Dev of Respons in Product Designers

________________________________________________________________________
The Development of Responsibility in Product
Designers
Stacey Birkett
Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of a Doctor of Philosophy
May 2010
Department of Design, Development, Environment, and Materials

______________________________________________________________________________
This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from
the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement.
Abstract
The design professions today claim to take responsibility seriously but the knowledge base for
guiding responsible designing is erratic. Some definition of the topic has been provided through
the interface between engineering and ethics but the relationship between responsibility and
product design has received less attention.
This thesis makes a contribution to the emerging research area of responsible design by
attempting to answer the question of how designers develop concepts about responsibility. Using
interview and card sorting research methodologies, and using participants drawn from both
education and practice, the thesis explores how designers perceive and understand the idea of
responsibility in their work as product designers.
The thesis comprises three main studies: first year undergraduate students, graduating
design students, and practising designers. It explores the way designers’ perceptions mediate the
interpretation and application of responsibility in their practice. The results show how concepts of
responsibility change and evolve as levels of expertise in designing develop.
The key findings show that (1) designers are interested and willing to address issues of
responsibility; (2) the concept of responsibility changes as designers move through their careers;
(3) the language that designers use to articulate the scope of responsibility and ethics becomes
broader, richer and more abstract with professional maturity; (4) the design of products is a
complex process and models for addressing design responsibility need to reflect this complexity;
and (5) the work has produced unique and designerly methods to explore responsibility in design.
The findings have major implications for design education, particularly at undergraduate
level. More generally, the innovative, highly visual methods developed as part of this work are
highly relevant to future research with designers as participants.
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Declaration
This is to certify that:
the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD except where indicated, due
acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used, the thesis is less than
100,000 words in length, inclusive of all footnotes, bibliographies and appendices.
_________________________
Stacey Birkett
May 2010
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Publications & Conference Proceedings
During the course of the PhD the following peer reviewed conference publications have been
developed, and are incorporated in this thesis:
Birkett, S., Lloyd, P., and Garner, S., 2009. The Development of Responsibility in Product Designers.
In Proceedings of International Association of Societies of Design Research conference
(IASDR09), COEX Centre, Seoul, South Korea.
Birkett, S., Lloyd, P., and Garner, S., 2008. Graduating product designers and their attitudes
towards design responsibility: a survey. In Proceedings of International conference on engineering
and product design education (E&PDE08) pp. 631-636, Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya,
Barcelona, Spain.
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Acknowledgements
OU Supervisors: I owe my deepest gratitude to my supervisors, Peter Lloyd and Steve Garner for
their constant support, inspiration and guidance throughout this research. I would like to express
my sincere gratitude for all the help and support they have provided during these challenging
years.
Research Participants: I would like to extend my gratitude to all those who participated in this
research. The UK universities and their students who were involved in Study 1, the practising
designers who took time out of their busy work schedules to provide an insight into product
design practice, and both the masters students from Hong Kong Polytechnic University who were
involved in the control study, and the first year undergraduates who enabled Study 3 to take place.
Without their time and participation this work on design responsibility would not have been
achievable.
Hong Kong Polytechnic University: I am grateful to the staff at the School of Design at the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University. In particular I would like to thank Kin Wai Michael SIU, Thomas
Fischer, and Christine Tsin for their help coordinating the study that was conducted there. I
would like to also thank John Heskett and Rémi Leclerc for the lively discussions we shared with
regards to my research. In addition to the staff, I would like to acknowledge the students who
made my experience of the attachment programme so enjoyable and memorable. Especially David
Sung Hong Yang, Xing Na, Celeste Jiang, Vivian Feng, and Lu Jiangyan. Their kindness was
immeasurable.
Friends & Family: I am grateful to all my friends and family for their motivation and support,
especially Sarah Walker, Jo Overton, and Jo Iacovides for the numerous occasions they have
listened to me discuss the topic of design responsibility. Of all my family members, I would
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particularly like to acknowledge my Nana, who has inspired me to dream and have the courage to
believe that anything is possible if you work hard enough.
OU Friends: I would like to express my thanks to James Law, Lindsey Shaw Greening, Miquel
Prats and Joan Serras for their friendship and warmth. They immediately made me feel at home,
both at the OU and in Milton Keynes.
Lastly, I would like to thank my boyfriend, Leslie Collins. It is difficult to express the enormous
role he as played in my life and subsequently in this journey. When I lost sight of the finish line,
he reminded me that it wasn’t too far to go. His love, support and belief enabled the completion of
this task. I therefore, dedicate this thesis to him.
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Contents
Tables ...........................................................................................................................................................xv
Figures....................................................................................................................................................... xvii
Phase one: Introducing and exploring design and ethics ....................................................................1
1. On design and ethics ...........................................................................................................................3
1.1. The interchangeability of terms..................................................................................................... 4
1.2. Towards a definition of terms......................................................................................................... 6
1.3. Responsibility in product design.................................................................................................. 11
1.4. Towards an interface between design and ethics..................................................................... 19
2. Interrogating the interface between design and ethics .............................................................27
2.1. Distinguishing between the prescriptive and descriptive...................................................... 27
2.2. The prescriptive in design and ethics ......................................................................................... 31
2.2.1. Prescriptive practice: Codes of ethics..................................................................................... 36
2.2.2. The prescriptive in education ..................................................................................................39
2.3. The descriptive in design and ethics ...........................................................................................44
2.3.1. How individuals make ethical judgements ........................................................................... 47
2.3.2. Descriptive accounts of design ethics .................................................................................... 55
2.4. A framework for the research ....................................................................................................... 59
3. In search of methodology.................................................................................................................63
3.1. Towards a descriptive approach................................................................................................... 64
3.2. The beginnings of a research question ....................................................................................... 66
3.3. Planning and developing study 1................................................................................................. 68
3.4. Core research questions.................................................................................................................. 70
3.5. Study 1 – Responsibility in graduating product designers ................................................... 70
3.6. Method of data analysis and findings.......................................................................................... 72
3.6.1. The diversity of issues covered by the term ‘responsible design’ ................................... 73
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3.6.2. Where a designer’s responsibility for their products ends............................................... 76
3.6.3. Differences in what participants said and did...................................................................... 78
3.7. Discussion.......................................................................................................................................... 79
3.8. Summary............................................................................................................................................ 82
Phase two: Learning from reflections and developing a new method to uncover
responsibility in product design ............................................................................................................. 85
4. A new method to investigate design responsibility ................................................................... 87
4.1. How study 1 influenced the development of study 2.............................................................. 87
4.2. Using study 1 data to develop a method for study 2 .............................................................. 89
4.2.1. Developing a card set from the database .............................................................................. 92
4.2.2. Producing a manageable card set ........................................................................................... 95
4.3. A card sorting exercise – How to sort?...................................................................................... 99
4.4. Card sorting - Testing and iterations of a pilot study ......................................................... 102
4.4.1. Task 1 .......................................................................................................................................... 103
4.4.2. Task 2 .......................................................................................................................................... 110
4.4.3. Task 3 .......................................................................................................................................... 112
4.4.4. Task 4 .......................................................................................................................................... 113
4.4.5. Discussion of pilot studies ...................................................................................................... 115
4.5. Repertory grids and the construction of meaning ................................................................ 116
4.5.1. Triads and personal constructs............................................................................................. 118
4.6. The development of the final card sorting task ..................................................................... 121
4.6.1. Card sorting task and thesis research questions............................................................... 124
4.6.2. Final method.............................................................................................................................. 124
4.7. Summary.......................................................................................................................................... 125
5. Study 2 – Investigating design responsibility in practising designers.................................127
5.1. Responsibility in practice............................................................................................................. 127
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5.1.1. Procedure ....................................................................................................................................129
5.2. Method of data analysis and findings........................................................................................132
5.2.1. Triad sorts ..................................................................................................................................132
5.2.2. Card sorting – step (i) ..............................................................................................................135
5.2.3. Card sorting – step (ii).............................................................................................................140
5.2.4. Card sorting – step (iii)............................................................................................................141
5.2.5. Analysis of transcripts .............................................................................................................143
5.3. Discussion ........................................................................................................................................151
5.3.1. The designer’s role in a larger context................................................................................152
5.3.2. The transference of responsibility ........................................................................................155
5.3.3. What designers say and what they do.................................................................................156
5.3.4. Hard and soft standards in design ........................................................................................157
5.3.5. Internal and external influences on responsibility ...........................................................158
5.3.6. Implicit and explicit ethics......................................................................................................160
5.3.7. Wants and needs .......................................................................................................................161
5.4. Summary ..........................................................................................................................................161
6. Study 3 – Investigating design responsibility in year 1 undergraduate students ............. 163
6.1. Method: How study 2 influenced study 3 ................................................................................163
6.1.1. A control study with masters students................................................................................164
6.2. Study 3 – Undergraduate product design students...............................................................167
6.3. Method of data analysis and findings........................................................................................168
6.3.1. Triad sorts ..................................................................................................................................168
6.3.2. Card sorting – step (i) ..............................................................................................................171
6.3.3. Card Sorting – step (ii) ............................................................................................................179
6.3.4. Card sorting – step (iii)............................................................................................................181
6.4. Discussion ........................................................................................................................................182
6.4.1. The impact of design education.............................................................................................183
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6.4.2. When will I be famous?........................................................................................................... 184
6.4.3. Transference of responsibility ............................................................................................... 185
6.4.4. What designers say and what they do................................................................................. 186
6.4.5. Hard and soft standards in design........................................................................................ 186
6.4.6. Internal and external influences on responsibility ........................................................... 188
6.4.7. Implicit and explicit ethics ..................................................................................................... 189
6.4.8. Wants and needs....................................................................................................................... 190
6.5. Summary.......................................................................................................................................... 191
Phase three: Combining the three studies to provide an insight into designers’ perceptions
of responsibility in product design ......................................................................................................193
7. Combining the studies; a coming together of the discussions ..............................................195
7.1. Comparing studies 2 and 3.......................................................................................................... 195
7.1.1. Discussion of triad sorts ......................................................................................................... 196
7.1.2. Discussion of card sorts .......................................................................................................... 201
7.2. Development across three levels of design experience ........................................................ 211
7.2.1. Design knowledge development - hard and soft responsibilities ................................. 212
7.2.2. Ethical development ................................................................................................................ 214
7.2.3. Role context development ...................................................................................................... 219
7.2.4. What have we learnt about designers’ development? ..................................................... 219
7.2.5. Is development of responsibility in product designers a linear process?.................... 221
7.3. Critical reflection on the methodology .................................................................................... 226
7.3.1. The three study approach....................................................................................................... 227
7.3.2. Design of the research methodology ................................................................................... 230
7.3.3. Data analysis – Other methods ............................................................................................. 231
7.3.4. Reflection on the participants................................................................................................ 234
7.3.5. Summary of methodology ...................................................................................................... 236
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7.4. Summary ..........................................................................................................................................237
8. Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................... 239
8.1. Contribution to responsibility development in product designers ....................................242
8.2. Using the descriptive interface to contribute to the prescriptive interface .....................246
8.2.1. Design education.......................................................................................................................246
8.2.2. Design practice ..........................................................................................................................247
8.2.3. Design literature .......................................................................................................................248
8.3. Key findings.....................................................................................................................................249
8.4. Limitations of the research ..........................................................................................................249
8.4.1. Design participants...................................................................................................................250
8.4.2. The card sorting method ........................................................................................................251
8.4.3. Guidance for future researchers ............................................................................................251
8.5. Future work.....................................................................................................................................253
8.6. Summary ..........................................................................................................................................255
References................................................................................................................................................. 257
Appendices................................................................................................................................................ 265
Appendix A - Kohlberg’s Six Stage Development Model..............................................................................267
Appendix B - Study 1: Ethical Approval............................................................................................................271
Appendix C - Keyword Database.........................................................................................................................277
Appendix D – Images for developing a card set ..............................................................................................281
Appendix E - Card Set (including numbers) .....................................................................................................287
Appendix F - Study 2: Ethical Approval............................................................................................................297
Appendix G - Study 3: Ethical Approval ...........................................................................................................303
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Tables
Table 1: Themes and the opposing categories proposed in challenge 1 of ‘Design for Life’ .............. 3
Table 2: Three levels of ethical responsibility .............................................................................................. 13
Table 3: Initial categorisation scheme developed as a result of initial transcriptions. ....................... 72
Table 4: Student's first response when asked about responsible designing? ........................................ 75
Table 5: Summary Table of keyword database (from the Study 1 dataset)........................................... 90
Table 6: List of word cards generated from the Study 1 dataset ............................................................. 93
Table 7: Image cards and representations/associations of issues of responsibility............................. 95
Table 8: Condensed version of issues the word cards aimed to address. ............................................... 96
Table 9: A combination of the primary issues of responsibility. .............................................................. 98
Table 10: Card sorting techniques, advantages and disadvantages ......................................................102
Table 11: Demo set for triads and possible construct and contrasts for this set ...............................122
Table 12: Triad Sets 1-6...................................................................................................................................123
Table 13: Participants involved in Study 2 experiments .........................................................................129
Table 14: Triad Set 1- An example of the construct and contrast assigned by st2_p9....................130
Table 15: Triad set 4 – An example of the construct and contrast assigned by st2_p8...................133
Table 16: Study 2: Card 30 - Grouped in Sort 2, step (iii). Outcomes for all participants...............141
Table 17: The Life of Card 20.........................................................................................................................145
Table 18: Wordle input of st2_ p8. Full transcript of interview narrowed down. ............................148
Table 19: Control Study: student’s first response when asked about responsible designing? ......165
Table 20: Comparing graduating degree students and Masters students...........................................165
Table 21: Triad Set 4 – An example of the construct and contrast assigned by st3_p10................169
Table 22: New cards created by Study 3 participants...............................................................................179
Table 23: Study 3 - Image cards not grouped.............................................................................................181
Table 24: Common image cards that were associated with the responsibility to the 'future'.........182
Table 25: Study 3: Triad set 1 - construct and contrasts (cards 20 and 35). ......................................198
Table 26: Study 3: Triad set 3 - construct and contrasts (cards 12 and 19). ......................................198
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Table 27: Study 3: Triad set 4 - construct and contrasts (cards 22 and 33). ...................................... 199
Table 28: Word cards not grouped. Focusing on Study 2 and Study 3 results. ................................ 201
Table 29: New cards created - Comparing Study 2 and Study 3 results. ............................................ 207
Table 30: Image cards not grouped. Focusing on Study 2 and Study 3 results ................................ 210
Table 31: Summary of the three study datasets......................................................................................... 211
Table 32: Use of metaphors; across the three levels of design expertise............................................. 217
Table 33: The issues which the three groups presented as their most important responsibility.. 221
Table 34: Card Interpretations (cards 27, 30, and 36).............................................................................. 229
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Figures
Figure 1: Acting out the Nietzschian cattle destruction line. ................................................................... 22
Figure 2: The acted out Confucianist Cattle destruction........................................................................... 22
Figure 3: A graphic representation of the domains of design (D) and ethics (E)................................. 24
Figure 4: Conklin's pattern of cognitive activity. ........................................................................................ 30
Figure 5: Archer's three phase model of the design process. Taken from Cross (1989; 2000)......... 32
Figure 6: A simple three-stage model of the design process by Nigel Cross........................................ 44
Figure 7: French's model of the design process, as presented by Cross................................................. 45
Figure 8: Lawson's diagram of internal and external constraints in design ......................................... 46
Figure 9: Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Adapted by Trevino (1986) ................................ 49
Figure 10: Harré’s interpretation of Kohlberg’s concept of development (line A) and a possible
different type of development (line B) which demonstrates his concept of alternative paths of
development. ................................................................................................................................................ 52
Figure 11: Representation of prescriptive (P) and descriptive (D) approaches in design and ethics.
......................................................................................................................................................................... 60
Figure 12: Combining the Design/Ethics figure with the Prescriptive/Descriptive figure. ........... 60
Figure 13: Design Education; A focus on Descriptive and Prescriptive. ............................................... 65
Figure 14: Possible snapshots to offer insights in 'responsibility' of product designers.................... 69
Figure 15: Proportion of participants completing a work placement during their university degree.
......................................................................................................................................................................... 71
Figure 16: Word cloud highlighting the key terms used by participants in response to question 1
regarding responsibility in product design .......................................................................................... 74
Figure 17: The three levels of expertise that this research investigated. .............................................. 88
Figure 18: An example of the images that a Flickr search for 'two hats' produced............................. 94
Figure 19: The eighteen Word cards produced for the card set. ............................................................. 96
Figure 20: Image Cards reduced set of 16. .................................................................................................... 97
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Figure 21: Card sorting in pilot studies by pilot_p1. ............................................................................... 103
Figure 25: Pilot sort 2 by pilot_p1................................................................................................................ 110
Figure 29: Sketching your personal design process.................................................................................. 112
Figure 30: Three snapshots of participant of pilot_p4 card sorting (using the headings; client,
business, society, and user)..................................................................................................................... 114
Figure 31: Card 35 - An image of an iPod................................................................................................... 115
Figure 32: An example of a completed Role Construct Repertory Grid Test (Kelly 1955, p270).120
Figure 33: Card 36 - Added for Triads Sets................................................................................................ 121
Figure 34: Three cards used to illustrate the triad method to participants........................................ 121
Figure 35: Sort 2 – step (i) A sample of the word cards as grouped by st2_p11. The card in italics
‘environment’ was a card that was added by participant 11 using the blank cards. ................ 130
Figure 36: Sort 2 – step (ii) A sample of the five responsibilities (word cards) selected and rated by
st2_p11........................................................................................................................................................ 131
Figure 37: Sort 2 – step (iii) A sample of the five responsibilities (word cards) which were used as
headings by st2_p11; the image cards were then grouped under these, and discussed as the
task proceeded. .......................................................................................................................................... 131
Figure 38: Triad sets and graphical representations of groupings made by all Study 2 participants.
....................................................................................................................................................................... 135
Figure 39: Study 2: Quantitative data – All participants results for Sort 2, step (i)......................... 136
Figure 40: Study 2: Graphical representations of the cards grouped into the three categories in
sort 2, step (i)............................................................................................................................................. 138
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Figure 41: Study 2: Quantitative data – All participants results for Sort 2, step (ii). .......................140
Figure 42: Early categorisation and coding of the data. ..........................................................................144
Figure 43: Screenshot of Wordle, demonstrating how the values can be easily added using the
advanced version. .....................................................................................................................................149
Figure 44: Word Cloud with a narrowed version of the topics that were discussed by st2_p 8
during the card sorting task. The larger the word the more occurrences it had in the
transcript (as shown in Table 18). ........................................................................................................150
Figure 45: Internal and external influences on practising designers. The responsibilities in the
internal section are the ones that are closest to the designer. .......................................................159
.......................................................................................................................................................................171
Figure 47: Study 3: Quantitative data - All participants results for Sort 2, step (i) ..........................172
Figure 48: Study 3: Graphical representations of the cards grouped into the three categories in
sort 2, step (i). ............................................................................................................................................174
Figure 49: Card sorting, step (ii) - Selecting five cards and prioritising them...................................180
Figure 50: Internal and external influences on first year design students. The responsibilities in
the internal section are those closest to the designer. .....................................................................188
Figure 51: Triad sets - Comparing Study 2 and Study 3 triad groupings...........................................197
Figure 52: Comparing Study 2 and Study 3: Graphical representations of the cards grouped into
the three categories in sort 2, step (i)...................................................................................................203
Figure 53: Designers’ awareness of their design responsibility and the connection with global
issues. ...........................................................................................................................................................204
Figure 54: A graphical representation of how views towards the world in which designers’ practise
may change as experience increases.....................................................................................................206
Figure 55: Matrix of issues which emerged from the individual studies highlights connections
between issues that were multi-study issues throughout the research. ......................................212
Figure 56: Increase of knowledge in hard standards in correlation with experience. ......................213
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Figure 57: Triad set 1 – Comparing the cards that have been grouped by the experienced design
practitioners and the first year design students. .............................................................................. 215
Figure 58: The broadening of design responsibility as designers move through education to design
practice. The figure shows a re-presentation of Figure 17 to demonstrate how the research
discussed in this thesis reveals a broadening progression of design responsibilities. ............. 220
Figure 59: Possible visualisations of paths of development mapped onto Kohlberg’s six stage
model. Path 1 represents Kohlberg’s concept of development. Path 2 represents a step
approach. Path 3 represents a steady continuous line of development. Path 4 represents an
iterative approach through the stages................................................................................................. 223
Figure 60: A visual representation of moral orders, described by Harré, and mapped onto
Kohlberg's six stage development model. The figure shows how Harré’s moral orders of the
business world, marriage, and the legal system are guided by stages 2, 3, and 4 of Kohlberg’s
development model. ................................................................................................................................. 224
Figure 61: An alternative visual representation of st2_p1. Displaying cards selected for the 1-5
scale in step (ii).......................................................................................................................................... 232
Figure 62: Comparing cards categorised in 'definitely my responsibility' with those categorised in
'not my responsibility' – An example from all participants in Study 2. ...................................... 233
Figure 63: Identifying points that would provide an insight to the development responsibility in
product designers. .................................................................................................................................... 240
Figure 64: Suggested responsibility development of product designers. The figure shows how
different moral orders in product design may be mapped onto Kohlberg’s six stage model.
Demonstrating that development of responsibility in product design may be more reflective
of Conklin’s pattern of cognitive activity (Figure 4) – where a designer moves from different
stages of responsibility development dependent on the design situation (e.g., design situations
may be classified as environment, safety, business, and so on). .................................................... 242
Figure 65: A proposed model of responsibility development in product designers. The figure takes
the key elements of moral development from Figure 59, Figure 60, and Figure 64 and
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presents them here to demonstrate the layers of responsibility development evidenced in this
thesis. ...........................................................................................................................................................244
Figure 66: (the same as Figure 12) Concepts of Design/Ethics combined with concepts of
Prescriptive/Descriptive.........................................................................................................................246
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‘ethics is not an appendage to design but an integral part of it’
(Johnson, 2002)
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Phase one: Introducing and exploring design and ethics
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1. On design and ethics
September 14th 2009 saw the introduction of a new reality TV series titled ‘Design for Life’. This
series was introduced in the 9.00pm, primetime, BBC TV viewing schedule. Each program
involved the world renowned, French designer, Philippe Starck and it adopted the now-familiar
reality TV format whereby a number of contestants battle it out for the prime position and a prize.
In this case the contestants were twelve British designers (including university design students)
and the prize was a six month placement at Starck’s design agency in Paris. The show is a useful
and timely illustration of the present-day interest in the purpose and function of design in our
society. More particularly, the show has exposed a long-standing but only partly articulated
debate about the responsibility of those who seek to design for mass markets. The series opened
with Adam Buxton, the narrator, explaining:
Starck believes that whether we realise it or not product designers affect every moment of
our lives, the chair you’re sitting on, the cup in your hand, the screen you’re watching. Each
is the result of deliberate design decisions. And Starck wants to encourage the twelve
students he’s chosen to question everything about product design and to learn how design
decisions now will affect all our lives in the future.
(Design For Life, 2009)
The first challenge set by Starck did not involve designing any physical product at all. Instead, he
required the contestants to visit a large out-of-town retail market armed with 100 Euros. They
had one hour to purchase two opposing products within one of three themes, as presented in Table
1.
Table 1: Themes and the opposing categories proposed in challenge 1 of ‘Design for Life’
Theme Product 1 Product 2

