties, including the
producer from consumer, a dramatic increase in efficiency resulted. This reinforced an attitude and
view that the customer was someone to target and market to versus an entity to market with. The
result was poorer and poorer marketing effectiveness but high cost efficiency for producers” (Lusch
& S Vargo 2004, pp. 412-413).
SDL theory provides a historical argument for why ethical conflicts emerge in the business /
consumer dichotomy. The ethical imperatives in the norms outlined below further suggest how a
humanistic approach can resolve conflicts:
“If all firms were to:
1) be transparent and truthful to the customer,
2) be the guardian and do what is best for long-term customer welfare,
3) focus on selling service flows and not tangible stuff, and
4) continually invest in the development of human skills,
then we would argue we would have less societal ills or things that government may be
prompted to address. In fact a brief journey over the last 100 years will show that the
major legislation directed at marketing was largely because firms did not follow the
preceding norms” (Vargo & Lusch 2004, p. 416).
While SDL, and service design in general, appear to clear a path towards looking beyond the
business/ consumer dichotomy and resolving conflicts across the entirety of an ecosystem (or service
system) HCD still lacks models that may assist in deconstructing these spaces to unpack the many
relationships and ethically-relative positions that could exist.
The limits of ethical judgement
We have, thus far, discussed ethical pluralism at some length. This pluralism can further be
understood to exist across time. As the conditions of the world have shifted so have the socio-
cultural contexts in which people exist.
For example, the petrol engine: a great idea in the early Twentieth Century to solve mass-
transportation but potentially disastrous now.
4
For more details relating to Service Dominant Logic see: http://sdlogic.net/
5
Also, note the relationship between service design and SDL and that SD can be considered due to their application of co -
creation, a form of HCD (Vargo et al 2008 p.150).
6
It is worth noting that this view includes product design where in SDL “Goods are [understood to be] distribution
mechanisms for service provision” (Vargo & Lusch 2004 p.3).
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 133
Earlier in this paper we discussed how a work of design cannot be said to be, in-and-of-itself ethical
or un-ethical and that rather, it is the individual or individuals that are responsible for the design that
carry the ethical burden in the socio-cultural context in which it exists. This then suggests a limit to
our critique of design from an ethical standpoint.
On the one hand it is necessary to retain the ability to remove a work of design from an ecosystem if
‘it’ is un-ethical but it is equally important to retain the ability to assess the success of a design if we
are to learn from and apply the factors of the design that are successful but remove the un-ethical
elements.
Ethically, we also stand in a space of paradox, because 1. it always remains a possibility that in the
context of pluralism we may not have considered all ethical positions and 2. that we cannot know
what shifts may affect our socio-cultural condition such that what was once deemed ethical or not
may change.
For an effective critique of design (from an ethical or any other standpoint) it is necessary that we
understand it in its most complete context within a given ecosystem. Without this we cannot start to
consider all stakeholders and their associated ethical positions. A model for students and
practitioners that provides a generic way to view both common and likely stakeholders in any given
ecosystem would go a long way to assist with this.
If a design intervention is to be accountable it is necessary that one can trace it’s logic back from
point of existence (in the world, now) to the hypothesis or interpretation of the original problem
space that informed the decisions made as part of its creation. In this way sustainability can be
created through adjusting decisions and iterating the design. Although this is unlikely to assist across
broad spans of time (from the time when slavery was acceptable to when it became unacceptable,
for example) it provides an important and useful basis for the ongoing iteration of design in shorter
time spans such that adjustments may be made that can consider the ethical (and other) needs of
multiple stakeholders across an ecosystem.
A model that could supplement or work in tandem with the HCD method that provides traceability,
accountability and therefore sustainability would also go a long way to assist our humanistic design
efforts.
Conclusion
Wicked problems are wicked because, amongst other things, understanding problems as existing in
society, at the intersection of many possible points of views held by a variety of potential
stakeholders introduces indeterminacy. Ethical frameworks in this context may also be multiple and
may exist in harmony or dis-harmony alongside each other.
In this paper we have argued for an acknowledgement of this complexity by HCD: that a distinction
between successful and good design needs to be recognised; that we need to look beyond the
business (or organizational) and consumer (or user) dichotomy; that ethical pluralism can exist across
multiple stakeholders in an ecosystem; and that our ethical judgements need to be considered within
the context of socio-cultural change.