Function Useful Useless
Ecology Sound Unsound
Gender Male Female
3
Within each theme, the categories were open to interpretation. In fact, this turned out to be one of
Starck’s objectives in exploring what motivated the contestants and therefore the briefing was
deliberately minimal. The ‘function’ theme involved finding one product which was ‘useful’ and
another which was ‘useless’. In the ‘ecology’ theme contestants needed to find a product which was
environmentally ‘sound’ and another which was ‘unsound’. Gender involved finding a product
with ‘male’ qualities and another which had ‘female’ qualities.
The physical products selected were not so interesting, but observing the contestants
scouring the supermarket and verbalising their ideas and reasoning in response to potential
purchases was more revealing. The exercise provided clear insights into the students thought
processes and reasoning for selecting or neglecting particular objects. The concepts delivered in
the show were not as detailed as the ideas that have penetrated the design literature, but it has
brought the issues of responsibility and ethics in design to a large audience. This show nicely
demonstrated that design is more than a service that is there to be consumed. It demonstrated that
the process of design is something much deeper, which potentially can have a great social impact.
1.1. The interchangeability of terms
The ‘Design for Life’ TV series was interesting because it brought the dual concepts of design and
ethics into the mainstream consciousness in an accessible way. However, the ideas are not new.
Much academic literature has presented concerns on the relationship between design and ethics
long before Starck’s reality TV show. More significantly this academic interest seems to be
increasing. Amongst the design professions a groundswell of concern has emerged over the past
decade about the need for ‘design’ to reassess its role within the world which it serves and shapes.
Around the globe, responsible design has become a critical priority among businesses and design
professionals (Eisermann, et al., 2005). There are calls for design to be the most ethical and
responsible that it can be. The design community appears to have embraced the concept that more
debate on ethical issues in design is required, and why wouldn’t they? On the face of it, such a
debate could assist the design community to present its value to various communities as well as
4
making sound commercial sense. Surely all design involves decisions and actions which affect
others? Evidence of these visions for a more responsible design community have been seen in
recent design conferences, journals, and various academic initiatives such as new courses. The
signing of the Kyoto Design Declaration in March 2008 (Sotamaa, 2009) can be seen as a
particular instance of this new emerging interest in responsibility within the design community
(sustainability).
Other recent literature echoes these types of statements or substantiates the general thrust.
However, concepts of ethics and the standpoints adopted vary. There appears to be four keywords
around which the literature on the subject is built: ethics, responsibility, morals and values. In the
1970s Victor Papanek opened his seminal book Design for the real world' (Papanek, 1985) with the
words: ‘There are professions more harmful than industrial design, but only a very few of them.’
His warning did much to fuel a debate that embraced ethics, responsibility and values. In some
literature these words are used interchangeably, e.g., Whitbeck (1998), by her own admission,
does this with the terms ‘ethics’ and ‘morals’, often substituting one word for the other to discuss
the same issue. However, it is recognised that ethics, responsibility and values are closely
intertwined and one of the purposes of the literature review is to seek to establish how future
debate might be supported through a clearer understanding of the terms used. But the problem is
a deep one. Kusz (2005) suggests that ‘whether they are designers, design managers or educators,
many in the design community are motivated by the conviction that design’s primary purpose is to
help make the world a better place’. The concept of ‘making the world a better place’ could be
categorised as an ethical issue, a topic which relates to responsibilities, or an issue which is
concerned with values. It is very difficult to separate them without understanding the emphasis of
a particular author. It could be argued that the desire to make the world a better place is rooted in
particular ethical viewpoints, but if it is to be achieved then it requires responsible behaviour, and
that may in turn be influenced by what is of value and relevant to ethical viewpoints.
The term ethics can clearly relate to a number of issues: well-being, safety, conflicts of
interest, whistle blowing, competence, honesty, user ergonomics, usability, universal design,
ecology, pollution, material selection and manufacturing issues, to name only a few. Literature
5
with ethics as a keyword often focuses on one of these specific ethical topics. For example, there
have been papers on safety (van der Burg and van Gorp, 2005; van Gorp, 2005), sustainability
(Bould, 2009; Dewberry, 2005; Dewberry and de Barros, 2009; Lofthouse, 2004; McCoy, 2003;
Papanek, 1995; Szenasy, 2003), consumption and consumerism (Ingram, et al., 2007; Woodhouse,
2001), designing for users (Cummings, 2006; Garrety and Badham, 2004; Gasson, 2003). The
standpoints of these investigations depend on the position of the researcher. Some are interested
in the processes of the designer, others the business context, and others seek to reveal the broader
social context.
The term responsibility has been used to describe, for example, personal responsibilities,
professional responsibilities, social responsibilities and corporate social responsibility. Once again
the boundaries between these sub-categories are blurred but they are all frequently used as
umbrella terms for issues that educators, designers, and managers should consciously address in
their day-to-day activities. Cooper (2005, p11), in constructing an answer to ‘what constitutes
socially responsible design?’ suggests that ‘ethical responsibilities bring us into a much broader
domain. They involve ‘doing the right thing’ and avoiding harm or social injury’. But surely all
design activity should do this. It seems the issue of definitions is a stumbling block to a clearer
debate. An increasing variation in the terms used has created the impression that responsibility in
design is more complex and more difficult to understand than it really is. Of course, it is a complex
subject and the context for design is constantly in a state of change. Nevertheless there is a need
to make design responsibility something that is transparent and accessible if it is to be applied in
practice.
1.2. Towards a definition of terms
Design can be used as noun, a verb or an adjective (Heskett, 2002; Lawson, 2006). In this thesis
design is largely used as a verb, meaning the action or process of design; the design process. While
this thesis is interested in design outcomes, these are mostly valued as a means of exploring the
design process. So this thesis takes design (as a verb) to mean the generation of ideas, judgements,
6
actions, and behaviours. More significantly these outputs arise when a person is involved in the
‘transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones.’ (Simon, 1969)
In this thesis ethics is used to mean a set of rules, which are accepted as normal within a
society or group, the rules distinguish which beliefs and actions are right or wrong. It is these
rules, or moral principles, that influence and guide people’s beliefs, behaviour, and actions. The
term rule is not used to describe an official rule, e.g., a legal rule. Rules may present themselves in
both implicit and explicit ways. As noted above, the term responsibility is used more variously and
as such it is more difficult to define. Nevertheless it’s a pivotal term for this thesis and for this
reason it warrants a closer scrutiny through the publications of earlier researchers. Bovens (1998)
quoting Barnard, suggests:
‘Responsibility … is the power of a particular private code of morals to control the conduct
of the individual in the presence of strong contrary desires or impulses. Ergo, not to do what
may be more desirable, but to opt for what is the right course of action.’
Bovens makes clear that for him responsibility can take either of two forms; active responsibility
and passive responsibility. Passive responsibility focuses on responsibility ‘after’ the event, raising
questions such as who was responsible, who was to blame, or who is to be held accountable. Active
responsibility differs, in that, it comes beforehand, it is responsibility assumed ‘before’ an event.
Bovens does point out that the two are closely connected; ‘The moral acceptability of the passive
form will mostly be dependent on the availability of the active form. We will not easily accept the
idea of bearing responsibility unless we have at our disposal the possibilities of behaving
responsibly’ (Bovens, 1998, p27). Bovens suggests that responsibility is not merely a post-event
phenomenon, determined after an event (passive responsibility) because allocation of responsibility
may be dependent on active responsibility, causal connections between actions and outcomes,
which the person can control. This raises important questions for those who seek to work in the
design professions. Who is to be held responsible when design fails? To what extent does design
imply an acceptance of responsibility? What level of control do designers possess? Perhaps an

7
understanding of the perceptions of the wider community of stakeholders is required if we are to
understand the forces of responsibilities and to comprehend the complex design world which
operates on both local and global scales.
Bovens (1998) paraphrases Hart’s four forms of responsibility as (1) responsibility as a cause,
(2) responsibility as accountability, (3) responsibility as capacity, and (4) responsibility as task.
Bovens suggests a fifth responsibility might be useful; ‘responsibility as a virtue’. This concept
‘suggests that someone takes his tasks and duties seriously, acts only after due deliberation, and
considers himself answerable to others for the consequences of his actions.’
This thesis is particularly interested in exploring Hart’s ideas of ‘responsibility as task’ and
how design responsibility may be perceived as a virtue, in the sense that tasks, duties, and
deliberation are taken seriously. Potentially, this concept might form an integral part of role
responsibility rather than a separate entity as Bovens suggests. Responsibility as a task relates to
responsibilities which are assigned to a particular role. For example, we might say that
parenthood brings with it responsibilities such as the responsibility to protect the child. The same
could be said for design. The role of the stakeholders entails a number of responsibilities to be
adopted, dependent on the particular role a person holds. What are the responsibilities of design
educators, of design students, of design practitioners, of design managers, of consumers, of
governments? The list is revealing and provocative. These questions are not easy to answer.
Furthermore they are compounded because a stakeholder can hold many roles and sometimes such
roles can be in conflict. Van der Burg and van Gorp (2005) illustrate this with the example of an
engineer designing a trailer. The creator is not only a design engineer; they are also parent, friend,
neighbour, road-user etc. In their research, they suggest:
‘The evaluative standards inherent to these practices may conflict with each other. As a
mother, for example, an agent (engineer) thinks it is self-evident that she should protect her
children against the dangerous traffic, while as an engineer she thinks she should choose the
most inexpensive trailer design which is structurally safe, but not safe in traffic. These goals
conflict with each other. Engineers who are not parents encounter a comparable problem,
8
for if they have friends they are also required to do all that is in their power to prevent their
friends from getting hurt, and if they are drivers of cars, cyclists or pedestrians they very
likely aim to get somewhere without getting hit by a truck and pitch under it. The goals of
these practices also conflict with their choice as designers of trailers. Participation in these
diverse practices invites the engineers to engage in a type of reflection that transcends their
practice of trailer design, and shows that they have reason to try to do all that is in their
power to prevent traffic collisions from happening.’
(van der Burg and van Gorp, 2005, p249)
This insight into the influences on the engineer demonstrates that it is impossible to work within
a vacuum. Outside experiences and relationships which define and evolve our sense of
responsibility are involved in the decisions made in the design process. The issue of investigating
responsibility in design is very complex. Although this is a challenging area of research, the
complexity of it highlights the need to develop the building blocks of a sound foundation if we are
to construct an understanding of responsibility in design.
To reiterate, this thesis is interested in ‘active responsibility’, responsibility which is
accepted before a situation, rather than ‘passive responsibility’ which can often manifest itself as
allocation of blame. Responsibility is also interesting from the perspective of a particular role and
the responsibilities that role brings with it. However it is important to make clear that
responsibility is closely intertwined with ethics, and should not be completely separated. The
definition of ethics provided in this thesis suggests that rules distinguish which beliefs and actions
are considered right or wrong. Responsibility, or a sense of responsibility, is guided by a person’s
beliefs of what is the ‘norm’ for the role they conduct in society. However, it is possible that
perceptions of what responsibilities entail may change as a person grows and increases their moral
understanding of themselves and the world in which they live.
This thesis suggests that the absence of an agreed taxonomy hinders a researcher’s ability
to engage in debate about ethics and responsibility in design. Terms are used interchangeably,
new definitions are imposed and new situations demand new additions to any proposal for a
9
taxonomy. In some ways design as a subject domain reflects this condition. Design has changed
dramatically in nature – even over recent decades. Design today is a global phenomenon of huge
commercial significance. For all but the most basic of design activity it is a digital, collaborative
business and this has created new pressures at its interface with ethical considerations. Today
design exists within a global cultural context and this obfuscates attempts to build a clear
foundation for a universal approach to responsibility. In order to navigate this interface it might
be useful to apply Ladd’s two categories of engineering ethics ‘micro-ethics’ and ‘macro-ethics’.
Herkert (2001) has successfully applied these and he offers a useful explanation. Micro-ethics
‘focuses on issues for the most part internal to the profession’ whereas macro-ethics ‘refers to
professional responsibility in a broader sense.’ Szenasy (2003) explains how she discusses with her
class the issues of ethics in design: ‘The course is all about responsibility to the planet, to the
regions we live in, to the community, to the profession, to the client, and to the self’. Clearly since
ethics and responsibility are intertwined the categories of micro and macro ethics may potentially
be very illuminating in this investigation of design responsibility – particularly if the field is
widened further to include consumerism, changes to behaviour or lifestyle, climate change,
aesthetics and usability. It may be that issues of internal and external responsibilities might be
informed by such an approach.
As suggested above, a topical illustration of this interconnectedness comes from the
environmental movement. We know that global warming is increasing. Knowledge of global
warming challenges our perceptions of what is the ‘right’ or ethical thing to do to combat it, and
that in turn affects decisions on how to respond. This may be evidenced through changes in
consumption or reconsideration of a product’s life-cycle. Rarely are the issues local and distinct.
More often the issues are influenced by external forces and are complex in character. For example,
legislation may be involved, and this can be different depending on geographical location. Thus
laws may be different during different stages of a design process. A product might be designed in
the UK, manufactured in China, and sold in the USA. This globalisation of design means that the
decisions made in one country can have far reaching influences in others.
10
So far Sections 1.1 and 1.2 have illuminated a requirement for clarity in terms but before the
discussion can progress we need to step back to look at the wider domains of design and ethics.
The literature review needs to examine design because it is composed of different disciplines
ranging from engineering at one extreme to the arts and crafts at the other. The focus of this
work, the domain of product design, exhibits characteristics from across this spectrum. Since
much of the literature review draws upon research into ethics from the engineering community
Section 1.3 seeks to explore the applicability of this for product design. The following section
takes the opportunity to contrast engineering with other approaches to design.
1.3. Responsibility in product design
Chapter 1 has begun the literature review but it has given rise to as many questions as answers.
Such questions are illuminating and potentially they chart an innovative and relevant agenda for
research. This section will continue to raise new questions as well as respond to those presented as
it explores practice in engineering, computer systems, architectural and product design.
The volume of new publications on responsibility and ethics in design suggests that there is
a growing interest in the field. Mirroring this is the emergence of new components in
undergraduate design education focusing on responsibility and design ethics. These would
suggest a new desire to understand what it means to design ethically. In reality, there are few
examples of guidelines, much less codes of ethics, that might guide product designers towards
responsible design. Those that exist are more likely to have derived from the field of engineering
or engineering design. In some ways this transfer of codes of practice is satisfactory because
product design and engineering share several characteristics. For example, they both involve
designs which will be integrated into society and they are both disciplines which involve
innovation and compromise. However, they also have their differences. Engineering often displays
a particular focus such as cost minimisation or safety. Also engineering projects might operate at a
much larger scale than a typical product project. Thus some observers present engineering as
dealing with the ‘big decisions’ in contrast to design’s more modest remit. However, design too
11
can have serious consequences in situations of failure. Fatalities can result from decisions made
within the product design process, for example, children choking on toy parts. But generally,
product design has different challenges to those of engineering. One area of common concern is
the safe application of products or systems. A case which demonstrates this well is the London
Ambulance Service in the UK.
The ambulance services, as one might imagine, are built on a philosophy of patient care.
Their purpose is to help those in need. This is a philosophy which extends beyond the ambulance
services and forms the core of the National Health Service (NHS). In the late 1980s and early
1990s the London Ambulance Service (LAS) was under immense pressure to improve targets. It
was attracting considerable negative media attention with regard to the service it was providing,
suggesting that it needed to improve ambulance response times. To overcome some clear
problems the LAS was facing it was decided to implement a computerised system. The system
would reduce response times and therefore offer a more efficient service to the public - or at least
that was the plan. In 1992 the LAS launched what it termed ‘Computer Aided Despatch’ (CAD).
Unfortunately, the introduction of the system only fuelled the troubles. When the newly
implemented CAD system failed on 26th and 27th October a number of would-be patients in the
London area died as a consequence of ambulances not arriving on time. The ambulance service
received substantial criticism and the design of the system was brought into question. As with
most large design projects, there were fuzzy decision points during the design process which
appeared to have influenced the failure of the system. The official report (South West Thames
Regional Health Authority, 1993) which investigated the incident indicates that there were four
key issues which led to the system failure: (1) selecting the contractors, (2) the timescale allocated
to develop and implement the system, (3) the lack of testing, and (4) the lack of staff training.
The London Ambulance Service case demonstrates that decisions made in the design
process can have life or death implications. Using case studies of design failures can be revealing
because it can illuminate the particular as well as the broader picture. However, such cases are
likely to also include media speculation in addition to official reports. Also, such cases can be
difficult to ‘read’ because each party reporting are conveying judgements and assessments.
12
While the decisions made in product design can be very different to those made in
engineering design there is also considerable overlap, particularly where ethics is concerned.
Woodhouse (2001) highlighted a lack of attention given to consumption, and possible over-
consumption, in engineering projects. In his work, he presents issues of consumption at three
levels of ethical responsibility; (1) the minimalist view, (2) reasonable care, and (3) ‘good works’,
defined by Harris et al. (2000, p104) as ‘actions above and beyond the call of duty’.
Table 2: Three levels of ethical responsibility
Levels of ethical responsibility Description of level

First level The minimalist view Requires only that engineers
conform to the standard operating
procedures of their profession
(Harris, et al., 2000, p101)
Second level Reasonable care By which an engineer would
attempt to see things from the
perspective of those at risk or harm
(Woodhouse, 2001, p26)
Third level Good works The approach does not call for
saintly acts, merely for admirable
ones (Woodhouse, 2001, p26) –
going above and beyond the call of
duty
It may be that engineering design has avoided the issue of consumption because few are willing to
reduce their opportunities for employment. Conceding that there might be too many designs
already, or an existing design meets needs and wants, is unlikely to improve the job prospects of a
designer or engineer. Nevertheless, having an ethical viewpoint is increasingly important to
companies who employ designers and engineers. Florman (in Woodhouse, 2001) argues that
engineers are not called on to impose their morals in their practice but a broad trend to adopt a
more ethical standpoint is discernable. In engineering design, it is clear that codes of conduct have
been formulated and applied to a much greater extent than is the case in product design. It seems
that product designers still largely rely on their personal moral codes to guide their practice.
Winner (1990) claims that:
‘ethical responsibility now involves more than leading a decent, honest, truthful life, as
important as such lives certainly remain. And it involves something much more than
13
making wise choices when such choices suddenly, unexpectedly present themselves. Our
moral obligations must now include the willingness to engage others in the difficult work of
defining what the crucial choices are that confront technological society and how
intelligently to confront them.’
As noted above, codes of ethics in engineering suggest that there are certain defined
responsibilities that the role of an engineer entails. Gasparski (2003, p636) coined the terms
endomorality and egzomorality to characterise particular types of responsibility in design activity.
He suggests endomorality in design is ‘the moral code of design activity’ whereas egzomorality is
‘that part of its moral code that concerns the social responsibility of its practitioners as such’. Both
define elements of a designer’s accountability: first, in respect of truth and honesty in relation to
the designer’s output — a design, and second, in respect to societal benefit and not harm, both in
respect to relevancy of what is designed for practical use. Gasparski, states that the responsibility
of a designer is ‘qualified responsibility’ because of two reasons: (i) the appearance in such a role is
dependent on one’s own choices, (ii) it inclines others, who are not specialists and who have no
way of evaluating a designer’s activity objectively, to place great trust in a designer. By this he
refers to trust not in a specific person but in the role he or she performs.
Design’s influence is not limited to just the products and services it creates, it exerts an
influence on the economy, the environment, and social behaviour. Here three examples of design
are used to illustrate the inherent intertwining of ethics and product design. The first example
concerns the design of mp3 players and makes reference to a lawsuit in 2006 brought against the
Apple Corporation in the United States. The lawsuit argued that the plaintiff received hearing loss
as a result of using an Apple iPod with headphones (Park, 2008). The case raised the question of
who was responsible for the hearing loss; was it the designer who enabled the iPod to reach the
volume of 130dB or was it the user who had this capacity at their disposal? There are shades of
grey in this case, but it does raise interesting questions for design about responsibility. Who is
responsible, does responsibility of use lie with the user or the designer? Is there a shared
responsibility? The design of other types of mobile personal devices has also raised ethical
14
questions such as should designers restrict user behaviour? Blythe and Wright (2005) illustrate
this;
‘When the Sony walkman first appeared it caused much debate about the privatisation of
public space: the user could effectively isolate themselves from their environment to create
their own experience of it. Problems of personal stereo etiquette such as volume and
appropriate location caused, and to an extent continue to cause, concerns about isolation,
alienation, manners, home taping and copyright infringement.’
Designs of these types of products effectively change user behaviour. Such products are commonly
incorporated into everyday environments and they change the way people interact. This gives rise
to questions about whether the social impacts are taken into consideration during product design.
Do designers consider the implications that their designs may have on user behaviour? Does
product design involve consideration of the wider society of non-users as well as direct users?
Another type of product design which has raised questions about designer responsibility is that of
computer game design. There has been various research into how the fantasy worlds that video
games create can ‘encourage and glamorise’ certain situations (Hickman and Allison, 2002). In the
UK the Football Association felt they were unable to endorse a game called ‘Hooligans: Storm
over Europe’, as it would work against their effort to reduce violent behaviour at football matches.
The product was perceived by some as a game that effectively encouraged anti-social behaviour. A
number of other games have also raised questions about violence and anti-social behaviour. ‘Marc
Ecko's Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure’ was banned in Australia. The reasons for this
included the promotion and rewarding of virtual criminal acts, in this case vandalism (Australian
Government, 2006). Should designers design games which incorporate these types of violent
behaviours? What messages are designers intending to express by designing such games? Is it
irresponsible to be involved in designing these types of games?
Lloyd (2009) offers an insight into the discussions that actually take place during the
process of designing. In this work, Lloyd discusses two very different design projects; a
15
crematorium, and a digital pen. The latter offers a useful illustration of responsibility in product
design. During a series of design meetings the participants were involved in discussions regarding
the features the pen should possess. One discussion centered on the issue of the pen’s ability to
store digital signatures. This discussion led to the suggestion that the store of digital signatures
may be used for forging cheques. However, this line of inquiry was not developed and it gives rise
to new questions about whether the designer or design team could be held responsible if a case of
forged signatures should result from the marketing of this product. What happens when designers
consider outcomes, but do not act on them? Who is more at fault, a designer who fails to
anticipate a consequence or a designer who raises a concern but then does not follow it up? Lloyd
sums up these questions nicely by asking ‘would they be responsible in anyway for this crime,
having previously envisioned its possibility?’ In this study of pen design the participant discussion
turned to the possibility that the pen could be used for bullying such as using the pen to burn or
intimidate fellow pupils. An interesting response from one the participants suggests ‘we probably
ought to go through this list and look at which ones you can actually do with a pencil’. From this
it might be deduced that products that exist on the market can provide ‘ethical norms’ - yardsticks
to distinguish what is ethically acceptable or to guide designers’ responsibilities. But an important
question remains; do designers have a responsibility to design products that cannot be misused?
Designers and engineers display many common ethical concerns. For example, both display
emerging responsibilities for user safety, functionality and the environment. But it seems clear
that one key distinction between the work of product designers and engineers is the relationship
between the product designer to the consumer. It brings product designers into much closer
contact with issues of anticipation, misuse and the emotional impact of products. Clearly some
areas of engineering design also have a close contact with consumers – for example in car design –
but broadly product design’s interface with the consumer defines its distinctive characteristic.
Product design has a unique influence. Artefacts can arouse emotions of desirability and status not
found in more utilitarian items. Product designers imbue an object with attributes and with this
comes responsibilities not commonly found in engineering. The field of product design deserves
its own body of ethical research but unfortunately at present a foundation is provided by the
16
engineering community. While this has some value the lack of studies possessing the rich
consumer interface displayed in product design is a major hindrance to the development of the
subject. This thesis seeks to make a contribution to knowledge about current ethical design
practice and offers suggestions for improving designers’ ability to understand and manage their
responsibilities in the future.
Design can exert more than an influence on consumers, it can provide a means of control,
and the responsible exercising of control has long interested researchers. The work of the
American architect Robert Moses is relevant here. Moses designed a number of roadways in the
New York region. As well as functioning as roadways for vehicles his various bridges and
overpasses also functioned as social filters. The bridges he designed controlled access to particular
areas of town. Winner (1980) explains how two hundred or so low-hanging overpasses on Long
Island were deliberately designed to hinder some residents entering certain areas because of their
height. The buses that low income residents typically depended on were too high to pass under
the bridges so poorer sectors of society were excluded. This usually translated as racial minorities
but included other low-income groups. It restricted access even to Jones Beach, Moses's widely
acclaimed ‘Public Park’. While the design of the overpasses met their original purpose, to route
urban traffic, they also deliberately kept particular people out of specific areas.
Joerges (1999), suggests there is a moral issue in this example, one that has implications for
the wider application of design. This is ‘what kind of material objects should one make and
accept?’ The answer is grounded in ethical theory, it depends on many factors surrounding the
designer and other stakeholders. Holt (1997, p116) suggests that ‘when a designer exercises
judgement … it is not just a case of conforming to what is expected. There is an element of
expanding the limits of acceptability, but not by too much’.
So do designers find this balance? There is a question here about what is responsible design
and that may influence the answers to what one should make or accept. To take an even more
extreme example, Kemper (2004) discusses how terrorists can take a design and use it to generate
terrible outcomes. He uses the example of commercial airliners whose original design purpose; ‘to
fly passengers and cargo over extended distances’ had been distorted to a use as weapons in the
17
September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center, New York in 2001. Kemper also offers the
example of the car converted to a car bomb. He suggests that consideration of evil intent should
be incorporated into design practice.
Work such as that by Joerges and Kemper reveal the capacity of design to be used for
discrimination (both knowingly and unknowingly) and blatantly evil acts. It complicates further
the search for transparent ethical ground rules for design. Even misuse gives rise to complications
as the example of the digital pen discussed earlier revealed. For example mobile phones have many
and varied beneficial purposes but they can also be used by children to bully other school pupils.
McDonough (2004) discusses design as the ‘first signal of human intention’. However, what if the
intention of the designer is different than that of the user? Are designers responsible for putting
products with potentials in the hands of users? Are these unforeseeable uses or should the
designers have imagined that these uses would be possible? Does designing products that might
be misused mean designers should design out the opportunities for misuse, or even decline to
work on a product? Fundamentally, is it possible to anticipate every type of misuse?
Reflecting on the many questions raised in these first three sections of this chapter there is
one condensed question which guides the inquiry presented in the following chapters. This is;
what is a designer responsible for? Gasparski (2003) suggests that the designer is responsible for
five things;
1. formulating the problem,
2. the agreement of this formulation with real needs,
3. a correct diagnosis of the current situation,
4. the forecast of anticipated changes of the given situation, and
5. solution of the problem posed in accordance with the rules of the designer’s art and craft.
However, Gasparski suggests that designers are not responsible for the use of their designs in a
way that was not intended (Gasparski, 2003, p638). Developing this, he does suggest, in
agreement with Martin and Schinzinger (1999), that a designer may be responsible if they put the
18
design in the hands of someone they suspect will use it in a ‘morally reprehensible’ or ‘social
harmful’ way.
As broad as it is, design is only half of the equation. Of particular interest is the interface
between the domains of design and ethics.
1.4. Towards an interface between design and ethics
So far, this chapter has established some inter-relationships but ones where investigation is made
more difficult through a lack of a clear taxonomy. Nevertheless, the guiding proposition through
this chapter has been that design is important and developing responsible designers is crucial.
It is possible to learn from previous case studies that design and responsibility go hand in
hand. The design, development and marketing of the Ford Pinto car is a notorious case where
tight budgets and short deadlines set within the design process led to a disastrous outcome. In this
particular model there was a significant design fault which resulted in the fuel tank exploding if
the vehicle was involved in a particular type of impact. The case raises significant ethical issues
because it appears that the fault was highlighted during testing but was not resolved. For the
additional cost of US$11 per vehicle the fault could have been addressed, thus reducing the chance
of the fuel tank being punctured. After conducting a cost-benefit analysis (Kelman, 1994) the
decision to continue with the original design and to not make the $11 change was confirmed. This
highlights the difficulty for organisations to move beyond the relatively crude assessment tools
provided in traditional cost-benefit analysis. They struggle to factor-in the emotional aspects of
risk, and only measure the cost in a monetary sense. Even the process of calculation in itself raises
ethical questions. If the cost-benefit analysis had been conducted from the viewpoint of a different
stakeholder, e.g. the families of the people killed in accidents, would the decision have remained
the same? However, as terrible as the design was, it did not break any safety legislation at that
time. It therefore adds a new question into our consideration of design and ethics; does legally
acceptable design mean morally acceptable design? The families of the victims who died as a result
of this design decision would probably suggest it does not.

19
Van der Burg and van Gorp (2005) illustrate a similar potential conflict - the issue of legal
responsibilities and engineers’ responsibilities. They discuss this conflict in the context of the
design of trailers. They suggest that ‘often it is possible to do more than the rules require in order
to prevent collisions or to reduce the amount of seriousness of injuries due to collisions’. This
raises fundamental questions regarding boundaries to the responsibilities of a designer and how
responsibilities and boundaries are defined, negotiated and policed in the context of modern design
practice.
There have been a number of studies of the Ford Pinto. Most adopt a method of reflecting
on the events which took place and then discussing ‘passive responsibility’, for example,
examining who was to blame for the fuel tank issue. But clearly one of the most important values
of such studies is the ability to define lessons for the future. Harris (1995) introduces the case of
the space shuttle Challenger as a way of discussing and addressing the issue of preventive ethics.
The Challenger case is well known within the field of engineering. In 1986, it exploded during
launch, taking the lives of six astronauts and one teacher. In this paper the author presents three
types of explanations for the disaster: ‘bad engineering, bad management, and bad ethics’. He
explains how some may think if bad engineering can be blamed there is no need to investigate bad
management or bad ethics. That is, if one cause can be identified there is no need to look further.
However, Harris appeals for investigators to look at all contributory factors even where there is a
complex inter-relationship between factors. Harris suggests that ‘one consequence of taking a
more pluralistic approach to explaining disasters is that the place of ethical considerations in
explaining disasters is not neglected’. He explains that the design of the O-ring valves violated
engineering principles, the lack of responsiveness to Roger Boisjoly’s concerns violated
management principles, and that improper ethical conduct, all contributed to the disaster. Harris
proposes that perhaps the ‘Golden Rule’ should have been addressed: ‘Do unto others as you
would have them do to you’. He argues that these cases are useful to help with preventive ethics
and that ‘Engineers, like the rest of us, learn from experience. If they can isolate the engineering
factors that explain a disaster, they can do something to prevent similar mistakes in the future’
20
(Harris, 1995, p93). However, these cases are not everyday occurrences. They may offer insights
in how not to behave, but do they provide any transferable rules which should be followed?
So far, the literature review has focused on disaster case studies and research work which
seeks to guide or influence designers about their options. However, the literature also offers more
abstract approaches to design and ethics. In his PhD thesis, Ross (2008) focused on ethics and
aesthetics in intelligent product and system design, particularly aesthetics and interaction design.
He exploited a four-cycle method where the first cycle involved a design workshop which aimed to
offer a starting point to investigate ethics and aesthetics. Ross was interested in the good and
beautiful – a concept constructed on Aristotelian ethics. The workshop presented the participants
with four ethical systems (1) Confucianism, (2) Kant’s Rationalism, (3) Romanticism, and (4)
Nietzschian ethics. Ross suggests that these ethical systems were used because they contained
‘mutually contrasting systems, that all had a strong link to existing aesthetic movements in art,
architecture or design’. These ethical systems were then adopted by the participants (via role
playing) and a design task was set. There were two design tasks, (1) Cattle slaughter and (2)
Candy vending machines. The Cattle slaughter task sought to allow participants to re-frame their
ethical approach under each of the four systems. It asked, for example, what might a Confucianist
machine look like, what kind of interaction would it invite, and how would this interaction differ
from that of a Nietzschian machine in terms of aesthetics? (Ross, 2008, p15). The Candy vending
machine task was similar but this time participants were primed with the following statement:
‘When we purchase a candy bar the machine drops it down before our very eyes and forces us to
bend over and grasp the candy from an inconvenient opening. What would a Kantian or Romantic
candy vending machine look like and how would it act?’
Ross’s approach to the investigation offers an insight into how different approaches based on
ethical mindsets can provide very different design outcomes. The design ideas resulting from the
Nietzschian viewpoint varied significantly to the design ideas that were generated by those
adopting a Confucianist viewpoint. Figure 1 and Figure 2 demonstrate how the same people, using
different ethical approaches can develop very different designs.
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1
Figure 1: Acting out the Nietzschian cattle destruction line.
Figure 2: The acted out Confucianist Cattle destruction.
Ross builds on ideas of ethical systems and goes on to investigate how designs which originate
from a particular ethical system can encourage users to interact with products in specific ways. In
1
Film clips of all ‘snapshot’ figures in Ross’s thesis are available online at: www.philipross.nl/thesis
22
the following quotation, Ross explains his findings regarding the Candy machine task. It provides
a stimulating example of research that, through its dual focus on ethics and design, illustrates and
illuminates the interface between the two domains.
‘(This machine) intends to make a person feel small and intimidated at first, but through
interaction allow him to overcome his own self and the machine. The machine features a
lighted black box, placed five meters high, holding a candy bar. A long black tube connects
it to a nozzle, at two meters above ground level. Beneath the nozzle is an elevated platform
of about 50 centimetres. The machine is situated in the crowded public main hall of the
university, attached to a large concrete column. A person first needs to climb the ‘platform.
This makes him extra visible to the public. Then he needs to shout in the nozzle to open a
glass lid in the bottom of the black box with the candy bar. The opening angle of the lid is
coupled to the loudness and duration of the shouts. A person needs to shout on top of his
lungs for a while to open the lid sufficiently for the candy to fall down. The fact that this
interaction takes place in public adds pressure to the interaction: Shouting becomes really
conquering inhibitions.’
Ross’s approach has parallels with many studies of design in that he partly sets a brief for the
study participants to follow. There are criteria to be followed which are determined by the
specification of the ethical system. Ross’s work is interesting and relevant to this research because
it illustrates how novel techniques can engage participants and help to unlock viewpoints that may
be difficult to expose or externalise. Studies of this type would seem to have much to offer to
design research that, by definition, had to embrace ethical viewpoints and decision-making. Of
course, there are methodological issues to be resolved such as the effect on subjects of adopting
one viewpoint throughout a study or the unrealistic constraint of all members of any given team
adopting the same viewpoint. These are likely to results in less instances of conflicts and trade-
offs. If the ethical systems varied within the teams the outcomes may be very different.
Nevertheless, Ross offers a very innovative and exploratory approach for exploring the interface
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of design and ethics. One issue that is not illuminated by Ross’s work is the personal ethical
systems of designers. It is this issue that concerns this PhD thesis. Chapter 2 begins to address
this by focusing on tools for individual decision-making and guidance at this interface between
ethics and design.
Figure 3: A graphic representation of the domains of design (D) and ethics (E).
This chapter has sought to illuminate a broad research area across the two distinct subject
domains of design and ethics. In particular it has made a case for the need for research at the
interface of these two domains. The literature review so far has revealed much work in the parent
domains but very little at the interface. Some work by earlier researchers has revealed how a lack
of agreed definitions of terms has hindered discussion and enquiry. Other work has revealed the
need for commercial practice and design education to better equip design practitioners to
assimilate ethical decision making into their work. The most valuable part of the literature review
has reported studies, such as those undertaken by Ross, that have revealed the value and
importance of novel and innovative approaches to research at the interface between design and
ethics.
Chapter 1 has painted a broad picture of what is going on in the field of design ethics. It has
drawn on TV shows from popular culture as well as academic work. Often design and ethics can
be very dry and difficult to understand, which is not helped by the continuous evolution and
development of terminology which surrounds the topic. What is needed is some development of
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the building blocks to enable future researchers to progress the subject, particularly through
curriculum development in undergraduate design education. We need to know more about ethical
codes of conduct in design. It seems likely the best source of information will be designers
themselves and this must embrace student designers as well as expert practising designers. In
chapter 2 there is a re-focusing onto the individual and what tools are available for individuals to
make ethical choices, design choices, and the choices that lie between the two.
25
26
2. Interrogating the interface between design and ethics
‘Design is a value-driven activity. In creating change, designers impose values upon the
world - values of their own or those of their client. To be a designer is a cultural option:
designers create culture, create experience and meaning for people’
(Press and Cooper, 2003, p6)
2.1. Distinguishing between the prescriptive and descriptive
Chapter 1 used a variety of sources to substantiate the existence of an interface between the
phenomena of design and ethics. This is uncontentious but it establishes a foundation for a more
valuable inquiry into processes that operate at, and across, this interface. One of the aims of this
thesis is to document new knowledge – particularly knowledge of processes - relevant to the
professions that operate in the broad fields of design and ethics. However, one of the key building
blocks in this is knowledge of individual participants, particularly individual designers. Findeli
(2001) suggested there can be no responsible design without a responsible designer. Therefore,
this chapter begins a process of inquiry that reveals important new understandings about the
analytic and synthetic processes of individuals. Significantly, it explores processes that play an
important role in both design and ethical decision-making. These processes make a significant
contribution to mapping shared territory between design and ethics. This in turn points the way
forward to new requirements, particularly for design education at undergraduate level.
This chapter begins with an example which illustrates how design issues and ethical issues
are often entangled within design problems. The example of a flood barrier in the Netherlands,
illustrates how ethical issues are part of design thinking, whilst design thinking can provide a
catalyst for defining, manipulating and resolving ethical issues. Key to this is the definition of
prescriptive and descriptive processes embedded within both design and ethics practice.
Disentangling the theoretical from the practical is not straightforward and the discussion has to
embrace assumptions, expectations and individual values. At the core of this chapter is the belief
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that both design and ethics are concerned with what people ought to do; they both consist of
models and frameworks which are designed to guide people. That is, in part they both rely on
prescriptive processes. However, design and ethical problems require creative interventions by
individuals and groups. Unique interpretations and personal value systems are not only tolerated,
they are built into much professional practice for the creation of new products, systems and
environments. If we are to understand the modern processes of design and ethics today we need to
illuminate the descriptive as well as the prescriptive.
This chapter seeks to construct a descriptive/prescriptive structure onto the basic
design/ethics model established in Chapter 1. In doing this, the chapter builds on a foundation of
design knowledge significantly dependent on researchers from the engineering design community.
This work goes some way to redressing the balance by adopting a focus on ethical issues in
product design and industrial design. The chapter concludes by discussing findings from the
literature review that had an impact on the structure of the research.
Chapter 1 identified an interface between design and ethics but this might be better
represented as an overlap of shared practices and priorities. The two fields don’t just rub up
against one another, they actively draw upon each other’s fields of knowledge, values, and
methods. After all, design is a social process. The world we live in is a designed world with moral
implications at every stage of our building processes. Design has the potential to influence and
impact lives on a global scale and even the smallest design decision has the potential to possess an
ethical dimension. But while ethics is an integral part of most design processes the extent of
ethical decision-making within design varies depending on the field of design. It will also differ
from stage to stage, some projects generating ethical issues in the conceptual stage while other
projects generate their issues in the embodiment or distribution of a developed design. The level
of the overlap between design and ethics is clouded by a perceived fuzziness at the boundaries.
Darley (1996) characterises this as an example of complexity, suggesting that ‘many decisions
prove to have implicit ethical components that are hidden at the moment of decision, arising only
later, after decisions are made’. This view corresponds with Lloyd and Busby’s (2003) warning
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that ethics should not be seen merely as a sub-problem of design. This view is also adopted by
Johnson (2002), who suggests that ‘ethics is not an appendage to design but an integral part of it’.
There exist some useful illustrations of the merging of design and ethics in practice. Van de
Poel and Royakkers (2007) describe a project to design a storm surge barrier in the Oosterschelde.
After a flood took place in 1953, killing 1800 people, there were plans to close off the
Oosterschelde. These plans resulted in opposition from environmentalists and fishermen who
raised concerns about the impacts this scheme may have on the environment and the fishing trade.
A dilemma was exposed with the need to protect human lives (safety) juxtaposed against
employment issues and the ecological nature of the area (environmental).
Students at TU Delft and Wageningen were tasked to focus on these two issues and to
propose a design that would be beneficial to both sets of values systems. The proposal they
devised consisted of a barrier with movable gates to control water flow. This did not cut off the
Oosterschelde but neither did it leave it exposed to the dangers of flooding. Van de Poel and
Royakkers suggest ‘the flood barrier was a creative compromise to balance the… moral values…
that were at stake’. It’s a small but useful illustration of how design can involve ethical issues and
how ethical issues can provide a stimulus for design.
The notion of using design processes to solve ethical problems is one that has been
highlighted by Whitbeck (1996). In noting the close relationship and some of the similarities
which exist between design and ethics, she has suggested that understanding design approaches to
problems could help in tackling ethical problems. However, Dorst and Royakkers (2006) suggest
that although ‘Whitbeck provides us with a compelling sketch of what a designer-perspective on
moral problems could offer… the analogy was not fully developed’. They examine Whitbeck’s
analogy properties against Brian Lawson’s 14 features of design problems and design solutions.
One of the most interesting contributions from their work is the suggestion that ‘a solving process
for moral problems is not a linear process’. The authors indicate that ‘this is in stark contrast to,
e.g., the ethos system methodology of Harris et al. (2000)’. Dorst and Royakkers suggest that ‘the
process of moral problem solving can be seen as consisting of many… small local cycles that deal
with sub-problems’. Using an iterative method for problem solving is echoed in the work of van de
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Poel and Royakkers (2007). This way of approaching moral problems then, like design problems,
involves a number of feedback loops. The iterative nature of the design process means that the
designer acquires new knowledge as each cycle is completed. Conklin (2005) demonstrates how
the designer often moves from the problem to solution, in a jagged line fashion (See Figure 4), as
opposed to a linear fashion.
Figure 4: Conklin's pattern of cognitive activity.
The iterative nature of the design process means that if the designer returns to a previous stage in
the process they will know more than they did when they were initially at that stage. This raises
an interesting question about the design professions; do designers approach ethical problems in
the same way that they approach design problems? It also provokes more fundamental questions
such as:
Do designers recognise ethical issues within design?
What issues do designers regard as ethical issues and of those ethical issues, which is the
designer responsible for?
Can ethical issues and design issues be separated?
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Developing answers to these questions will certainly illuminate the perceived interface between
design and ethics and so they form a useful guide in planning the conduct of the investigation.
On the face of it an investigation of processes seems to reveal some shared territory for
design and ethics. Cross (1989) suggests that design processes can be both prescriptive and
descriptive and while models of ethical processes more typically refer to ‘normative’ and ‘non-
normative’ the associated language used frequently reveals their common root. For example,
Beauchamp and Childress (1994) explain that non-normative ethics consists of both descriptive
and meta ethics. They go on to clarify that normative ethics ‘present standards of right or good
action’ (prescriptive models) and descriptive ethics ‘report what people believe and how they act’
(descriptive models). Stevens (1999) develops this distinction between normative and descriptive
ethics by explaining that ‘normative ethics involves formulating and defining moral principles.
The concept of normative ethics involves deciding which actions are good and should be
performed’, whereas, ‘descriptive ethics reflect facts about the moral judgment of a person or
group’; what people actually do.
Beauchamp and Childress, in their work on bioethics, group together descriptive ethics and
metaethics as non-normative because their objective is to establish what factually or conceptually
is the case, not what ethically ought to be the case This thesis adopts their two broad strands of a
non-normative approach and addresses it under the heading of ‘descriptive’ approaches. However,
there are connections between the prescriptive and descriptive so a line of demarcation should not
be imposed too hastily. Sometimes in discussing one, it can be difficult to avoid the other.
2.2. The prescriptive in design and ethics
A number of authors have devised graphical representations to characterise their particular
interpretation of prescriptive models of the design process. These include French, Pahl and Beitz,
March, and Archer, whose representation is reproduced from the work of Nigel Cross as Figure 5.
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Figure 5: Archer's three phase model of the design process. Taken from Cross (1989; 2000)
Some authors have characterised such prescriptive models within design as ‘concerned with trying
to persuade or encourage designers to adopt improved ways of working’ (Cross, 1989). Within
such models the designer faces a number of issues, conflicts and trades-offs, but has to work
through these considerations in order to generate a solution. Because design problems are usually
incomplete or ‘ill-structured’ the models do not suggest ‘right’ actions, they simply offer a
framework for guidance. Whitbeck (1998) proposes that ill-structured problems do not lead to a
uniquely correct solution, but that there can be a range of possibilities, each with its advantages
and disadvantages. However, she does suggest that there can be wrong solutions to a problem.
Van de Poel and Royakkers (2007), in discussing the work of Herbert Simon suggests that ‘for ill-
structured problems, no single criterion exists to order uniformly the possible solutions from best
to worst’. Therefore, the designer needs to apply their judgement. Holt (1997) suggests that
‘every advance, or change of direction, in the design process is the result of the designer's
judgement.’ This thesis suggests that such judgement is largely grounded in ethical perspectives
which in turn relate to a sense of responsibility. These factors play a fundamental role in decision-
making in the design process.
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Ethics, like design, also involves judgements. However, also like design there are
prescriptive models of ethics, which consist of rules to guide people towards making decisions.
The dominant moral frameworks investigated in engineering design are utilitarianism,
deontology, and virtue ethics (Dorst and Royakkers, 2006; Herkert, 2000; Lloyd and Busby, 2003;
van de Poel and Royakkers, 2007). Lloyd and Busby (2003) assume that these three models or
frameworks guide designers’ decisions. The rules that these models prescribe vary:
The deontological viewpoint is not focused on determining if a consequence is good or bad.
Instead, the focus is on the actions that people take. The rules of deontology suggest what people
‘ought’ to do (duty). So if one ‘ought’ to tell the truth, and not lie, then this would be the action
that would be followed, regardless of the outcome.
Utilitarian or, consequentialist ethics involves focusing on outcomes – the consequences,
rather than actions. A person with a utilitarian viewpoint will disagree with the deontological
viewpoint that one ought to not lie, if the outcome of telling the truth is that someone is harmed.
Utilitarians believe that the action that generates the maximum good is the action to adopt; the
actions are based on the outcomes that maximise good for the greatest number (Whitbeck, 1998).
Virtue ethics is interested in the character of a person. Whitbeck (1998) suggests ‘kindness’,
‘honesty’, ‘courage’, and ‘bravery’ are all ‘character traits that are praised as moral virtues’.
Robinson and Dixon (1997, p341) suggest that particular virtues enable a person to respond to
possible conflicts between responsibilities and a number of enabling virtues are offered in the
literature, for example, temperance, wisdom, justice, fortitude/courage, hope, and empathy. Such
virtues are promoted as central in a variety of relationships and roles including that between client
and employer, and across public and professional duties. This raises some difficult questions: Is
character more important than actions or outcomes? Which virtues are important to design?
Prichard (1998, p218) asked engineers what qualities they valued in their colleagues or
those they might hire. To do this they posed the question ‘What qualities do you look for in a
responsible engineer?’ They present a list of the most commonly mentioned responses including
integrity, honesty, cooperativeness, courage, ability to communicate clearly and effectively, habit
of documenting work thoroughly and clearly, openness to correction, willingness to compromise,