We have further identified that an opportunity exists for HCD to address these complexities however
the field lacks effective models and tools that could assist students of design and designers in general
in:
Deconstructing and making sense of the ethical (and other) complexities that exist in
problem-ecologies
Designing solutions that strive to create harmonies across the multiplicity of views, needs
and ethics of divergent stakeholders, and
A manner of critique that acknowledges the path to solutions from original problem
interpretation such that iterative change can be made within such complexity
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 134
Lastly, the objective of such models and tools (and the agenda of a humanistic approach to design)
would need to consider the manner in which they assist design in providing accountability of
complexity and sustainability through a critique that acknowledges this same complexity.
References
Buur, J, & Larsen, H 2010, ‘The quality of conversation in participatory innovation’ CoDesign:
International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, Vol 6: No 3, September, p. 121-138.
Brignull, H, Garroum, S, Miquel, M, Rosenberg, J & Offer, J n.d., Dark Patterns: fighting user
deception worldwide. Available from darkpatterns.org, viewed 11 August 2014,
<http://darkpatterns.org/>.
Dupre, B 2013, 50 Ethic Ideas you really need to know, Quercus, London.
Fenn, T, & Hobbs, J 2012, ‘The information architecture of transdisciplinary design practice:
Rethinking Nathan Shedroff's continuum of understanding’, 2nd International Conference on Design,
Development and Research Design, Cape Town, South Africa, p. 1-16.
Fry, T 2009, Design Futuring: Sustainability, Ethics and New Practice, Oxford & New York, Berg.
Good, available from Merriam-Webster dictionary, viewed 11 August 2014, < http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/good>.
IDEO 2008, A Toolkit for Human- Centered Design, viewed 14 June 2012 < www.ideo.com>.
Kallman, Ernest A. and Grillo, John P. 1996. Ethical decision making and information technology, 2nd
ed., Boston, Massachusetts: Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
Keinonen, T 2010, ‘Protect and appreciate – Notes on the justification of user-centered design’,
International Journal of Design, 4(1), p. 17-27.
Mattelmäki, T 2008, ‘Probing for co-exploring’, CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in
Design and the Arts. Vol. 4, No. 1, March, p. 65-78.
Melles, G, de Vere, I and Misic, V 2011, ‘Socially responsible Design: thinking beyond the triple
bottom line to socially responsive and sustainable design product’. CoDesign: International Journal of
CoCreation in Design and the Arts. Vol. 7, Nos. 3-4, September-December, p. 143-154.
Papeneck, V 1991, Design for the Real World: human ecology and social change, Revised 2nd ed,
London, Thames & Hudson.
Rittel, H. and Webber, M, ‘Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning’, Policy Sciences, (4), 155-169.
Sanders, EBN 2000, ‘Generative Tools for Codesigning’ in Schrivener, S. Ball, L and Woodcock, A.
(eds.) Collaborative Design, Springer- Verlag, London Limited, 2000, p. 3-14.
Sanders, E B.-N & Stappers, J, 2012, Convival Toolbox: Generative Research for the Front End of
Design, Colophon, Amsterdam.
Sanders, E B.-N & Stappers, J, 2008, ‘Co-creation and the newlandscapes of design’, CoDesign:
International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 4:1, p. 5-18.
Steen, M 2011, ‘Tensions in human-centred design’, CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in
Design and the Arts, 7:1, p. 45-60.
Thorpe, A. & Gamman, L 2011, ‘Design with Society: why socially responsive design is good enough’.
CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts. Vol. 7, Nos. 3-4, September-
December, p. 217-230.
Vargo, S & Lusch, R 2004, ‘Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing’. Journal of Marketing
Vol. 68, p. 1–17.
Paper extracted from 7th Interiornational DEFSA Conference Proceedings
© Copyright 2015 by the Design Education Forum of Southern Africa (www.defsa.org.za) 135
Vargo, S &Lusch, R 2006, ‘Service-Dominant Logic as a Foundation for a General Theory. Moving
forward with a service-dominant logic of marketing’, in The Service-Dominant Logic of Marketing:
Dialog, Debate, and Directions, Lusch, R. and Vargo, S (eds.), M.E. Sharpe.
Vargo, S, & Lusch, R 2014, Service Dominant Logic: Service is the basis of exchange, Viewed 11 August
2014, < http://sdlogic.net/>.
Vargo, S, Maglio, P, Akaka, M 2008, ‘On value and value co-creation: A service systems and service
logic perspective’, European Management Journal, 26, p. 145– 152.
Visser, F, Stappers P, Van de Lugt, R 2005, ‘Contextmapping: experiences from practice’, CoDesign:
International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, Vol. 1 No. 2, Taylor and Francis, p. 119-
149.
Westacott, E n.d., Moral Relativism, The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy, viewed 07 April 2015,
< http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/>.
Whitely, N, 1993, Design for society, London, Reaktion Books.