33
commitment to quality, perseverance, creative engineering imagination, willingness to make self-
sacrifice or even take personal risks, not being too personally ambitious, caring about engineering,
macro- as well as microscopic vision, civic-mindedness, and competence. This is clearly a list from
the perspective of engineering. What’s missing in the literature is a similar documentation for the
design professions. If such a task is to be defined, the researcher would do well to reflect on some
broader questions initially. For example, do people actually conduct themselves in the way these
theories suggest; do people adopt just one of the ethical standpoints; and can a theory
satisfactorily describe a group of people or do individual standpoints vary depending on the
circumstances? Such questions colour the form of this inquiry.
Ross (2008), as discussed in chapter 1, offers one of only a few recent attempts to integrate
emerging understandings about the two distinct worlds of design and ethics. The research
framework Ross constructs involves juxtaposing four differing ethical systems within design
thinking. Research subjects were instructed to adopt decision-making approaches based on the
given ethical system and they did this through role playing in a design task. Both tasks provided
opportunities to explore how design was conducted where ethical decision-making was directed.
Designing interaction between humans and machines offers a rich vein for creating different user
experiences and Ross’s work allowed participants to create some striking interactions as a
consequence of the ethical approach they were required to adopt. Ross sets the scene thus; ‘When
we purchase a candy bar (where we pay in advance), the machine drops it down before our very
eyes and forces us to bend over and grasp the candy from an inconvenient opening’. His design
student subjects created interfaces ranging from the impractical to the bizarre. Nevertheless,
Ross’s work demonstrates the overlapping interface of design and ethics and is very inspiring. He
has approached the topic in a lively, engaging, and exploratory manner. Perhaps more research in
the field of design and ethics needs to adopt this grounded, experimental approach to
methodology. But caution needs to be exercised. For example, Ross’s subjects are only acting out
an interpretation of the given value system. These interpretations will, very likely, vary. There
may be other ways of investigating design and ethics which are less synthetic and more revealing
of a designer’s values.
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Lloyd and Busby (2003), rather than allocating an ethical system for research subjects to
follow, instead conduct interviews with designers. The approach they adopted generated
qualitative data (in the form of the participants’ justifications for their actions) which could then be
classified into ethical categories (consequentialist, deontological, and virtue ethics). Their
qualitative approach offers a strategy for revealing ethical design thinking in practice. In their
paper, the authors reflect on the work of Simon to explain their methodology; drawing on the
analogy of a papaya fruit. The analogy relates to the importance of understanding what a papaya
fruit tastes like. Without this, it is argued that it difficult to know how to use this taste in the
future. With this in mind the argument centres on the need to understand design in the same way;
to understand design means to understand how it can be used to generate effective solutions.
Taking Lloyd and Busby’s (2003, p506) suggestion that ‘reasons for a design solution only occur
post hoc, in judgements about an existing solution’, this thesis suggests that this same idea could be
used to explore ethical reasoning in design. This reflective approach could also be used to explore
responsibility. Using this argument, it is possible to suggest that a ‘post hoc’, reflective, approach
may be the best way to explore the role of responsibility in design. However, how to approach
such an investigation is unclear. Perhaps, adopting a method grounded in a deontological
approach may stimulate some interesting findings on responsibility. Kant’s philosophy which
surrounds the concept of ‘duty’ may help to understand how individuals construct their concepts
of duty and responsibility.
The work of van de Poel and van Gorp (2006, p335) discusses the concept of duty. They
suggest that there is a need for ethical reflection and that designers have a moral duty to reflect on
the ethically relevant choices that they make during their design process. Johnston et al. (2000)
identifies a link between Kant’s philosophy and Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory (Kelly,
1955/1991), a method which was developed within the field of psychology. This theory can help
to reveal how people make sense of the world around them and it may be that such an
understanding can offer fresh insights into what design responsibility consists of in this rapidly
changing environment in which we live.
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All such ethical theories are used as a way of guiding decision-making. However, within
such theories, judgement is still required. In design there are suggestions that the way a problem
is framed can influence a designer’s perception of the problem setting, the possible solution
directions (Dorst and Cross, 2001) and, more generally, influence designers’ judgements. This is
important because, as Schön (1983) points out ‘problem setting is the process in which,
interactively, we name the things to which we will attend and frame the context in which we will
attend to them’. With the framing and understanding of issues (both design and ethical) comes the
integration with perceptions and responsibilities. This chapter next explores an important sub-
category of prescriptive forces, namely codes of ethics.
2.2.1. Prescriptive practice: Codes of ethics
Codes of ethics have been generated for a number of professions as a way of formalising
expectations. They establish guidelines for the actions and duties that are expected of a person or
group within a particular profession and can be found in, for example, medicine, psychology and
social work. Little et al. (2008) suggest that codes of ethics reflect a variety of interests and
circumstances, but in nearly every case they begin with a sense of ‘higher purpose’ for the
particular profession. They go on to explain that ‘this is particularly true in engineering, where
such codes almost always begin with an affirmation of the engineer’s obligation to hold paramount
the safety, health and welfare of the public in the performance of professional duties, notably
design’. Perlman and Varma (2002) suggest that professional codes of ethics must:
‘be of sufficient breadth that they cover the likely ethical conflicts and concerns of the
professional field but do not reach to extraneous incidents… Second, they must be of
sufficient specificity that they can serve as guides to making sound decisions for practical
action in actual circumstances…’
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The moral dimension is implicit. However, as van der Burg and van Gorp (2005, p246) suggest,
moral codes are usually very formal and abstract. They can be interpreted differently. They
suggest that this is problematic if codes of ethics are to be used as a guideline for moral thinking.
They suggest that codes of ethics can be of limited value because they do not sufficiently challenge
the practitioner’s common understanding of their profession.
There is some debate about whether engineering should or should not be regarded as a
profession. In the USA there are professional bodies of engineers while in other countries, such as
the Netherlands, engineers have a more indeterminate status since they are not licensed or
certified (van Gorp, 2005). If codes only guide those with professional status, what do those who
are not ‘professional’ engineers use as a framework? Must they rely on training, intuition, personal
ethical systems and judgements? Florman (1983) proposes that ‘the engineer is no longer to be
guided by his employer’s wishes or instructions, or by his own creative imagination, as
constrained by laws, regulations, and technical parameters. He must answer first to what his
conscience tells him is best for the common good.’ So where does this leave the role of codes of
ethics? Within educational research there has been the suggestion that:
‘formal codes of ethics are not the best way of addressing ethical issues … Philosophers have
often exaggerated the importance of such codes, although philosophy has little to contribute
to them. What we need rather is a closer attention to the ways in which ethical decisions are
actually made … New and unfamiliar situations require us to extend our existing abilities,
not return to first principles and set up formal codes.’
(Small, 2002)
However, how do codes of ethics fare within design? Davis (1991; 2003) suggests that codes of
ethics are often misconceived, and that ‘much criticism of professional codes simply misses the
mark: a professional code is neither a faulty rendition of ordinary morality nor a legalistic
alternative to it. Professional codes do something neither law nor morality can – they combine
law’s ability to provide novel (special) standards with morality’s claim on conscience.’
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Nevertheless, as Herkert (2001) explains, ‘many ethicists such as Ladd are sceptical of the
relevance and usefulness of codes which they argue are primarily designed to create a positive
public image of the profession, largely self-serving, used to divert attention from macroethical
problems’.
Ladd’s sub-division of engineering ethics into ‘micro-ethics’ and ‘macro-ethics’ is liberating
and flexible. The former broadly concerns relationships between individual engineers and their
clients, colleagues, and employers, while the latter is concerned with the collective social
responsibility of the profession. The design profession has few examples of equivalent proposed
codes. However, one that does have similarities is the International Federation of Interior
Architects/Designers (IFI, 2005). This code identifies the ‘designer’ as;
i. Designers concerned with graphics and visual communication
ii. Designers concerned with products and capital goods
iii. Interior architects/interior designers
The codes of ICOGRADA2, ICSID3, and IFI4 suggest that the designer has a responsibility to
three parties;
(1) The Designer’s responsibility to the community
(2) The Designer’s responsibility to the client
(3) The Designer’s responsibility to other designers
It is clear to see the symmetries between this code and the micro and macro levels as described by
Ladd. Lenarcic (2003) suggests that ‘ethics are about the intangible values in our relationships
with other people and the environment in which we live. In a time when we are constantly
2
International Council of Graphic Design Associations
3
International Council of Societies of Industrial Design
4
International Federation of Interior Architects/Interior Designers
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encouraged to “think local and act global,” our own ideals become those of the greater world in
which we live.’
Therefore it seems apparent that it is important to understand both the local and global
impacts that designers’ decisions are capable of having. The IFI code demonstrates the concern for
both the micro and macro. However, the guidelines, like those in engineering design are still very
broad and open to interpretation. Therefore, even with codes, are designers aware of the influence
they are capable of? Do they agree that they can, or indeed, do make a different to the world?
2.2.2. The prescriptive in education
Codes of ethics provide frameworks to professionals but what about those professionals working
in education and the students they seek to develop? What frameworks or models are prescribed to
students when it comes to design ethics? Design education engages students with many issues
such as safety, the environment, user considerations, and so on, frequently through projects and
assignments. However, design responsibilities are rarely highlighted explicitly. Should students
rely on their tutors to impose codes of conduct? Would this not merely suppress the development
of their own codes of conduct and increase the design profession’s reliance on clients to dictate
responsibilities? It seems clear that design education – at least that professional preparation
taking place in our universities – must engage with this these questions. To do otherwise leaves
designers, as Heskett (2002) puts it, as mere technocrats, following the orders of others. But just
how design education should develop this ethical perspective is less clear. Perhaps the cues can
once again be taken from engineering.
Cummings (2006) proposes that ‘engineering programs must demonstrate that their
graduates have an understanding of professional and ethical responsibility’. She suggests that the
Value-Sensitive Design approach, developed in human-computer interaction, can serve as an
engineering education tool which bridges the gap between design and ethics.
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‘Value-Sensitive Design framework is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of
technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner
throughout the design process. It employs an integrative and iterative tripartite
methodology, consisting of conceptual, empirical, and technical investigations.’
(Friedman, et al., 2006)
Friedman, et al. identify twelve human values that are presented as the core of an effective
framework: ‘human welfare, ownership and property, privacy, freedom from bias, universal
usability, trust, autonomy, informed consent, accountability, calmness, identity, and environmental
sustainability’. These values have been largely adopted in computer system design but less
comprehensively in other design domains. It seems important that education does work towards
the creation of value-sensitive design methodology embracing ethical values and the development
of a sense of responsibility. Cummings does not try to identify values specific to engineering
design, instead, she uses the existing Value-Sensitive Design framework and human values and
applies that to engineering. She illustrates this by presenting a case study in which she discusses
the design of military weapons, namely the ‘Tomahawk’, a land attack missile, which cannot be
redirected during flight. The case discusses the issues that surround the redesign of the
Tomahawk, which would then enable it to be capable of redirection during flight. Cummings
suggests that this type of design involves ethical questions such as those ‘obvious’ ones which
surround weapon design, to those more ‘subtle’ ones, like, how much automation is needed for
such a system? And to what degree should humans be in the decision-making loop?
She presents her conceptual investigation which focused on the Value-Sensitive Design
issue of ‘human welfare’. She links this value with that of existing engineering codes of ethics; ‘that
engineers should hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public’. She explains that
understanding concepts like the ‘just war’ theory and the principles of proportionality and
discrimination can help frame a design task. When exploring the ‘technical investigation’ of the
design, Cummings explains that the decision support tool (the systems control element with
which the user interacts) which accompanies the Tomahawk, ‘presents the information needed to
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make a decision but does not prioritize the data, nor provide solution rankings or possible
recommendations… Thus the ultimate decision as to which missile to retarget is left to the human
operator.’ This then generates questions regarding automation and what level of automation is
required for such a system. This echoes previous ethical concerns which relate to the degree of
decision-making which should or, should not be designed into the system. Like many conflicting
issues, there are advantages and disadvantages to each of the possible solutions. In this case,
Cummings highlights the conflicting choices that surround automation around this type of system
and highlights that there is a ‘tendency to rely upon automated recommendations and disregard
contradictory information in light of a computer-generated recommendation’, this is known as
‘automation bias’. This generates a problem, because it seems that the user simply follows the
recommended advice and does not allow their judgement to come into play. The empirical
investigation involved testing the conflicting possibilities for the level of automation that the
system could offer the user. The testing was to determine whether the ‘decision times and
correctness of decisions’ was influenced by the two possible levels of automation (of the missile
system) which had been defined in the ‘technical investigation: Level 1 narrows the selection down
to alternatives, while Level 2 suggests one course of action. In conclusion to her work Cummings
suggests that the ‘application of the Value-Sensitive Design methodology provides a bridge
between analyzing ethical issues and the technical engineering design process.’
This method could provide innovation in design education because of the different
approaches it inspires. However, is it possible to simply transfer human values in human-computer
interaction to design? Maybe not. In this case, Cummings focuses on an engineering product
which consists of two parts; the physical missile and the system for directing the missile. However,
not all designs have a systems component, and the challenges that are faced by human-computer
interaction designers differ from those within engineering design. It may be more appropriate for
design to develop its own ‘human values’, which are context-specific and more relevant to the
priorities of design education.
While there may be some disadvantages in transferring a method from one field and
applying it in another, it does generate discussion and offers a different way for students to think
41
about ethics in design projects. Szenasy (2003) approaches her classes with this same openness and
enthusiasm for new ways of thinking about design and ethics. She explains that her Ethics of
Design course ‘is all about responsibility to the planet, to the regions we live in, to the community,
to the profession, to the client, and to the self’. This approach seems to embrace both the micro
and macro elements of design responsibility. She explains how her class ‘begin each September by
watching MindWalk, a 1991 film that argues for abandoning the Cartesian, mechanistic, linear
thinking that lit up the road to industrialization and made the modern world possible’. She
suggests ‘now, if we are to survive, we need to switch to an ecological-systems thinking which
considers interconnectedness and relationships’. This approach is very close to the humanitarian
approach, discussed by Passino (2009) who suggests that engineers should go further,
volunteering their skills to benefit communities. There is a shift, not just in the way that education
is prescribing these important issues, but also in the way that thinking about them is approached.
There appears to be a real effort and growing enthusiasm to train up-and-coming designers in the
importance of thinking about ethical issues in design. Efforts are shifting from not just telling the
students what they ‘ought’ to be doing, but involving them in tasks which push them to establish
their own ideas of what they ‘ought’ to do. At the University of Kent in the UK, there was some
recent media attention when a group of student architects were set the task of designing a torture
device (McVeigh, 2008). The newspaper article sparked debate about just what design students
should be asked to do in their courses. However, the purpose of the project – a longer-term design
exercise for Amnesty International – seems to have been, at least in part, to make students aware
of their responsibilities as designers. This is perhaps an unrepresentative project but it highlights
some innovative approaches to the dilemma of engaging design students with issues of ethics and
responsibility.
Another initiative, which started as a personal project and has now been incorporated into
wider design education, is a contribution by Erica Nooney. Nooney, a senior student at the
University of Dayton, was struggling with uncovering her own sexual identity while trying to
define the social responsibilities of her chosen profession, graphic design (Adobe, n.d) In response
to these thoughts, she had two questions; (1) ‘what if students are forced to design for an
42
unfamiliar client whose values are opposed to their personal beliefs?’, and (2) ‘should designers
work to advance companies or associations whose causes are opposed to their personal beliefs?’
She embarked on a project to design for an organisation that clearly held different opinions on
sexual orientation to her own. One piece of work sought to convey the message that
‘homosexuality is something to overcome’. This project demonstrated the benefits of working with
alternative ethical frameworks and it was taken up by others teaching graphic design. ‘By
situating the students as disbelievers in their own designs, this project helped them experience the
long-range effects and power of design in a provocative way. Wallace challenged them to examine
and define the designer’s role for themselves and left each of them pondering their personal
boundaries’ (Adobe, n.d).
These movements in design are important because they encourage students not to only
think about outcomes, but about the whole messy process of design. These types of prescriptive
tasks allow students the opportunity and freedom to push boundaries, to define their value
frameworks, and to understand their ‘moral compass’ - an internal guidance system, which points
to the right direction of action, based on beliefs of conduct and responsible behaviour. Allowing
student designers to explore ethics and responsibility in this way, goes some way to support the
ideas proposed by Tigerman (2004) that ‘it is not so much that design ethics be an intrinsic part of
design, as it is that designers be ethical beings so as to be pre-qualified to engage in the design
discipline’.
So far, this chapter has constructed a case for promoting prescriptive approaches in
response to the difficulties of working across the perceived interface between design and ethics.
However, in reality a more holistic portfolio of approaches is required. Descriptive as well as
prescriptive approaches need to be applied. The chapter continues with a closer examination of
what might constitute the descriptive side of the model.
43
2.3. The descriptive in design and ethics
As in Section 2.2, this section examines literature from a number of fields including engineering. It
opens with the domain of design. Descriptive classifications focus on what actually is. They seek to
reflect what actually happens, rather than what ‘ought’ to happen. Cross (1989) succinctly
illustrates a descriptive model of design in Figure 6. The model consists of three stages:
generation, evaluation, and communication.
Figure 6: A simple three-stage model of the design process by Nigel Cross
Cross’s deceptively simple model of the design process takes the form of a flow diagram
presenting three stages. Although the designer works through each stage the model includes a
feedback loop. So as a result of evaluation, if new discoveries are made or new knowledge acquired,
the output can be further improved if the designer selects to return to the generation stage. Cross
contrasts this with French’s more detailed descriptive model of the design process shown in
Figure 7.
44
Figure 7: French's model of the design process, as presented by Cross.
The model by French is a more detailed map of the steps which a designer takes when conducting
the process of design. However, neither model offers any insight into the specific decision-making
processes at any of the stages. More particularly, such models don’t locate ethical decision-making
at any particular stage. Even the more detailed models of the design process appear to avoid any
mapping of where and when ethical decision-making comes into play. Nevertheless, it’s important
to ask if ethical considerations might be more urgent or more appropriately addressed at a
particular stage or stages of the design process.
45
Lawson (2006) in his work to describe ‘how designers think’ provides some illumination. He
proposes that design processes can be affected by both internal and external constraints but this
still leaves unanswered the question of where responsibility maps onto the models as illustrated in
Figure 8. Does responsibility manifest itself in these internal/ external constraints and to what
extent is it shaped by the influence of the designer, client, user or legislator? Lawson’s analysis
raises another question; do design students work under these same constraints as practising
expert designers or are student constraints different from professional constraints?
Figure 8: Lawson's diagram of internal and external constraints in design
Understanding the various constraints under which designers work may lead us to understand
obligations and responses to responsibility which are placed on designers. Busby and
Coeckelbergh (2003) suggest that understanding obligations which are ascribed by others may
potentially offer an insight into the development of moral imagination. Is moral imagination an
important component of responsible design? If it can lead to a greater envisioning and
appreciation of consequences as some authors suggest (Johnson, 2002; Lloyd, 2006; 2009), then
perhaps it is an important capacity. Ball and Christensen (2009), citing Tafal (1979), use a
quotation from Frank Lloyd Wright to illustrate how expert designers conceive solutions (in this
case, buildings) in the imagination. Is it possible that ethical considerations can also be added to
the melting pot? Can moral imagination operate alongside the imagining of material, form, users
46
and all the other design factors? The answer lies in our leaning styles. Huff and Frey (2005) in
describing Gareth Matthews work ‘Concept Formation and Moral Development’ analyse the
human developmental processes by which we learn basic and intermediate ethical concepts. Moral
imagination appears at the apex of these, suggesting that it may be an ‘excellence’ in the
Aristotelian sense in that it is both a virtue and a skill acquired only after the basics have been
mastered. If this is true then it would seem to pose a problem for the education of junior designers
but may give new impetus to design education at Masters level. Either way, it seems clear that the
development of a moral imagination is essential and it is a phenomenon of the individual, even
where that individual seeks to work as part of a group or team. The next section explores this
issue of the individual.
2.3.1. How individuals make ethical judgements
Kohlberg’s work has made some useful contributions to our understanding of descriptive ethics.
One piece of co-authored work was illustrated with a dilemma reproduced here:
‘In Europe, a woman was near death from a particular kind of cancer. There was one drug
that the doctors thought might save her. It was a form of radium that a druggist in the same
town had recently discovered. The drug was expensive to make, but the druggist was
charging ten times what the drug cost him to make. He paid $400 for the radium and
charged $4,000 for a small dose of the drug. The sick women’s husband, Heinz, went to
everyone he knew to borrow the money and tried every legal means, but he could only get
together about $2,000, which is half of what it cost. He told the druggist that his wife was
dying, and asked him to sell it cheaper or let him pay later. But the druggist said, “No, I
discovered the drug and I’m going to make money from it.” So having tried every legal
means, Heinz gets desperate and considers breaking into the man’s store to steal the drug
for his wife.’
(Colby and Kohlberg, 1987, p229-230)
47
Killen and Smetana (2008, p5) point out that this ‘Heinz’ dilemma, pits a number of social
considerations against one another, including the issues of stealing, property rights, marital
obligations, and the value of human life. The individual has to weigh up these issues and make a
judgement on what Heinz should do. The process of weighing up conflicting issues is one that
designers are familiar with. Kohlberg, by focusing on the differences in responses and focusing on
the problem solving strategies that underlie responses, was able to establish, develop, and
illustrate moral development. He developed a six stage model, three levels each compromising of
two stages:
Preconventional level (Stages 1 and 2)
Conventional level (Stages 3 and 4)
Postconventional level (Stages 5 and 6)
Kohlberg (1984) explains the three levels. ‘The Preconventional moral level is the level of most
children under 9, some adolescents, and many adult criminal offenders. The conventional level is
the level of most adolescents and adults in our society and in other societies. The
Postconventional level is reached only after the age of 20.’ Kohlberg explains that conventional
involves ‘upholding rules and expectations and conventions of society or authority just because
they are society’s rules, expectations or conventions.’ The Preconventional level is one where the
individual is yet to grasp this concept. At the postconventional level ‘acceptance of society’s rules
is based on formulating and accepting the general moral principles that underlie these rules.’
Often when there is a conflict between the general rules and the moral principles the individual
will tend to use the moral principle as a way of judging, rather than being guided by the
conventional rules.
Trevino (1986, p605) provided a concise explanation of Kohlberg’s six stages of moral
development. See Figure 9. Kohlberg (Colby and Kohlberg, 1987; Kohlberg, 1984) provides a
detailed description of the six moral stages which can be found in Appendix A.
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Figure 9: Kohlberg's stages of moral development. Adapted by Trevino (1986)
It is suggested that a person moves through the stages; stage 1 to stage 2, then stage 2 to stage 3,
etc. A person moves to the next stage, but they only move in one direction; they do not move
down the scale. However, not everyone will develop morally at the same time. Some people will
remain in the lower stages. Kohlberg suggests that it is very difficult, almost impossible for people
to reach stage 6. Can Kohlberg’s method, used with designers, provide any insight into their
development on design ethics?
Kohlberg’s work, which was largely grounded in the work of Piaget, has received some
criticism. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (2004) suggest that the approach to ethics adopted by Kohlberg is
a detached and rationalist approach. They prefer an ethics of ‘situated involvement’. Lawson
(2006, p15) suggests that design thinking, which takes place in the process of design, is a skill; ‘it
is a very complex and sophisticated skill, but still one which can be analysed, taken apart,
developed and practised’. This thesis is interested in this concept of breaking down a process,
49
focusing on a particular element – in this case design responsibility – and reconstructing it to see
how that then feeds into the whole process of design. The aim of this is to discover how design
thinking is constructed, broken down, and analysed.
Also if design is a skill as Lawson suggests then it would be logical to assume that it can be
acquired like other skills. This is the same principle that Dreyfus and Dreyfus present for ethics.
They work to the assumption that ‘acting ethically is a skill’, which can be acquired like all other
skills. So if acting ethically is a skill and design thinking is a skill, then the question is; do the two
combine? Do designers develop the two skills simultaneously and move through levels of
expertise from novice to expert at the same time? Or is design ethics a more holistic skill which
consists of its own unique properties? Dorst, when presenting at the IASDR 09 conference
suggested that the development model presented by Dreyfus and Dreyfus is important in
understanding how designers develop their skills. At the same conference, Young et al. (2009) also
drew on the work of the Dreyfus brothers to highlight the intertwined relationship between
design thinking and skill acquisition of designers journeying from novices to masters. However,
what about exploring the Dreyfus brothers approach on ethics; can their work help to understand
how designers develop ethically, or to gain an insight into how a sense of responsibility develops
with expertise? Holt (1997, p117) suggests that the designer will seek to make judgements against
a set of ‘rules of rightness’ generated over time from previous projects. How do designers define
‘rules of rightness’? Are they grounded in ethics or are they technical rules of rightness? Are
responsible designers cultivated as a result of their development, as they acquire the skills of
design? If so, then are less experienced designers more likely to be irresponsible? Holt (1997,
p121) explains how the work of Perry and others has demonstrated that the college years are, for
many, a time of significant intellectual growth. Explaining that students typically begin these
years with a dichotomistic view of the world in which things are either right or wrong and black
or white. Does this ‘black and white’ perspective of the world affect student designers’ perceptions
of responsibility?
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The models presented by Kohlberg and Dreyfus suggest that development occurs in a
linear5 fashion. That a person starts a one point and that they progress through stages as they
develop morally or as their skill develops. In contrast to a linear approach to development, Harré
(1983) suggests that Kohlberg’s theory has some flaws and that it is not stages of moral reasoning
that structure moral judgement, but rather, ‘moral orders’ in the social environment. Carpendale
and Krebs (1992, p206) in explaining Harré’s position, illustrate;
‘A moral order is an organized “system of rights, obligations and duties obtaining in a
society, together with the criteria by which people and their activities are valued” … a
culture may contain a “multiplicity of interacting, overlapping and complementary moral
orders” corresponding to different stages in Kohlberg's typology. For example, the moral
order of business might assume a Stage 2 “dog eat dog” orientation and the moral order of
the family might consist of Stage 3 mutuality.’
It is important to consider that a linear path of development may occur differently to that
described by Kohlberg. Harré suggests that Kohlberg’s linear process might adopt the structure of
line A, as represented in Figure 10.
5
Linear, in this sense refers to a line that starts at one point and progressively moves through stages from the lower
stage to a higher stage.
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Figure 10: Harré’s interpretation of Kohlberg’s concept of development (line A) and a possible different type of
development (line B) which demonstrates his concept of alternative paths of development.
Harré (1983, p226) suggests that;
‘We tend to regard A as normal. But B is also a possible life form, for example that of a
middle-class child during a Khmer Rouge regime6. And there are many others. To regard A
as universal is to assimilate the local conventions of a moral order displayed as theory of
development to some supposed trans-situational programme for a generalized human being.
Thought of this way, deviations from A become abnormalities, not normal growth into
alternative social worlds. But if we are to proceed to develop the consequences of these basic
ideas in more detail, the theories of the moral developmentalists must be examined as they
purport to have mapped the universal and inevitable progression by which cognitively and
morally competent persons arise.’
6
Radical communist movement that ruled Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 after winning power through a guerrilla war.
(http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/316738/Khmer-Rouge)
52
What might the paths of development look like for product designers? The literature review has
established that design is a complex process which consists of conflicting issues. For example, in
the design of the Oosterschelde storm surge barrier, two conflicting issues were juxtaposed; the
culture of design demonstrates the ‘multiplicity of interacting, overlapping and complementary
moral orders’ Harré alluded to when discussing moral orders and how they may map onto
Kohlberg’s six stage development model. However, how might his contribution help our
understanding of responsibility development in product design? What moral orders relate to the
complex nature of design? Design does not operate in a vacuum, it involves elements of business,
commercialisation, safety, and so on. So how do moral orders and the role of the designer in
society affect designers’ perceptions of responsibility?
Other criticisms of Kohlberg’s work have been targeted at the dominant number of male
subjects in his studies, suggesting his models of moral development represent male moral
development, rather than the more general human race, because of the lack of female subjects.
Gilligan, who Dreyfus and Dreyfus also classify as using a ‘situated involvement’ approach to
ethics, later tried to rectify the issue of male dominated studies by conducting studies with female
participants. Her model is very different to the model presented by Kohlberg. She offers a three
phase model that, when combined with Kohlberg’s model, offers a more complete picture of moral
development:
Phase 1: involves caring for the self in order to ensure survival.
Phase 2: is a transitional phase in which this judgment is criticized as selfish. The criticism
signals a new understanding of the connection between self and others which is articulated
by the concept of responsibility. The elaboration of this concept of responsibility and its
fusion with a maternal morality that seeks to ensure care for the dependent and unequal
characterizes the second perspective. At this point, the good is equated with caring for
others.
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Phase 3: involves the dynamics of relationships and dissipates the tension between
selfishness and responsibility through a new understanding of the interconnection between
other and self. ... Thus a progressively more adequate understanding of the psychology of
human relationships - an increasing differentiation of self and other and a growing
comprehension of the dynamics of social interaction - informs the development of an ethic of
care. This ethic, which reflects a cumulative knowledge of human relationships, evolves
around a central insight, that self and other are interdependent.
(Gilligan in Robertson, 1999)
Whitbeck (1996, p14), demonstrates another overlapping connection between design and ethics
when she draws on Gilligan’s work with female subjects; especially the work with ‘subject Amy’.
Whitbeck uses ‘Amy’ to illustrate how brainstorming, a common tool in design, has been used to
respond to the Heinz dilemma. Amy does not allow herself to be restricted to the two options of
stealing the drug or allowing Heinz’s wife to die. Instead she proposes new alternatives:
‘Well, I don’t think so. I think there might be other ways besides stealing it, like if he could
borrow the money or make a loan or something, but he really shouldn’t steal the drug – but
his wife shouldn’t die either’.
Whitbeck explains that when Amy was asked why Heinz should not steal the drug, she replies:
‘If he stole the drug, he might save his wife then, but if he did, he might have to go to jail,
and then his wife might get sicker again, and he couldn’t get more of the drug, and it might
not be good. So, they should really just talk it out and find some other way to make the
money.’
With this example of brainstorming, Whitbeck make the point that the activity of brainstorming
stimulates new ideas. She suggests this is similar to the activity of design. It may be interesting
54
for the field of design thinking to explore studies with the Heinz dilemma and to explore whether
designers consider moral dilemmas differently to other stakeholders in the process. Perhaps
exploring modified versions of the Heinz dilemma, which relate to design, could be a useful
methodology for exploring the construction and explanation of designers’ moral judgements.
Exploring methodologies which require the designer to explain their thoughts may be the most
beneficial. In chapter 1, the point was made that the combining of two complex fields can make it
difficult to explore. Perhaps, there needs to be some explanation of what knowledge designers
hold regarding responsibilities and their design practice. The application of knowledge elicitation
techniques may offer an insight into the experience designers have locked away in their heads.
The works of Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Dreyfus and Dreyfus also stimulates thoughts regarding
development of designers. It seems likely that designers move through stages of responsibility
development but maybe they do not comply with the ethical models that Kohlberg and Gilligan
propose? There is scope to investigate these ideas further through studies of novice and expert
designers.
2.3.2. Descriptive accounts of design ethics
Universities devote many resources to developing courses and curricula which aim to address the
importance of ethical considerations in design. One approach to teaching design ethics is through
the use of case studies. These case studies are examples of how designers have conducted
themselves in practice. Descriptive case-studies are often used for teaching design ethics and
therefore demonstrate the connectivity between prescriptive tools and descriptive accounts. When
these descriptive accounts are used they are used to explore ethics in design cases, but are also
used to prescribe how not to conduct ones’ self. Often, there are cases where the outcomes have
resulted in fatalities. These cases receive a lot of attention and tend to focus on passive
responsibility. Within engineering design there are a few individual case studies which have
received a lot of attention and are adopted within university programs to discuss engineering
ethics. These cases include the O-rings incorporated into the Challenger space shuttle; and the fuel
55
tank design and location in the Ford Pinto car. These case studies are important because they offer
students the opportunity to experience the complexity of the design process from the perspective
of those involved. These cases involved engineers who were clearly trying to confront the ethical
issues rather than avoid them. Both Roger Boisjoly (the Challenger case) and Lou Tubben (the
Pinto case) raised concerns about the safety, and both made efforts to bring this to the attention of
senior management within their projects. Unfortunately, despite their efforts, both projects ended
in disaster and there were fatalities in both cases. Case studies such as these are useful to reflect on
with respect to design processes and ethical decisions. However, as Lloyd (2009, p156) points out
‘ethical-decision-making, in design and elsewhere, is often characterised post hoc by points at which
‘big’ life or death decisions have to be made. Yet trying to identify where in the process this
happened is often very difficult.’ In these large cases, there is often a focus on who was to blame, or
where it all went wrong. However, it seems that design and ethics are not that clear cut or easily
divided. The cases are often complex, there are a number of stakeholders and pressures involved
and the cases tend to focus on large decisions within the projects; e.g. whether or not to launch the
challenger, rather than the more subtle ones which may have contributed to the overall failure.
Van de Poel and Verbeek (2006) have suggested that engineering ethics:
‘has mainly focused on disaster cases, with the suggestion that such disasters could have
been prevented by responsible behaviour on the part of engineers or by whistle blowing.
This has resulted in an externalist approach… focusing on the outcomes of processes…
rather than on the internal dynamics of these processes.’
There have also been some issues regarding case studies and their relevance in education; many of
the large scale cases tend to be USA based. Does the use of USA cases aid the externalist approach
or are students outside the USA able to relate to these cases?
Case studies are not the only method of transferring information of what designers actually
do during the design process. In design research there have been studies of the use of games to
teach ethics. Such an approach brings together the prescriptive element of rules which games
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consist of, but the game play and outcomes provide a descriptive explanation of what designers do
during the design process.
Lloyd and van de Poel (2008) investigate how concepts of ethics and responsibility in design
education can be approached via the use of games. Their work is largely grounded in literature
from other fields, such as business education, where games are used to stimulate issues of ethics.
However, as Lloyd and van de Poel highlight; games ‘have been little used in design education’. Of
those that have adopted a game based approach, worthy of note are Habraken and Gross, Schön,
and Bucciarelli. It is the game designed by Bucciarelli, Delta Design, which Lloyd and van de Poel
use for their foundation. In their words; ‘we chose to take an existing design game by Bucciarelli –
Delta Design – and add an ethical element to the play.’ The game is conducted in the same way that
Bucciarelli intended. Lloyd and van de Poel are aware that Bucciarelli’s version does generate
implicit example of ethics – specifically when the players have to deal with trade-offs. However,
they propose a new dimension, which will address ethics and responsibility in a more explicit
manner. The gravity wave, which the students are aware of in Bucciarelli’s version, is used by
Lloyd and van de Poel to create an ethical scenario. The students are aware of the gravity wave,
but it is only later that the players are ‘told that some years after the construction of their design
there has been a gravity wave that has destroyed their building and caused a loss of life.’ This
scenario then requires the players to reflect on their design process, decisions made, and actions
taken during the design. The players have to come together as a team to discuss the issue of who
is responsible for this outcome. Students are not asked to consider their responsibilities until after
they have been informed that the ‘gravity-wave’ has had an affect and that the design may be to
blame.
The game players did show signs of weighing up conflicting, complex, and messy issues
during the design process. An example of them discussing trade-offs between; avoidance of death,
cost of structure, aesthetics is included in the paper. A change to one thing can have a ‘butterfly
effect’ and change other aspects of the design. Focusing on the issues the students raised may
indicate what is of value and how valued it is, e.g., in this example, the students deem that ‘life’ is
57
valued over the cost and look of the building. Previous cases, such as the Ford Pinto, indicate that
sometimes other values take priority; in that case cost and time-scale appeared to be the
dominating factors of the design.
It appears that the students were not aggressively involved in ‘active responsibility’,
although there are examples of this. Instead the focus on responsibility came in the form of
‘passive responsibility’; ‘responsibility after the fact’ (Bovens, 1998). It refers to accountability for
something that has occurred in the past, after the incident, when the players were asked to reflect
on their design process and the issue of who was responsible? The Ford Pinto and London
Ambulance Service cases, discussed in the previous chapter, combined with a similar approach
here suggests that ‘passive responsibility’ is a common approach in design projects. Perhaps the
focus needs to move away from what designers are willing to later accept responsibility for
towards, what responsibilities they accept upfront as theirs. What responsibilities do designers
value and prioritise during the design process?
Lloyd and van de Poel (2008) suggest that ‘ethics must in some way be ‘felt’. Learning about
the concept of responsibility in theory is a lot different from feeling responsible for something
happening’. In this work they have used a scenario involving death – is it only these extreme
‘death’ scenarios that can trigger ‘felt’ responsibility? Probably not, so how do we get designers to
discuss everyday responsibilities, issues which on the surface may not be obviously ethical issues,
as questions of life and death are.
Games are one way in which ethical decision-making and allocation and acceptance of
responsibility can be addressed in the design process. However, what this methodology
reinforces is the importance of discussion. The fact that the designers reflect on their process and
in doing so have to justify the decisions they made and justify why they should or, should not be
responsible seems to be a very powerful tool. Perhaps then, a method is required which
encourages this type of behaviour. Perhaps a more relaxed and experimental form of
investigation can provide a different dimension to traditional ethnographic studies, empirical
studies, and surveys. McDonnell et al. (2004) bring together the fields of design and expertise by
experimenting with video capture, student presentations and story telling. The design students
58
recorded and edited the material they shot, structuring it into short video sequences which
presented what happened during their design process. In addition, the students had to provide an
explanation of their portrayal of the design story. The approach adopted by the authors is
attractive because it incorporates multi-methodology; video participation, design task, reflection,
construction, and presentation and justifications of the outcome the students present.
Investigating how designers construct their worlds is not a new concept. McDonnell (1997), in
her paper ‘Descriptive models for interpreting design’ describes experimenting with George
Kelly’s repertory grid technique ‘as a conversational tool’. Another method being used more
frequently is card sorting (Curran, et al., 2005; Downing, 1992; Fincher and Tenenberg, 2005;
Hare and Pahl-Wostl, 2002; Kumanyika, et al., 1997; Nurmuliani, et al., 2004; Rugg and
McGeorge, 1997; Upchurch, et al., 2001; Wood and Wood, 2008). Perhaps these two methods
could be usefully added to the accumulated portfolio of tools for investigating design ethics. And
these are discussed in more detail in later chapters.
2.4. A framework for the research
Chapter 1 identified the research domain of design and ethics. It proposed an interface existed
between the two fields and presented the case that research was needed across the domains if this
interface was to be understood and exploited in design practice and design education. Chapter 2
has taken a different tack. It has identified two broad models of conduct that can be seen in the
application of both design and ethics. These two models are presented as distinctive and
comprehensive. It’s possible to present them as a simple illustration just as was done for the
domains of design and ethics in Chapter 1, as illustrated in Figure 11.
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Figure 11: Representation of prescriptive (P) and descriptive (D) approaches in design and ethics.
If the representations from Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 are combined a new representation is created
which provides a framework for structuring the author’s own studies of design and ethics (see
Figure 12).
Figure 12: Combining the Design/Ethics figure with the Prescriptive/Descriptive figure.
This new combined figure displays four sectors. Top left is Design Prescriptive (DP) and top right
is Ethics Prescriptive (EP). It is these sectors that were introduced in Section 2.2. Bottom left is
Design Descriptive (DD) and bottom right is Ethics Descriptive (ED) and these were discussed in
Section 2.3.
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This new combined diagram supports a balanced approach to the research design. By
mapping research plans onto this diagram it is possible to precisely locate a study and to anticipate
its contribution. For example, some studies might be located at the core of one of the four sectors
while other studies might deliberately set out to investigate either of the two interfaces. While the
centre of the diagram suggests a significant interaction between two interfaces the forces of both
will be felt across the whole diagram.
Chapters 1 and 2 have drawn upon available literature in making the case for the four-sector
model. However, as has already been acknowledged, much of the literature has come from the
fields of engineering and engineering design. There is not a significant body of knowledge from
the design community and one of the aims of this thesis is to go some small way to redressing this
imbalance. There are many unanswered questions which surround the responsibilities of product
designers but a number of pointers for research have been identified through the literature review.
This thesis now needs to convert the answers and, most importantly, the questions into a research
plan and strategy. Chapter 3 presents this research direction, research questions, and research
approach devised with the use of a pilot study.
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3. In search of methodology
Chapters 1 and 2 offered a broad preparatory discussion on the relationship between design and
ethics. It used a number of published sources to support the notion that the two domains possess
an important interface and that research is needed at and across this interface. However, it is much
less clear how one might go about investigating this phenomenon. This chapter presents the
search for an appropriate methodology. It examines the nature of the research questions that
emerge from the previous chapters and it explores various options for conducting studies of this
evolving phenomenon of responsibility in design.
As illustrated by the four-quadrant diagram in Figure 12 in the previous chapter, the initial
review of literature suggested that the research could be very broad, that is, it might usefully
explore any or all of the four sectors. In theory, if one knew which of the sectors would lead to
revealing findings, it would be a much easier task to identify a specific research question and to
apply appropriate research methods to generate data. But this is not the case with this programme
of research. The nature of the research question is not clear and therefore the selection and
application of investigative methods cannot be undertaken. At this stage the research is still very
much concerned with problem finding rather than problem solving. Therefore what is required is
some form of illuminative research that works to reveal the broad nature of the research context
and the possible research questions. This can be followed by more specific research methods
tailored to suit the particular questions selected or composed.
This chapter explains how the direction of the research was established using a broad
illuminative approach and how findings from this stage provided a foundation for more specific
studies presented in subsequent chapters. Given that the methodology was emergent, that is, each
stage of investigation informed the next, it would be misleading to attempt to communicate all the
methodological issues and decisions in one chapter. Similarly, the review of literature relating to
methods and methodology cannot be simply dealt with in one chapter as might be the case in
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other PhD theses. Therefore this chapter will begin the discussion but methods and methodology
is a recurring theme in subsequent chapters.
3.1. Towards a descriptive approach
The initial literature review played a substantial role in illuminating where research attention
might be usefully focused. As the preceding chapters have already noted a number of authors have
identified important new relationships between design and ethics - particularly over the last
decade. Much of this attention had emerged from engineering and engineering design, and is
concerned with issues such as safety, but there has also been a small but significant groundswell of
writing about other concerns. These include more ‘social’ issues, such as sustainability and
consumption. Whilst the professional community of design practitioners and academics is not
unrepresented in these publications the vast majority of the writing has broadly come from the
engineering camp. However, there are some notable exceptions. Sustainability has been a
discussion point in product design for a number of decades with Victor Papanek, advocating
responsible design, being hugely influential from the 1960s. In the 1980s Papanek called for
greater social and moral responsibility from designers. He warned that ‘by creating whole species
of permanent garbage to clutter up the landscape, and by choosing materials and processes that
pollute the air we breath, designers have become a dangerous breed’ (Papanek, 1985, p ix). More
recently, Findeli (2001, p13) suggested that there can be no responsible design without a
responsible designer and while there have been movements to encourage better practice including
more inclusive design, better usability, and so on, there have been few initiatives to grow interest
in responsible behaviour in design. Design as a profession seems well equipped to address the
practical needs of users but there is little consensus regarding its position on, for example,
sustainable living, consumption or globalisation. Nevertheless, responsibility is an emerging topic
in design – and particularly product design – but it’s useful to note that research often seems to be
ahead of itself in product design; prescribing actions rather than focusing on what is actually being
done.
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Figure 13: Design Education; A focus on Descriptive and Prescriptive.
From the perspective of 2010 it appears that researchers have begun to chart some of the
quadrants re-presented in Figure 13. Particularly we are seeing some illumination of the sectors
DP (design prescriptive) and EP (ethics prescriptive). There have been efforts made in
engineering and product design to define the shared ‘prescriptive’ knowledge base and the
interface between the two quadrants (DP and EP). For example, there have been calls to improve
design practice by better consideration of material choices, usability, accessibility, and so on.
There have been similar calls in engineering where codes of ethics have been defined to help guide
engineers. But not all sectors of design reveal this emphasis on the prescriptive. For example,
some examples of engineering design research appear to be concerned with illuminating the lower
half of the model, that is, the sectors DD (design descriptive) and ED (ethic descriptive) and the
interface between them. This has been particularly welcome given the imbalance between research
across the prescriptive / descriptive divide.
The review of literature confirms that, even today, codes of ethics in product design are rare.
While product design companies may adhere to business codes of ethics the application of similar
codes for guiding design are few and far between. It seems reasonable to ask, if we lack accepted
guidelines on responsibility, then what guides the actions of product designers? This thesis
suggests that to develop and understand product design and ethics, we need to focus on the
descriptive sectors of the model shown in Figure 12, and the interfaces between them. This is not
to say that the prescriptive quadrants are less revealing or less important. In fact, there appears to
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be an important synergy between the quadrants and this presents a potentially useful line of
inquiry in the following studies.
In the context of global warming, studies of ‘design practice’ have been very revealing.
Studying the consequences of actions by a wide range of professionals have given us hard evidence
that we can use to alter future actions and behaviour. Furthermore, as our understanding of global
warming increases, so our concept of what ‘good’ behaviour is can also change. In this way the
descriptive drives the prescriptive. There is an important parallel with design here. With reference
to design responsibility it’s likely that design practitioners themselves will be the most fruitful
source of information about the manifestation of responsibility in practice. If we seek to define
‘good’ behaviour in design practice we need to understand the actions and motivations of people
engaged in design activity. This is particularly important if we are to develop prescriptive models
for design training, development and education. But again, the important point is that the
descriptive drives the prescriptive.
This thesis seeks to report new knowledge about the interface between design and ethics but
the investigations focus on the descriptive half of the model. This half is less-reported for a
number of reasons – it is difficult and messy to study real design practice, it doesn’t always lend
itself to research, and it can be difficult to compare instances of design practice that might have
differing contexts, differing numbers of participants and differing timescales. Nevertheless,
research that is founded on the descriptive is much more likely to illuminate an emerging and
indistinct phenomenon such as design responsibility. The alternative strategy of studying the
prescriptive will only confirm what we already know. Plus this has already been the focus of
attention for a number of researchers.
3.2. The beginnings of a research question
There are opportunities to investigate design responsibility on a number of levels but given the
emphasis on the descriptive this work focuses on the individual designer. However, it is
acknowledged that any single designer does not and cannot make all the decisions involved in a
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design task. Where and when are ethical decisions made? Clearly, there are models of design
sequences which explain the steps a designer works through but where, when and how is a
designer to incorporate responsible thinking into such a sequence? There does not appear to be
any clearly defined strategy for incorporating responsible thinking in design and this should form
part of the initial investigation or even part of the overall research question. Is one to assume that
design responsibility operates evenly across the whole design process or are there particular
stages where responsibility is particularly influential or formative? Asking this question is
important because it can influence which aspect of design responsibility the research focuses on.
The literature review revealed the breadth of research into the field of design. Earlier
researchers have focused on, for example, design process, creativity, the design brief, sketching,
modelling, and prototyping, to name only a few topics. The methodologies adopted have been
wide-ranging to take into account the particular characteristics of the context and the subject
being studied. Of particular value appear to be the more qualitative and reflective approaches.
Such a strategy would seem to be sensitive to the difficulties of gathering data about responsibility
in design practice. Particularly, it might usefully reveal the motivations and drivers in a decision-
making process that frequently exploits judgements, feelings and hunches.
Earlier in the thesis it was noted that terms such as ethics and design are often used very
broadly and interchangeably in published literature. This is one of the defining characteristics of
this relatively new discipline of design research and it has posed some problems for extracting
meaningful comparisons in the literature review. In chapter 1 a number of key terms had to be
defined simply to facilitate the discussion but it became apparent that any qualitative research
method would have to deal with a variety of terms if participants were to be engaged in
discussions of their perceptions of design responsibility. An apparently simple question actually
turned out to be very revealing in the journey towards an appropriate methodology. This was:
What are designers’ perceptions of their responsibilities? and this question has guided the evolution of
the research. How can one discuss responsibility in the field of product design without
understanding the practitioners own definitions of the term? Reflection on this question
underpinned the strategy to begin the investigation of responsibility in design by using qualitative
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techniques such as interviews. This illuminative approach seemed entirely in-keeping with the ill-
defined and emergent nature of responsibility in design. It was the approach adopted in the first of
what turned out to be three studies.
3.3. Planning and developing study 1
With the establishment of the research question ‘What are designers’ perceptions of their
responsibilities?’ the research programme was still a long way from suggesting any hypothesis but
it seemed to offer a productive means of generating insight in an area where there was little
existing research. At this early stage it was still not established what the word ‘designer’ referred
to and this impacted on the choice of methods. For example, should the study seek to engage
practising designers, student designers, design managers, or even other design-related
participants? While this issue was being addressed the original single question was being
developed. One of the subsidiary questions was Do designers’ perceptions of responsibility change and
evolve? and this inspired a return to the work of Kohlberg who noted that if one monitors
responses from people at different points in their lives, their ideas can change and develop.
Kohlberg’s work on moral development indicates that monitoring the same research participants
for a number of years can be highly revealing. Could this type of study work with exploring
perceptions of responsibility in product designers? The answer is probably yes. However, given
the timescale of the PhD programme it would be difficult to monitor the same designers over such
an extensive timeframe. While such longitudinal studies were not feasible, investigating snapshots
of different levels of design expertise were – and additionally offered some potential valuable
opportunities. Figure 14 lists different permutations of participant groups that could provide
insight into perceptions of responsibility in product design. All were either in design education or
design practice.
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Graduating Designers Practising Designers Design Managers 8
Graduating Designers Practising Designers Design Lecturers 8
1st Year Design Students Graduating Designers Design Lecturers 8
1st Year Design Students Graduating Designers Practising Designers 9
Figure 14: Possible snapshots to offer insights in 'responsibility' of product designers.
Each of these possible groupings of research participants had their own appeal. However, the most
logical participants to involve appeared to be: first year undergraduate students, graduating
students, and practising designers. The specific design context chosen was product design.
The chosen group demonstrated a sequence that closely matched a career path of a typical
product designer and this seemed to best match the adopted research questions. However,
alternative groups may also be revealing. One that might be particularly interesting to pursue
would be a study incorporating design academics. Their input could offer insights to the teaching
and learning of responsibility in product design. However, in this work, this dimension was not
included. Nevertheless this thesis hopes to contribute new knowledge that can be beneficial to
design education as well as design practice.
An effective study was required to scope the area of product design, to investigate the
phenomenon of ‘responsibility’ in this context and to explore concepts of responsibility from
designers at different career stages. It was decided that the first study would involve graduating
product designers. The primary reason for this was because UK graduating product design
students take part in final year degree shows across the UK every year - usually sometime
between the months of May and July. These shows provide an opportunity for graduands to
display their portfolios of design work and meet with various external visitors such as potential
employers and members of the public. The shows are generally held at the host universities but
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occasionally they are held at other venues such as the Business Design Centre in London. These
shows provide a chance for researchers to meet product design students. For this work it provided
a timely opportunity to discuss perceptions of responsibility with those who are just about to
embark on their professional design careers. Section 3.5 discusses the conduct of Study 1.
3.4. Core research questions
To reiterate, before discussing the conduct of Study 1, the core research questions will be stated
here:
(1) What are designers’ perceptions of their responsibilities?
(2) Do designers’ perceptions of responsibility change and evolve? and this inspired a return to the
work
3.5. Study 1 – Responsibility in graduating product designers
As discussed above, Study 1 was designed to lay the foundation of the research. It was to provide a
signpost to the questions and approach for subsequent investigations. Its objectives were to gain a
better understanding of how current graduating design students perceive their responsibilities,
and to gain a broad understanding of the issues they face. Generally it sought to establish a
grounded approach to the PhD research in order to better illuminate issues relating to design
responsibilities. Study 1 devised a number of semi-structured interviews with a focus on
developing an understanding of: (1) the role responsibilities play in the design process (2) how
these responsibilities are evidenced in the design process, (3) how these responsibilities map onto
theories of existing design processes, and (4) perceived boundaries to responsibility, that is, the
points where designers consider their responsibilities end.
This chapter reports on a questionnaire study of 50 (37 male & 13 female) undergraduate
design students who were interviewed at their final-year product design degree shows at 11 UK
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universities7 in 2007. The student participants were all less than 30 years old. Experience varied;
some students were registered on sandwich courses and therefore had 6-12 months experience in
an industrial setting, others had none. This is represented in Figure 15.
Did you complete a work placement as part of your degree?
Yes, less than 6 months

6%
Yes, 6 months or more

26%
No
68%
No Yes, 6 months or more Yes, less than 6 months
Figure 15: Proportion of participants completing a work placement during their university degree.
Time pressures at the degree shows required that the interviews be short and focused. A pilot
study conducted with five students at one degree show helped develop a 10 minute script for
interviews. The reason for selecting degree shows was threefold. First, they provided an
opportunity to talk to a large number of students in a relatively short period of time and without
too much prior arrangement. Secondly, and more importantly, students could be interviewed in
front of their own projects, allowing them to reflect specifically on those projects. Thirdly,
graduating students are potentially tomorrow’s designers, therefore their understanding and
application of responsibility is vital to future economic and environmental prosperity.
At each degree show participants were approached and asked if they would like to take part
in a short survey about responsibilities in their design practice. Once they had agreed, and
7Brunel University, Coventry University, De Montfort University, Goldsmiths (University of London), Loughborough
University, Middlesex University, The University of Northampton, University of Brighton, University of Huddersfield,
University of Leeds, and University of Sussex.
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consented to being audio recorded, the interview was conducted8. Participants were free to take
more time to expand on answers to questions if they wished, and some did, but generally
interviews were kept short. In order to reveal any gender differences a balance of male and female
participants was sought, but it should be noted that some degree shows presented a predominantly
male cohort.
3.6. Method of data analysis and findings
The 50 participants produced approximately 11 hours of audio data. An initial analysis selected a
sample of these (4 male, 4 female from a range of universities) to transcribe fully. This facilitated a
broad understanding of the interviews and helped determine which areas to subsequently focus on.
A rough categorisation scheme, as presented in Table 3, was generated.
Table 3: Initial categorisation scheme developed as a result of initial transcriptions.
External environment Initial response to first Attitude In Theory/ In practice

question
Standards Environment Designer Mass consumerism vs.
Legislation - Global warming People are individuals: product design
Process: brief, client - Design for disassembly own responsibility Responsibilities at the
Cog in a big machine - Material selection Done the best I can beginning vs.
That’s what I was taught Usability Research/ knowledge responsibilities at the
to do Universality (the more acquisition end
people the better) Progress – technology/ Idealism vs. joining the
making lives better etc rat race
Needs and wants Two hats – client vs.
university
The rough categorisation scheme drew attention to four points of interest;
(1) the external environment; involved issues which influenced or impacted on the designer.
The external issues which affected their process or responsibilities, e.g. standards, the
8 The Open University ethical board were consulted. Based on the fact that the participants were to remain anonymous,
not be recorded on camera, not to discuss sensitive issues (such as those that may be discussed in the other sectors, e.g.,
health care or psychology. The board deemed that the study passed their guidelines and did not require further
paperwork to be submitted. However, a study proposal taking in the requirements of the study was generated
regardless, in support of good research practice. See Appendix B for details.
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brief, being one person in a larger organisation (the metaphor of a cog in a machine) – a
responsibility to move or stop the machine, and so on.
(2) initial response to first question; earlier discussion in the thesis highlighted the
importance of understanding terms and definitions if research is to be conducted in a
particular area. Therefore it was important to understand: what are designers’ perceptions
of their responsibilities. The first question of the interview was important because its
objective was to get designers to open up and divulge their perceptions and definitions of
responsibility in design practice. More on this question will be discussed in section 3.6.1
(3) attitude; offered a category which focused on the attitudes that the graduands held
towards responsibility and broader concepts of their views of product design.
(4) in theory/in practice; focused on what the graduands said, but then how that differed from
what they did. Often the participants were conflicted, holding one view, but conducting
themselves in an opposing manor.
The categorisation and coding was developed and refined as the rest of the data was analysed. It
generated three main issues; (1) the diversity of issues covered by the term ‘responsible design’, (2)
where students think their responsibility for products ends, and (3) differences between what
students say about their responsibilities in theory, and what they practice in their design work.
3.6.1. The diversity of issues covered by the term ‘responsible design’
The issues that students mentioned when talking about responsibility ranged from issues to do
with the environment and material usage, to the needs and wishes of stakeholders, and safety
issues concerning the product itself. These are perhaps issues that one would expect graduating
students to touch on when asked about design responsibility – issues that probably derive from
their education. Figure 16 presents a word cloud representation of the issues explicitly raised in
response to the first question (what do you understand by the term responsible designing?).
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Figure 16: Word cloud highlighting the key terms used by participants in response to question 1 regarding
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responsibility in product design
The analysis moved on to look at the first thing the students mentioned as this potentially gives an
indication of the issue uppermost in their mind. Students tended to offer multiple responses to what
they perceived responsible design to consist of. Therefore, coding was implemented based on the
first issue the student raised. Additional information regarding the use of word clouds as a method
of data analysis can be found in section 5.2.5.
Table 4 shows the distribution of issues for this analysis using a coarse filter of five subject
groups: environment, design, safety/legal/standards, stakeholders, and ethics. Students’ initial
responses to ‘what do you understand by the term responsible designing?’ revealed a focus towards
‘environmental issues’ including thinking about ‘product lifecycle’, ‘recycling’, ‘materials selection’,
and designing ‘sustainable products’. It was clear that students didn’t just want to be ‘creating
landfill’.
9
Online version can be found at: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/1376293/q1_responses_no_coding.
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Table 4: Student's first response when asked about responsible designing?
Issue Number of Students

Environment (including issues of sustainability, materials etc) 17
Design (including design methods, designing for people etc) 15
Safety/legal/standards (e.g. Disability Discrimination Act etc) 7
Stakeholders (e.g. clients, markets, business, consumers, public etc) 4
Ethics (more generally) 6
In contrast to environmental issues, concerns about safety came further down the list of initial
responses. A possible reason for this is that safety issues, (in the words of one student these are
‘covered by law I guess’) can constrain what designers do. There was a feeling that once there was a
legal framework in place, responsibility could safely be passed further up the chain of organisation to
ensure products passed any safety legislation. One student commented that ‘these days it’s very
difficult to get something out there that is not 100% safe’. The dataset as a whole shows that 10% of
students interviewed thought they could rely on the ‘company safety net’ in this respect. This
contrasts with environmental issues, where legislation is hazy, and design recommendations tend to
be guideline driven. With no formal control over this area of design, students obviously felt more
personal responsibility.
Related to this the data often revealed a concern by students in more ideological areas,
worrying about the effects on society as a whole. For example there was concern about designing
‘frivolous things’, not wanting to ‘design something that would harm the environment or
someone’s health for the sake of sales’, ‘[designing] to help people rather than just to… look nice’
(authors italics) and a questioning of whether products would really be ‘beneficial’ to society.
There was an attitude of very much wanting to ‘design for something’ for products that ‘will serve
a function [and have] real purpose’. One student mentioned the need to ‘think well beyond your
own mindset’, while another thought that ‘design that solves issues in a thoughtful way’ was
enough. A designer’s ‘responsibility to society’ was mentioned three times. Against this was also
the realisation that there were ‘professional responsibilities to meet the brief’ and ‘responsibilities
to your client’.
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Students appear to want to be responsible to society, not to design frivolous things, and not
to design something that would fix one problem but create another yet, ironically, the students
who talked of longevity seemed to have rather a short-term longevity in mind; ‘a good amount of
time – minimum of 2 years’, ‘a shelf life [of] 3 years before anything would need replacing’. One
student told of a lecture she had attended where the lecturer had told her that ‘all [you] are going
to design is ‘landfill’; it’s like people keep something for 2 years and then chuck it away’. Another
student’s take on responsible designing was creating products that ‘not only work right here,
right now, but in five to ten years [where they] can be just as effective as the first day [they
were] launched’. The students generally thought of the long-term as being anything from 2 to 10
years and this is perhaps, more than anything, a reflection of the product lifespan demanded by
industry to meet market demand.
3.6.2. Where a designer’s responsibility for their products ends
This line of questioning included rating on a quantitative scale. Students were asked how they
would feel if their product, on display at the degree show, was (1) intentionally misused (a tailored
‘bad’ scenario was improvised, e.g., ‘how would you feel if the TV remote that you designed was
misused as a detonation device to explode a bomb?’ or, ‘how would you feel if the crutches you
designed were used as a weapon to attack someone?’) and (2) if their product resulted in accidental
harm to a user. 31% of respondents felt a high level of responsibility for intentional misuse (of
their designed products) with 55% feeling a high level of responsibility where an accident had
occurred. Some students were very clear that they would not be responsible for intentional misuse
by users; because such usages were not what they intended in their design process.
Some students indicated that once the product was out there on the market, responsibility
for the product lay with the user: ‘[it’s] really their business’, ‘if they misuse it then it would be
their fault’. There were, not surprisingly, many comments suggesting misuse was ‘down to the
individual, [it’s] beyond my control’, ‘it’s not really my responsibility how people use it’, ‘it’s
difficult to design against it’ and ‘you could use anything in a mischievous way’. However, there
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were more nuanced views. One student indicated that responsibility would transfer to the user
after a period of time: ‘[the] user would have to take responsibility after a while’. Other students
thought that if the product could be used in a way that was not intended then that was a flaw in
the design: ‘If someone can get hurt even through misuse, [you] need to try and redesign’. One
student suggested that it did not matter if it was a misuse or an accident – if the product fails, the
designer fails, ‘the goal is safety’.
This started to reveal the merging of designers’ intentions and design consequences; raising
questions such as how far designers should think about possible consequences, in terms of both
intentional and unintentional uses of the product. Designers are presumably keen to take credit
where unintended consequences fall in their favour, so it is only logical that they should feel
responsible when the converse happens, although this did not appear to be the case.
Students provided a range of examples when referring to intentions and consequences of
design. Some students felt that if designers knew the consequences their products might have,
then allowing them to go to market would be classed as irresponsible; an example cited earlier was
that of the ‘Ford Pinto’, with design engineers knowing about the potential problems of fuel tank
positioning. Another design example referred to by a student was a film of the structural engineer
who designed the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre. The student recalled in the film that
the engineer couldn’t have foreseen the impact of a passenger aircraft intentionally flown into the
towers and was therefore not responsible. These exemplars clearly help students to think about
the consequences of design. However, there was little real evidence of the application of this
thinking to their own design projects.
The need to question and address worst-case scenarios in their own work (in terms of
intentional misuse) did not seem to be something that current graduating designers do in their
design practice. They did, however, appear to have a good understanding of product failure,
stress-analysis testing, the need to communicate how to use a product, and wanted to make
products as fool-proof as possible.
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3.6.3. Differences in what participants said and did
Perhaps one of the most striking themes that emerged from the data was the idea that students,
while holding a particular ethical belief, practice something that conflicts with this belief.
Sometimes the students are clearly aware of the fact that they can think one thing and contradict
it by practising another. One student when talking about where he considered responsibilities in
the design process admitted that in theory it should be thought about early on, but in practice he
will ‘usually just come back to them at the end’. Another student was very clear that he designed
products depending on what he thought was right, but he accepted that if his contract required
him to work on a project he was not happy about, then he would go against such beliefs to honour
his contract.
There was a clear desire to design products that did not have a negative impact on the
environment but a recognition that material choices were sometimes limited to environmentally
unfriendly materials. One student was quite clear where their priorities lay: ‘there’s no point in
creating environmentally friendly products if people do not buy them’. Another student offered a
‘hats’ metaphor to explain her role as a student designer; ‘you’ve got your university hat on…
trying to get assessed and get your degree, and then you’ve got the client [hat]…it is complex
really.’ It was striking how comfortable students seem to be with their practice conflicting with
their ideology. Section 3.7 will explore and discuss such cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1962;
Lidwell, 2003) in more detail.
Students were wary of contributing to a consumerist culture with some indicating that they
did not want jobs that involved creating fad products. Others seemed to have wearily accepted
that they would have to do this: ‘designers have to join the rat race to make ends meet. And that’s
sad and I know that’s what I will have to do and eventually I intend to make a change’. This again
raises interesting questions about long-term intentions and short term demands.
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3.7. Discussion
Study 1 involved carrying out a focused interview study of 50 final-year product design graduates
and presented three main findings. First, that environmental considerations topped the list of
what students considered their responsibilities to be. Although they referred to a wide range of
subjects relating to responsibility, the environment was clearly their number one concern. It is
possible to speculate that this may have been due to poor legislation in this area, together with a
high media profile surrounding the global issues of the environment.
Secondly, designers are clearly able to hold a particular opinion about their responsibilities,
but exhibit something different to this. Several mentioned that they didn’t want to just produce
‘landfill’ in their future careers, while recognising that product design is based on consumer
demand for new products. This might relate to the design process itself, where students are able
to, indeed are taught to, live with conflicting constraints and ambiguity. As raised earlier this
generates an interest in cognitive dissonance and the role that plays in design. The data indicates
that there are clear examples of what Festinger describes as cognitive dissonance within the Study
1 dataset.
The basic idea, of cognitive dissonance, presented by Festinger (1962) is that people tend to
have general clusters of opinions, attitudes, beliefs and values; these are usually consistent with
one another, but some times there can be situations where inconsistencies occur in this otherwise
consistent behaviour. An example that Festinger presents in his work is; ‘a person may know that
smoking is bad for him and yet continue to smoke’. The knowledge that smoking is bad for them
contrasts with the behaviour they exhibit; continuing to smoke. This type of example would
generate ‘dissonance’ – cognitive dissonance is the psychological discomfort that arises as a result
of conflicts. Festinger presents two hypotheses;
(1) The existence of dissonance, being psychologically uncomfortable, will motivate the
person to try to reduce the dissonance and achieve consonance.
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(2) When dissonance is present, in addition to trying to reduce it, the person will actively
avoid situations and information which would likely increase the dissonance.
Dissonance may only be short lived as a result of some new information, or a behavioural action
conducted. However, it may last longer and require time to try and recreate ‘consonance’; a
consistency between opinions, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours. Festinger makes the important
point that few things are ‘all black or all white’ and to some extent opinions or behaviours are ‘a
mixture of contradictions’; ‘a person buying a new car may prefer the economy of one model but
the design of another’. There are conflicting issues in such a dilemma that requires the person to
focus on the trade-offs and make a decision. Festinger suggests that there is a ‘consistency
between what a person knows or believes and what he does’. However, Harmon-Jones and Mills
(n.d.) suggested ‘promises of reward or threat of punishment provide cognitions that are
consonant with the behaviour. Such cognitions provide justifications for the behaviour.’ Therefore,
although a behaviour may contradict usual behaviour, it is justified based on such factors. In doing
so the dissonance may be less. Dissonance may also be reduced if the person changes their beliefs
and attitudes to match a different behaviour, creating consonance between beliefs and behaviour,
in doing so dissonance will not incur.
Festinger’s theory has been applied to marketing, particularly advertising, as a way of
encouraging people to behave in a particular way. For example, it has been applied to advertising
in the health sector in order to encourage people not to take part in behaviour that they know is
bad for them. With the current social problems of binge drinking, drink driving, and smoking
there are many TV advertisements that try to change this type of behaviour. This is often done
with the use of adverts that attempt to generate cognitive dissonance within the viewer. Sticking
with the example that Festinger presented, smoking, there has been recent work conducted which
explains the application of dissonance exercised in mass media advertising campaigns to deter
smoking; ‘the campaign was based on messages designed to produce dissonance, by clearly
pointing out inconsistencies between popular opinions and values, on the one hand, and being a
smoker, on the other.’ (Hafstad, et al., 1996)

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Concepts surrounding cognitive dissonance have not only been discussed in media design, in
the form of advertising, but also in relation to art-based design students. Durling et al. (1996)
discusses the issue of cognitive dissonance in relation to teaching and learning styles, suggesting;
‘where there is a mismatch between styles of teaching and learning, the students may experience
psychological discomfort, and knowledge transfer may be impeded.’ These examples show how
cognitive dissonance can be applied to reduce damaging behaviour and how teaching and learning
styles in design education could potentially use cognitive dissonance as a foundation for improving
design education. Perhaps cognitive dissonance in relation to design responsibility could be used
in education to improve design ethics. However, it is important to note that the theory does have
its issues. As Cohen and Goldberg (1970) in their work on consumer decision making processes
explain ‘one criticism levelled against the theory of cognitive dissonance is that the individual,
rather than learning from his mistakes, increases the likelihood of making them again through
justification and rationalization.’
Since Festinger introduced the theory of cognitive dissonance much of the work has
involved a focus on how to reduce dissonance, or how to generate dissonance as a way to change
behaviour and/or attitudes. In 1999, Festinger, reflecting on the last 30 years of cognitive
dissonance research, questioned if there were other approaches of exploring cognitive dissonance
that were still unexplored. Building on this, Gosling et al. (2006) propose a rather different and
interesting approach to the reduction of dissonance. In their work they examine the ‘denial of
responsibility’ and tested its effectiveness of reducing dissonance. They propose that ‘if the feeling
of responsibility affects the level of dissonance arousal, the hypothesis formulated here predicts
that denial of responsibility should reduce it.’ Their study involved three experiments with a
methodology adopted from the work of Simon et al. (1995), involving the collection of quantitative
scalar data. The results ‘show that denial of responsibility reduces the affect induced by
dissonance; it is therefore not a means to avoid dissonance but a mode of reduction’. This work
generates some concerns; what if people who hold positions of responsibility become aware that
denial of responsibility can reduce the amount of psychological discomfort they feel? Maybe this
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denial approach would be adopted just to ease a person’s conscience, in turn; this could lead to no
acknowledgement of wrongdoing.
In terms of the research presented in this thesis, there may be scope to look further into the
issue of cognitive dissonance. The phenomenon of cognitive dissonance is apparent in the fields of
psychology and marketing, and it has also begun to penetrate design research. The Study 1 data
suggests that dissonance is evident in graduating designers, but does not indicate if it is a
conscious matter, or if it is an issue that should be of concern. As previously stated by Festinger,
to some extent opinions or behaviours are ‘a mixture of contradictions’. Maybe graduating design
students, and indeed possibly, designers are capable of dealing with these conflicts and it is not an
issue of concern. The focus on investigating cognitive dissonance within product designers is
outside the scope of this PhD. However, the data indicted that cognitive dissonance in product
design may be worthy of further investigation.
Thirdly, students have a very straightforward view of the consequences of their products.
This perhaps reveals their inexperience with regard to thinking through the possible
consequences of what they do, both in terms of the direct use of the objects they design and in
terms of more nebulous cultural impacts. It is perhaps in this area that design educators can have a
bigger role to play, bridging the gap between the designer, the object, the user, and the society
and showing how responsibilities transfer and inter-relate.
3.8. Summary
Chapter 3, set out to explore approaches that might assist our understanding of how present day
designers perceive responsibility. This chapter has outlined data gathering through interviews of
students. The first question in this study was a simple, but vital one. It asked the graduating
students ‘what do you understand by the term responsible designing?’ The answers to this question
generated a plethora of issues, which were varied and operated on both local and global scales.
This question was important because it allowed an insight into the current concerns of present
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day product designers; issues that they associated with responsibility within the field of product
design. The study produced three interesting findings;
(1) Diversity of the issues covered by the term ‘responsible design’.
(2) Where a designer’s responsibility for their products ends.
(3) Differences in what participants said and did.
The outcomes of Study 1 guided a more focused research direction. This study has been insightful,
but this research wanted to offer a more illuminative contribution to responsibility in design.
Chapter 4 will offer a reflection on Study 1 and explain how this study influenced the two studies
which followed.
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Phase two: Learning from reflections and developing a new
method to uncover responsibility in product design
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4. A new method to investigate design responsibility
The first study used a semi-structured and broad approach of investigation to begin looking at
responsibility in product design. The study has provided some foundational insights into
designers’ present day perceptions of responsibility. Questions that follow from the study include:
what issues do designers accept active responsibility for? Which responsibilities are perceived as
the most important? How are considerations of responsibility evidenced in everyday design work?
The following studies address these new questions.
This phase of the research concerns not only designers’ perceptions of responsibility in
product design, but also the development of new methods for investigating this field. This chapter
will reflect on Study 1 and explain how the results influenced the development of a methodology
to be used in Study 2. It presents how data in Study 1 was incorporated into a card sorting task;
explaining the piloting process which tested the design and layout of the task. In addition to the
card sorting, there was some testing and development of personal construct theory (PCT) and
triads – a method from psychology which focuses on how people see their worlds. This chapter
will explain how card sorting and triads were combined and evolved to develop an innovative
methodology. This chapter will conclude by presenting the final methodology that is the
cornerstone of studies 2 and 3 in this research.
4.1. How study 1 influenced the development of study 2
Study 1 had a number of outcomes that fed into the development of studies 2 and 3. This section
will present those and explain how they were combined to develop the guidance and essential
foundations of the two studies which follow.
Study 1 has provided a grounding for the thesis, revealing an emerging understanding of
designers’ responsibilities. The study highlighted a number of things. First, that perceptions of
responsibility were very broad. Second, that the graduating designers had concerns about their
role in the world, and third, that designers felt there were some issues that they were not
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responsible for; such as issues relating to accidents and misuse – these issues raised mixed
opinions regarding responsibility.
The most common concern was the environment; for the majority of students this was the
first issue which came to their minds when discussing design responsibility. Obviously this is a
current issue in design schools and one would expect this to be reflected in the concerns of
graduating students. What we don’t know is how a designer’s view of environmental
responsibility might develop as they gain more experience.
It was stated in chapter 3 that in the three-year time frame of PhD research it was not
possible to conduct a longitudinal study. Therefore a different approach was adopted to address
the question of how an understanding of responsibility develops in designers. It was decided to
select three specific levels of design expertise, each offering snapshots into different points of a
designer’s career. These were:
• Beginning undergraduate product design students
• Graduating product design students
• Practising product designers
These three snapshots form the basis of the three studies of the thesis and are summarised in
Figure 17.
Figure 17: The three levels of expertise that this research investigated.
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Studies 2 and 3 were informed and shaped by the foundation provided by Study 1. Study 1
revealed a wide variety of issues which graduating students regarded as their responsibilities. It
found that designers realise they have a responsibility to the world, although it was sometimes
difficult for the graduating designers to express this in a sophisticated way, instead discussing
responsibility in a checklist fashion. The students talked openly about responsibilities which they
‘ought’ to have, but many did not go into detail of how these responsibilities were incorporated or
tackled within their design process.
The semi-structured approach also proved appropriate to the exploratory nature of the first
study, exposing the general area and revealing the perceptions of graduating designers. However,
the approach did not reveal much of the more tacit ideas of responsibility, for example how
responsibility is actually incorporated into the design process. This suggested a different method
was required that would get underneath the ‘theory’ of what one ought to do and look at how
issues of responsibility are actually addressed in product design - a method that would go some
way to providing a descriptive view of responsibility in the field. Such a method would need to be
more subtle in teasing out assumptions about responsibility, and be more attuned to the everyday
communication of designers.
4.2. Using study 1 data to develop a method for study 2
The data from study 1 produced a number of keywords. Many of these were established during the
analysis of what the students first said when they were asked about their understanding of
responsible design. Other keywords came from the dataset as a whole and consisted of words,
expressions, phrases, and metaphors that the students used to explain ideas of responsibility and
that were added to a database. Table 5 offers a summary. The full database can be found in
Appendix C.
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Table 5: Summary Table of keyword database (from the Study 1 dataset).
Design Safety Environment

Accessible Accessible Consumerism
Anthropometrics Accident Design for disassembly
Design brief Communication Eco Design
Stakeholders Ethics Miscellaneous
Business Actions Accident
Client Aesthetics Aesthetics
Community Attitudes Branding
Examples
Bathmat - elderly women died using it the wrong way
Dyson - moving manufacture outside UK
Ford Pinto - intentions, actions, and consequences of the fuel tank design.
The variety of vocabulary designers used to express ideas about responsibility in study 1, together
with their clear abilities in visual communication, provided the basis for a new method to elicit
ideas about responsibility. A method that would be much more visual while at the same time
allowing different forms of expression. The method that was developed was based on card
sorting, whereby a number of themed cards are given to a participant to sort and categorise, and
from which the researcher can make inferences about the way that the participant is ‘constructing’
their world view. The method depends on participants ‘appropriating’ ambiguous words and
images into this world view, thus revealing something of that world view to the researcher.
To build a set of appropriate cards the keywords and expressions contained in the database
were classified into a number of categories (using the framework of the study 1 categorisation
scheme). These were:
Environment (including issues of sustainability, materials, etc.)
Design (including design methods, designing for people, etc.)
Safety/legal/standards (e.g. Disability Discrimination Act, etc.)
Stakeholders (e.g. clients, markets, business, consumers, public, etc.)
Ethics (more generally)
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Two additional categories were introduced to encompass the whole dataset:
• Miscellaneous (for example metaphors not fitting existing categories)
• Examples (specific examples of design, companies or events)
Although some of the terms could be fitted into a number of different categories, the aim was not
to get to mutually exclusive terms, only to get a rough sense of the range of issues covered
together with a simple classification.
Card Sorting is a technique which has been adopted within the fields of knowledge
acquisition and knowledge elicitation (Diaper, 1989; McGeorge and Rugg, 1992; Rugg and
McGeorge, 1997; Upchurch, et al., 2001). Garg-Janardan and Salvendy (1990, p85) define
knowledge elicitation as the process by which facts, rules, patterns, heuristics, operations and
procedures used by human experts to solve problems in the particular domain are elicited.
Fincher and Tenenberg (2005) describe three advantages of card sorting:
(1) simplicity of use
(2) a focus on participants terminology
(3) the ability to elicit semi-tacit knowledge.
Similarly Gorman (2001, p22) suggests that experts often have trouble articulating how they
make decisions because their knowledge is tacit and intuitive. Study 1 has shown that
‘responsibility’ is just this kind of knowledge, particularly the way in which responsibility may
guide and shape the process and products of design, so a card sorting method would seem
appropriate. Card sorting’s focus on terminology means that the use of this methodology may
uncover, in more depth, what ‘responsibility’ is, and how it is constructed by designers during
different snapshots of expertise.
Although card sorting is generally used in systems design, the general theory of card
sorting could be adopted within product design. Wood and Wood (2008, p1) explain that ‘card
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sorting was originally developed by psychologists as a method to the study of how people
organize and categorize their knowledge’. It seems logical to suggest that this method could be
adopted in this research to understand how designers organise and categorise their knowledge
regarding ‘responsibility’ in product design. The types of cards used vary. Rugg and McGeorge
(1997) discuss three techniques; (1) card sorts (traditionally word cards), (2) picture sorts, and (3)
item sorts (e.g., physical objects). The use of word cards and image cards was appealing to this
thesis. The dataset from study 1 was rich in qualitative data and provided a number of keywords
which could be used to form word cards. However, there were also words, phases, metaphors, and
descriptions which could be developed into image cards. The idea of image cards was particularly
appealing because designers think in a visual manor. The use of image cards would therefore
provide a ‘designerly’ element to the method. Also images offer flexibility of interpretation.
4.2.1. Developing a card set from the database
The database of keywords was the starting point for developing the card set. The database offered
a variety of discussion points in relation to responsibility in the field of product design. However, a
manageable, yet representative, set of cards had to be devised. Initial incorporation of keywords to
be transformed into cards were based on common occurrences. Therefore, environmental issues
formed a starting point. However, the aim was to develop a balanced view of the study 1 dataset.
Although the first study was very environmentally focused, the design of a methodology was
cautious of not demonstrating bias towards this issue or coercing future participants of studies to
focus their discussions specifically on this issue.
The word cards and image cards were developed simultaneously. This chapter has
demonstrated that the use of image cards was appealing, because of their ‘designerly’ properties.
This, combined with their flexibility of interpretation, helped to evolve the keyword database into
a card set. Using the keywords allowed cards to be generated (word or image). There were 36
word cards developed to represent these issues, see Table 6.
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Table 6: List of word cards generated from the Study 1 dataset
Word Cards
Society Designer User Client Future Worst-case Past
Misuse Standards Practice Accident Unintentional Papanek Lifecycle
Gun design Change Intentions 9/11 Green design Methods Purpose
Needs Wants Business Function Ease of use Requirements Simple
Aesthetics Actions Benefits Unethical Ethics Morals Frivolous
Market
The image cards were particularly appealing because they could often address more than one
issue. Refer to Table 7. Developing the word cards and the image cards together meant that it was
more efficient to develop a card set. It was possible to see which keywords would not generate
usable images or would only generate very fixed images. As a result, a balanced card set that
would address a number of issues relating to responsibility were developed.
The image cards were generated via image searches online. The image searches were
conducted using the keywords and phases in the database as search terms. Searches took place
using Google images (http://images.google.co.uk) and the photo-sharing website Flickr
(http://www.flickr.com). This provided a rich database of images with which people associated
particular words or phrases. An example was that of the term ‘two hats’, used by a graduating
student to illustrate the different (and sometimes conflicting) roles that being a designer
demanded. The two hats metaphor produced a number of images. Figure 18 illustrates two
possible photographs which were returned in response to the search for ‘two hats’. A common
image which presented itself in this search was an image of a statue. The statue was of a man
holding two hats. Figure 18 demonstrates one of the many images of that statue and an alternative
‘two hat’ image.
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Example A10: Example B11:
Figure 18: An example of the images that a Flickr search for 'two hats' produced.
Example A was selected because it offered a simplistic image of the statue and clearly focused on
the aspect of the two hats. This clear and uncomplicated image was in keeping with the style of
the cards that this research aimed to produce.
The process of searching for all cards followed a similar process. A number of images were
gathered based on the keyword database primarily representing issues about responsibility that
Study 1 had highlighted. However, as previously described, there was a conscious effort to select
images which offered additional associations. In total 44 image cards were created, a sample of
which are shown in Table 7. A complete table of the images can be found in Appendix D.
10
Sourced from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lokidude_pics/467379943/
11
Sourced from Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grocko/2284033/
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Table 7: Image cards and representations/associations of issues of responsibility
Life cycle Sustainability Energy Materials

Manufacture Compromise Future
Global Design Change Change
End of life Development Function
Waste Ethics
Recycle
Ethics High road/Low Money Two hats

Change road Currency Two mindsets
Law Two paths Global markets Choices
Legal Choices Culture
Decisions Consumer
Ecology Designer
Environment Client
Business
4.2.2. Producing a manageable card set
The card set initially developed amounted to 80 cards in total, consisting of 36 word cards and 44
image cards. A second stage of development aimed to reduce this to a more manageable number
that could be used in a thirty minute period for study. The card set was reduced to 18 word cards
and 16 image cards, the criteria for selection being that which was described earlier, a set of cards
that would cover a variety of the issues in Study 1, but would do it in a balanced and unbiased
way. Figure 19 shows the 18 word cards and Figure 12 shows the coverage of the cards across the
issues identified in Study 1 and listed in Section 4.1.
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Figure 19: The eighteen Word cards produced for the card set.
The word cards aimed to present a number of issues which had been discussed across the
categorisations of; design, safety, environment, stakeholders, ethics, miscellaneous, and examples.
Table 8 shows a condensed of version which highlights these issues.
Table 8: Condensed version of issues the word cards aimed to address.

Needs Accident Change
Practice Standards
Wants
Business Human needs Accident
Client Intentions Change
Designer Unintentional Future
Society Misuse
User Worst case scenarios
Examples
Gun design - is designing guns responsible?
Twin Towers and the 9/11 events
The cards were selected by considering the image cards and the issues they were aiming to
address. The image cards were reduced following some basic criteria, they had to; (1) be
ambiguous – as explained by Downing (1992), in her work with imagery; if more than one
meaning could be applied to the ‘place-image’ then flexibility could occur; meaning that one image
could ‘function in several complex associations.’, (2) where possible use little or no text in the
image cards, and (3) provide a balanced representation of the issues that were raised in Study 1.
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After much deliberation the image cards were reduced to 16 image cards. The cards were reduced
via a three stage process:
(1) Using the criteria of ambiguity, little or no text, and a balanced representation of issues.
(2) A pilot study to test the ambiguity and range of perceptions and scope the image cards
generated.
(3) Discussion with the supervision team.
This process resulted in 16 image cards, as illustrated in Figure 20. Appendix E shows larger
versions of all word, image, and blank cards (including numbers).
Figure 20: Image Cards reduced set of 16.
Table 9 illustrates the spread of concepts surrounding responsibility and demonstrates which of
these were highlighted as the primary focus in order to provide insight into designers’ perceptions
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of responsibility. Those highlighted in blue represent the issues that the cards selected were
primarily interested in exploring in more detail. However, as previously mentioned, the
anticipation was that cards selected would generate multiple associations.
Table 9: A combination of the primary issues of responsibility.

Anthropometrics Communication Consumerism
Ergonomics DDA Design for disassembly
Function Ergonomics Environment
Inclusive design IPR Environmentally friendly
Needs Legal Global Design
Purpose Legislation Landfill
Simple Safe Manufacture
Technology Standards Materials
Unique design Testing Melt down
Wants Product life cycle
Accident Recycle
Needs Standards Reuse
Practice Sustainability
Wants
Change
Business Aesthetics Aesthetics
Client Benefits Branding
Community Choices Change
Consumer Consumerism Choices
Designer Decisions Cog in a machine
Market Ethics Conflicts
Money Human needs Cutting the future
Society Landfill Decisions
Target market Place of manufacture Future
User Purpose Marketing
Society Measuring up as a designer
Business What happens when the product Money
Client is out there in the market Trade offs
Designer Two hats
Society Human needs
User Intentions Accident
Unintentional Change
Future
Misuse
Worst case scenarios
Examples
Papanek – Environment contributions and influence on students ideas of responsibility.

All cards measured 14cm x 9cm and were presented in both landscape and portrait formats. Word
cards adopted Arial Black, as a font style, with a point size of 50 - on a white background. Each
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card was assigned a number; Rugg and McGeorge (1997, p87) suggest that using code numbers12
rather than names saves a lot of recording time, and can reduce the risk of cueing respondents
towards a particular type of response. The card thickness was a little thicker than an individual
playing card; this offered the advantage of being lightweight, and yet durable. Also six blank cards
were added to the set so that the card sorting exercise could be more interactive. Blank cards
would allow the participants flexibility to discuss responsibility. The development of this
methodology involved using graduand data as a foundation. However, this research was aiming to
incorporate designers with varying levels of experience. The use of blank cards would allow an
insight to concepts that designers associated with the topic of responsibility, which may not have
been integrated into the cards. The set now consisted of 40 cards; 18 word cards, 16 image, and 6
blank cards.
4.3. A card sorting exercise – How to sort?
This section explores the different types of sorts which exist in the methodology of card sorting.
Pilot testing to develop the present set of cards had used an ‘all in one sort’. All the cards were
used and could only be placed into one group. Clear lines could be divided when grouping and
discussing responsibilities. This was to test the participants and to see if they were able to clearly
divide responsibilities or if, as suspected, ‘responsibility’ is was a more holistic component of the
design process. The ‘all in one sort’ was also favoured for further testing the now smaller, more
manageable set of cards that had been selected. However, it was important not to overlook other
ways of sorting. Rugg and McGeorge provide an insightful discussion regarding the types of
sorting methodologies which exist, there are;
Q sorts
hierarchical sorts
12
A set of the final cards (produced after testing and iterations) showing numbers can be found in Appendix D
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laddering
all in one sorts, and
repeated single-criterion
The various types of sorts offer potential to mould the methodology. The varying techniques raise
questions regarding how this research will be conducted.
Q sorts
Large set of cards (i.e. up to 80), involves sorting cards into a normal distribution, e.g., on a scale
from strongly agree - to - strongly disagree. It involves statistical analysis and work needs to be
conducted prior to establishing appropriate content.
Hierarchical sorts
Involves sorting the cards into a hierarchical structure. The entities of the hierarchical structure
create problems because they would involve their own knowledge acquisition (KA) exercise. The
hierarchical sort may involve a number of sorts at different levels within the hierarchy. However,
Rugg and McGeorge (1997, p82) suggest that one major disadvantage of the hierarchical sort is
that ‘entire branches of the hierarchy may be missed if the cards do not cover all relevant
categories’, they recommend that laddering may be a more sensible approach.
Laddering
Grunert and Bech-Larsen (2005, p229) explain how Laddering was a method originally developed
by Hinkle in 1965 in the context of personal construct theory, although at that time the
terminology ‘laddering’ was not applied to the technique. Hinkle’s work built on that of George
Kelly’s work on the way that individuals construct meaning. Hinkle developed a method which
elicits meaning systems which start from the concrete and work towards the abstract. Grunert
and Bech-Larsen (2005, p229) explain the method;
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‘Starting at the most concrete level, respondents generate a first bipolar personal meaning
construct (e.g., I like lean meat as opposed to fat meat). This becomes the bottom of a ladder.
The interviewer then asks ‘Why’ or ‘Why do you prefer lean meat’, and the respondent then
generates a second, more abstract bipolar construct, like being physically well-off as
opposed to being physically feeble. The second construct is followed up by a ‘Why’ question,
and the process continues until the ladder has reached a level of abstractness from where it
is impossible to continue.’
All in one sort
One sort is performed which includes all the cards. The type of sort can vary; it may involve a
matrix sort, involving axes, or it may involve sorting the cards into clusters based on criteria such
as similarities between them. Rugg and McGeorge suggest there are problems with the ‘all in one
sort’ due to the fact that often they do not elicit individual attributes and that statistical analysis
may have to be used to identify underlying factors. They advise against using this technique for
KA. However, this may not present itself as a problem if the card sorting is interested in
qualitative data, as this research is.
Repeated single-criterion
This involves sorting the same cards repeatedly. Each time a sort is conducted the cards are
categorised in terms of a single, but different, attribute as criterion each time. The ‘single-
criterion’ may be provided by the experimental facilitator or by the participant. Rugg and
McGeorge suggest that if comparisons are to be made across the data then it may be beneficial to
use a fixed ‘criterion’.
Each of these approaches has its own advantages and disadvantages for investigating design
responsibility in this PhD research, see Table 10.
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Table 10: Card sorting techniques, advantages and disadvantages
Name of Sort Limitations for investigating design Advantages for investigating design
responsibility in this thesis responsibility in this thesis
Q sort Q sorts involve statistical analysis. Normal distribution and scaling of cards
However, responsibility is not based on may offer insight into how responsibilities
figures and statistic. The more revealing are traded off against one another and
data for this research would focus on which issues are valued over others.
qualitative data.
Hierarchical sort Branches of the hierarchy may be missed. Good to gauge which responsibilities are
hierarchically more important, but not
the main object of the research. Elements
of this sort could be incorporated to
investigate secondary aims of the
research.
Laddering The research needs to discuss the May be useful to investigate Personal
concrete issues of responsibility. Construct Theory further to gain an
Laddering may lead to discussions that understanding of the construction of
are too abstract designer’s worlds.
All in one sort May not elicit individual attributes, Perhaps individual aspects are not
resulting in statistical analysis of the required. The cards used in the thesis in
data. this research are to be largely grounded
in the work of study 1. Unlike the
traditional use of card sorting, this
research aims to use existing cards to
explore concepts of responsibility.
Repeated single- May be time consuming It is suggested that the same criterion is
criterion useful to work with if the data is to be
compared. This thesis wants to do this
and therefore believes that is an
important aspect to adopt.
The card set has been reduced to 34 cards
and 6 blanks, but it may still be time
consuming to use a repeated single sort.
After contemplating what each sort could bring to the thesis, it was decided that the ‘all in one
sort’ and the ‘Q sorts’ may be the approaches that would be the most successful for this research.
The next section will explain how the card sorting tasks evolved and were evaluated through a
pilot study.
4.4. Card sorting - Testing and iterations of a pilot study
With the set of cards generated and some broad concepts of how the card sorting exercise would
be conducted, a pilot study was designed to test the efficiency of the cards and to establish the type
of data they would produce. The study was also designed to test several approaches to different
task layouts in order to determine which produced the best results.
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The pilot study was conducted with four practising designers. Each participant was a recent
graduate and had roughly one year’s experience in industry as a practising designer. The task was
designed to establish the basic groupings and associations of responsibility involving a
combination of sorts. There were four sorting tasks in total. These were exploratory tasks to test
what type of data the cards would generate from designers. Not all participants were asked to
complete the same tasks. The discussion regarding each task will explain what the task consisted
of and which of the participants conducted the task.
4.4.1. Task 1
The first sort involved an ‘all in one sort’. The participants were asked to group the cards based
on perceived similarities. The first task was interested in getting the designers to; ‘Group the cards
in relation to how you perceive responsibility in design’. Representations of these groupings and
categories can be found in Figure 21 - Figure 24.
Figure 21: Card sorting in pilot studies by pilot_p1.
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Participant 1 (pilot_p1) sorted the cards into three categories; (1) designer, (2) business, and (3)
user. This participant felt that these three groups’ best represented their working role; ‘as
designers we’re worried about all these things really, probably a little bit less so about the
business because there are people who would have something to worry about, things like that, but
the designer and the user category are the most important for us’. The opportunity to add cards13,
using the blank cards was an option. This participant used a blank card to create the ‘testing’ card,
but selected groupings using existing cards in the pack (designer, business, and user).
13
Cards that have been added by participants are displayed in figures by using an Italic font to illustrate that they are
additional cards.
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Participant 2 (pilot_p2) did not use existing cards in the pack as categories for card sorting.
Instead, this participant created five groups (see cards with italic font) and named them; (1) end
result, (2) factors influencing design process, (3) nature, accidents and inspiration, (4) clients,
users, human factors, and (5) driving factors.
Pilot_p2 described the allocated groupings broadly and discussion was vague. For example,
when explaining the category ‘factors influencing the design process’ this participant explained ‘
it’s quite a big set because there are a lot of factors that go into design and they all change
depending on what it is, the technical process the specification, the clients, standards’.
Responsibility was not being discussed explicitly or in as much detail as the researcher had
expected. This was not necessarily a problem with the participants, but perhaps a limitation of the
current task design.
Participant 3 (pilot_p3) sorted the cards into two groups; (1) the ways things are supposed to be,
and (2) issues which are important to industry or society. There had been some concerns that
there were some design flaws in the task and that it was not exposing perceptions of responsibility
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and how designers really construct their concepts of responsibility. However, this participant’s
detailed description of the cards suggested differently;
‘This is the way things are supposed to be going [more responsible and ethically
orientated], that’s what we’re being told, that certain things are becoming law or are going
to become law and that we have to be careful of the waste that we produce and also how
products are designed. It was called from the cradle to the grave and it means when you
make it its all made out of a sustainable source of material and then when customers finish
with it, it can be taken apart and recycled. That’s supposed to becoming law. I’m a little bit
cynical about that. I’m not sure how much of it is actually going to happen, purely because
you have the money in the middle, the business, just kind of driving everything. You’ve got
all these parts in a product (card 30 – the mobile phone components) and at some point there
is going to have to be a law that we have to be able to, once it’s finished with, take them all
out and recycle them. But I think until the government do something businesses are not
going to really change their ways. As a designer now having worked in design I’ve made my
suggestions to clients to make their products more eco-friendly and environmentally
friendly and when you mention it they seem very keen to try and be eco-friendly, but when
it comes down to putting money on the table to do it then they are very cagey about it,
purely because no one else is really doing it at the moment and it’s a very dangerous
strategy because a lot of the effort which goes into it costs more and if it doesn’t pay off then
you’ve essentially wasted loads of money. Until government steps in and makes things law
then companies aren’t really going to do anything about it, unless they are a large company
who can afford to’
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Perhaps then, the issue was not with the design of the task, but the participants understanding of
responsibility. This small pilot study has begun to illuminate the varying development levels of
responsibility in product design and started to highlight that designers with similar qualifications
and experience in industry can be very limited in their explanations of responsibility or in this case
offer a more detailed picture of their perceptions of responsibility in product design.
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14
14
Also note that a new card was introduced to the card set for participant 4. Details are discussed later in this section.
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During this task pilot_p4 had an additional card incorporated into the card set. The card was an
image card of an Apple iPod. A more detailed explanation for the incorporation of this card is
provided in section 4.4.5.
This participant categorised the cards into six groups; (1) business or client, (2) standards
and practice, (3) engineering, (4) designer and user, (4) consumerism, (5) responsibility. This
participant presented their layout of the cards as ‘a wheel’. The card groupings represented a hub
(the designer and user) and all other issues were spokes from this core area. Some of the names
that this participant allocated to the categorisation of the cards were based on the cards in that
category, e.g., the group with the cards standards and practice became known as ‘standards and
practice’. This was also the same for the group ‘designer and user’. Some of the other participants
offered more abstract groupings and were less reliant on using the word cards in the groupings to
generate the group name.
Task 1 demonstrated some key findings;
participants had no problems grouping the word and image cards and defining the names
of their categories. Although, they did often spend a lot of time doing this.
participants tended to take the images very literally, not expanding on what they saw, but
merely describing the items on the card and then placing them. It had been hoped that the
cards would be understood in a more abstract way and that the designers would go
further than grouping things according to what was literally on the cards.
Participants were informed that the card sorting task was interested in responsibility in design,
but none of them explicitly drew particular attention to the issues of ethics or responsibilities.
Participant 4 did create a card group titled responsibility, but did not really explain the reasoning
for the cards placed in this group. This might have been because:
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(1) the designers did not feel the need to explicitly state their thoughts or,
(2) it may have been that ethics and responsibility are not really thought about in the design
process; either consciously or subconsciously or
(3) it may have been that some designers are better at structuring and explaining their
concepts of responsibility.
4.4.2. Task 2
The second stage in the card sorting exercise required the designers to select approximately six
cards and to place them on a scale; the right end of the scale being equivalent to issues they were
happy/satisfied with in their day-to-day practice, and the left end of the scale was equivalent to
issues they were unhappy/unsatisfied with. Once this had been done the participants were asked
to explain the selection and scaling of their cards. By asking that participants to select a small
number of cards it would be possible to gauge which issues were important, and their relative
importance. This task was designed to give an indication of which responsibilities the designers
may be happy with in their role and those which they are not. Figure 25 - Figure 28 presents the
sorting of this task.
Figure 25: Pilot sort 2 by pilot_p1.
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As with sort 1, the participants did not expand very much on why one issue was higher or lower
on the scale than another. They were asked, but their constructions of answers were vague. On
reflection, perhaps the researcher should have been more persistent with this questioning or
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adjusted the design of the method. Perhaps a different approach to a scalar task would have been
more productive at generating discussion.
4.4.3. Task 3
Task three was introduced for two of the participants; pilot_p3 and pilot_p4. It consisted of the
interviewees being asked to sketch their design process to gain an understanding of how they
perceived their personal process. They were asked to do this and to indicate on their sketch where
they felt ‘responsibility’ played a role in their design process.
Pilot - Participant 3 (pilot-p3) Pilot - Participant 4 (pilot-p4)

Figure 29: Sketching your personal design process.
Participant 3 indentified responsibility as a separate entity feeding into and out of other aspects of
the design process. Participant 4 did not explicitly mention responsibility preferring to discuss
responsibilities that are defined and incorporated into specific headings. This task indicated that
participant 3 felt ‘responsibility’ was something which could be identified as its own entity within
the design process. However, participant 4 discussed it as more of an intertwined issue which was
part of a number of sub-issues within the design process.
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4.4.4. Task 4
The pilot studies highlighted the lack of explicit discussion regarding ‘responsibility’. Although
asked to, the participants did not expand on their reasoning as they sorted the cards. This led to
two conclusions; (1) that prompting during the sorts may be required in future studies and, (2)
that a more structured method may free up the disputes over grouping titles and therefore
increase discussion.
The overall impression was that the flexibility allowed to participants was making it
difficult to make comparisons. This study aimed to focus largely on the qualitative data that was
produced, but this was weak because of the lack of explanations provided by the designers during
card sorting and the vagueness of discussion when explaining the card groups. This, combined
with the lack of consistency between the cards sorts, made it difficult to gather and directly
compare concepts. Since this thesis aimed to compare levels of experience and responsibility in
product design, this pilot study highlighted the need for a more structured approach.
Based on these reflections, Participant 4 (pilot_p4) was selected as a test subject for an
additional sort. This sort consisted of the participant being given four cards to be used as
predefined headings; client, business, society, and user. The purpose behind this approach was to
uncover how designers perceive their responsibilities within the design process. The literature
review highlighted the concept of active responsibility and this additional task was designed to
explore this concept, uncover the transference of responsibilities across the stakeholders, and
aimed to prompt the participants to provide a personal understanding of design responsibility.
This would encourage discussion about how designers deal with conflicting responsibilities among
stakeholders, and which responsibilities are involved in the role of each stakeholder. In doing so,
the intention was that the designer would have more of a focus for considering different
stakeholder groups.
This task did offer some interesting insights, such as where the designer placed the
‘designer’ card in the complex world of design which consists of ‘business’, ‘clients’, ‘society’ and
‘user’. Participant 4 suggested there was a connection between ‘business’ and ‘client’ and stated
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that these two were grouped. The participant then positioned the designer between these
combined elements and that of ‘society’ suggesting a bridging role which the spatial placement of
the cards allowed to emerge.
Participant 4 – snap shot 1

Figure 30: Three snapshots of participant of pilot_p4 card sorting (using the headings; client, business, society,
and user).
These studies revealed that the designers did not talk very much as they sorted and placed the
cards. It has been highlighted that this needed to be changed. During Task 4, the opportunity was
taken to implement the constant questioning of selections. Questions such as; ‘can you tell me why
you have placed that card there?’, ‘what does that card represent for you?’, and ‘have you
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previously come across issues like this in your personal practice?’ were posed. A question script
was prepared and used during the task. The use of such questions meant the participant was
constantly reminded of the need to express what they were doing. The changes to the
methodology meant that the task was working towards a ‘think aloud’ process and in doing so to
express their selection, reasoning, and logic of the card selection and movement.
4.4.5. Discussion of pilot studies
The pilots indicated that changes to the experimental procedure were needed to get designers to
talk in specific terms about their responsibilities in design.
As mentioned previously, an extra image card was added for the interview with participant
4; card 35 (see Figure 30 - Figure 31). This meant there were now 35 cards; a mixture of 17 image
and 18 word cards. To keep the number of cards in the pack consistent at 40 the number of blank
cards was reduced by one; there were now 5 blank cards in the card set.
Figure 31: Card 35 - An image of an iPod.
This card was introduced as a way of opening up further discussion. The card could potentially
evoke discussion surrounding, for example, style, aesthetics, branding, business, design,
uniqueness, and usability; and to highlight several interpretations. It was thought that this card
offered sufficient ambiguity. In addition to interpretations, the introduction of a card
incorporating a product aimed to encourage more reflection on products that the designer had
previously worked on.
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4.5. Repertory grids and the construction of meaning
The purpose of card sorting is to explore how people understand and construct meaning within
their world views. A more systematic method for achieving this is that of using repertory grids.
The card sorting literature (McGeorge and Rugg, 1992; Rugg and McGeorge, 1995; 1997) has
demonstrated the connection between card sorting methodology and the work of Kelly on
Personal Construct Theory and Repertory Grids.
The method of using Repertory Grids was originally designed in psychological studies
(Kelly, 1955/1991) with the purpose of understanding how people construct meaning from their
world and their relationships with others. Although this method was not specifically designed for
investigating design responsibility, the concept of the method suggested scope to use it to
understand how designers construct their meanings of responsibility.
In order to conduct a Repertory Grid, constructs and contrasts have to be identified. Kelly’s
original work in 1955, which remains standard, identified six ways to elicit constructs, and
therefore gain a greater understanding of how individuals construct their worlds: (1) the minimum
context card form, (2) the full context form, (3) the sequential form, (4) the self-identification form,
(5) the personal role form, and (6) full context form with personal role feature. Fransella and
Bannister (1977, p14-15) summarise Kelly’s methods of construct elicitation;
The Minimum Context Card Form
The person is first asked to give the names to role titles as, for example, listed by Kelly.
They are then presented with three of these elements and asked to specify some important
way in which two of them are alike and thereby different from the third. Having recorded the
reply, they are asked in what way the third person differs from the other two people (if they
have not indicated which two people are alike they are asked to do so). The answer to the
question concerning the difference is the contrast pole. As many triads of elements are
presented to the subject as the administrator thinks appropriate. There are no set rules.
There are only questions of ‘sample size’ in the number of constructs to be examined.
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The Full Context Form
In this form, all the elements, written on separate cards, are spread out in front of the
person. They are asked to think of important ways in which the groups of people are alike.
When the first two cards are selected, they are asked in what way they are alike. As
subsequent cards are added, the person is occasionally asked whether it is still the same
category as for the first two cards. If one is taken away, the person is also asked if the same
category is still being used.
The Sequential Form
Here, the elements are presented as in the minimum context form (that is as triads, rather
than as a group), but they are presented systematically by changing one card in the triad
each time. For example, having been presented with 1, 2 and 3, number 1 is removed and
number 4 is substituted for it and so on.
The Self-Identification Form
The elements are presented as in the sequential form, but the element ‘myself’ is always
included in the triad. This ensures (as far as possible) that all constructs elicited are
personally relevant.
The Personal Role Form
This is similar to the self-identification form, but the instructions now are: “suppose that the
three of you were all together by yourselves for the evening. What kind of place might it be?
What would happen? How would you yourself be acting? How would each of the others be
likely to be acting?” Many other situations or conditions could be used and it allows the
subject greater flexibility of reply.
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Full Context Form with the Personal Role Feature
For this method, all element cards are laid out before the person. When all the cards have
been sorted into piles, the ‘myself’ card is placed by each pile and the personal role questions
asked for each. These are posed in the form of “Suppose you were to spend an evening with
this group, what would be likely to happen?” and so on.
This thesis has already indicated that Kelly’s theory was involved with eliciting and
understanding the constructs of individuals and the way they construct their worlds and the
relationships in that world. To apply this same method to responsibilities in product design
requires a different approach. After careful consideration it was decided that the Minimum
Context Card Form would be used in which triads are given to subjects, as previously explained.
This decision was due to the simplicity of eliciting constructs and without guidelines which
involved the card ‘myself’, this was important because this methodology wanted to experiment
with concepts of responsibilities, rather than concepts of personal relationships (as described by
Kelly – family, friendship, colleagues relationships, and so on). Kelly’s work explored such
relationships and personal meanings by using word cards with the names of people written on
them. This research aimed to adapt Kelly’s work by focusing on relationships between
responsibilities and to implement this via the use of image cards.
4.5.1. Triads and personal constructs
Hitherto, this chapter has explained the pilot study and development of a card sorting task. At this
point the research focused on incorporating Kelly’s concepts of establishing and constructing
meaning into the methodology that was being developed as part of this research. The task of
developing triads for constructs and contrasts were guided by three steps15:
15 Kelly’s original concept and directions involved ‘people’, however in this research ‘people’ was substituted by ‘image’
(referring to the image cards)
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(i) the participants are presented with three elements (image cards – from the card set described
earlier), (ii) they are asked to specify some important way in which two of them are alike and thereby
different from the third. Having recorded the reply – the ‘construct’, (iii) they are asked in what way
the third image differs from the other two images.
In Kelly’s original description the reason why the third image is different from the other two
generates the ‘contrast’. Kelly, in fact, suggested two methods for eliciting constructs. The first is
the Difference Method (DM), whereby the ‘contrast’ is generated by determining the difference of
the third image from the other two, as described above. The second is the Opposite Method (OM),
whereby a ‘contrast’ is elicited by asking for an opposite of the ‘construct’ the participant has just
defined (Caputi and Reddy, 1999; Fransella and Bannister, 1977). It was the Opposite Method
which this thesis adopted. Epting et al. (1971) suggest that the OM offers more contrasts and this
was evidenced in pilot studies using triads of images. Testing the DM approach suggested that the
participants often just explained what they saw in the image rather than how that image evoked
the construction of their world in product design responsibility. The Opposite Method was more
effective in producing contrasts.
As contrasts are identified a grid can be built up. An example of such a grid can be seen in
Figure 32 – illustrating how the ‘variables’ of meaning constructs are built up.
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Figure 32: An example of a completed Role Construct Repertory Grid Test (Kelly 1955, p270).
Curran et al. (2005) explain how the early versions of the grid would consist of ticks and crosses,
as illustrated in Figure 32. Later versions would come to incorporate cell values. This research
was more focused on using the triad aspect of Kelly’s work, rather than the Repertory Grid as a
conversational tool (Harri-Augstein and Thomas, 1991; McDonnell, 1997), however, using images
meant it was difficult to get participants to determine scalar values. Imagery was used because it is
viewed as a more intuitive mode of communication for designers.
Another major issue of the Repertory Grid was with respect of the time taken to complete.
Pilot studies combining Rep Grids and card sorting demonstrated that the method would place
too many demands on participants, especially because the anticipated participant group was
practising designers who would have to take time out of their working day to participate in a
study. At this point, it was decided that the research did not need to try and compare the image
cards on a scalar rating. Therefore, the full demands of a Repertory Grid would not be required.
Instead the focus would remain on the triad task and the opposite method. These combined with a
more structured card sorting approach identified in the pilot tasks were thought to be enough to
elicit ideas and concepts of design responsibility.

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4.6. The development of the final card sorting task
The development of the final card sorting task began to combine the card sorting and the triad
methodologies and applied the lessons that had been learnt during the pilot studies. The result
was a card sorting task that would be used to investigate responsibility in studies 2 and 3. This
section explains how the card sorting and triad methods were combined to provide the final task.
At this point in the methodology development there were 17 image cards in the card set. To
ensure a simple breakdown of cards into triad sets (3x6) a new card was added, again to meet the
criteria of ambiguity. See Figure 33.
Figure 33: Card 36 - Added for Triads Sets.
Early piloting of this card offered associations to conflict, discipline, defeat, hard-work, challenges,
and materials. The card set now consisted of 18 word cards, 18 image cards, and 4 blank cards.
There had been some confusion in piloting with what was required during a triad sort. This
was overcome by using three cards from the discarded set to act as a demo when explaining the
triad method to participants.
Figure 34: Three cards used to illustrate the triad method to participants.
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These cards were selected because they could easily demonstrate what Kelly’s directions were
asking for;
(i) the participants are presented with three of these elements (image cards)
(ii) asked to specify some important way in which two of the cards are alike and how that differs
from the third image card.
(iii) having recorded the reply – the ‘construct’.
(iv) the participant is then asked to use the opposite method to generate a contrast.
These cards could demonstrate how there is no right or wrong answer, only interpretations of
meaning by participants. Table 11 provides a demonstration of these stages and a demonstration
of possible constructs and contrasts.
Table 11: Demo set for triads and possible construct and contrasts for this set
Cards Construct Contrast

Designed for Unstylish
style
Injury from poor Good working

working conditions
conditions
Associations with Associations with

illness, e.g. fitness
disability,
sickness, obesity
The image cards were divided into triad sets. These were generated randomly, using a blind
method. The reason for the blind selection process was to avoid the possibility of leading the
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participants to any particular conclusions. During the triad sort (sort 1) the participants were
provided with the same six triad sets, see Table 1216.
Table 12: Triad Sets 1-6.
Card Triad Set 1
20 30 35
Card Triad Set 2
8 32 36
Card Triad Set 3
10 12 19
Card Triad Set 4
6 22 33
Card Triad Set 5
24 27 25
Card Triad Set 6
17 14 31
16
The number under each card represents the number it was allocated. This number is not essential information for the
reader, but has been included because it was part of the method and card numbers will be referred to later in the thesis
when discussing the study analysis. A full set of the final card set and numbers can be found in Appendix D.
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It was also decided that responsibility needed to be an explicit part of the card sorting task. This
was achieved by setting very focused parameters to the card sorting. Three steps were introduced
to ensure that designers concentrated on ideas of responsibility and how it was involved in their
design process.
4.6.1. Card sorting task and thesis research questions
Study 1 was successful at revealing the concerns of graduating designers with respect to
responsibility. One of the key findings related to cognitive dissonance: what graduands said about
what they should do, compared to evidence about what they actually did in practice. Study 2
intended to investigate this issue further and instead of getting designers to provide a
‘prescriptive’ discussion on what they ought to do, to provide practical examples of what they
actually do.
This flowed logically into questions of prioritising responsibilities. Design practice is
renowned for involving multiple trade-offs and decisions in order to find solutions. Therefore,
how does responsibility fit into the trade-off process, and which responsibilities are valued as the
most important?
These questions would provide a more in-depth investigation of responsibilities.
Incorporating the blank cards into the card set would be advantageous in providing an
opportunity for designers at different levels of expertise to highlight issues of responsibility they
felt were missing from the card set.
4.6.2. Final method
This section explains the final method to be used in the subsequent chapters. It consists of (1) a
triad sorting task, as previously explained, and (2) a three-step card sorting task;
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Step (i); participants are given 18 word cards. They divide the word cards into three separate
groups; ‘not my responsibility’, ‘maybe my responsibility’, or ‘definitely my responsibility’. During
this step participants are encouraged to use the blank cards provided to record design
responsibilities they feel are missing.
Step (ii); the focus now becomes the pile of cards in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category.
Participants are asked to select five cards and place them on a scale of 1 (most important) to 5
(least important). Participants are then asked to explain their selection and give reasons for the
order they have chosen.
Step (iii); the five cards that have been selected in step (ii) are used as headings. The 18 image
cards are then given to participants for them to group under the five headings. While doing this,
participants are encouraged to discuss what each card represents for them, and if, or how the card
relates to their previous experience or design work.
The final method developed for the following studies thus consisted of two elements;
(1) Triad sort
(2) Three step card sorting task
4.7. Summary
This chapter has explained how the concepts of responsibility deriving from the first study have
resulted in an innovative research methodology. It has explained how the method was influenced
by card sorting literature and George Kelly’s psychological approach to understanding meaning.
This chapter has illustrated the evolution of the method and how the two approaches (card sorting
and triads) were brought together to offer the hybrid methodology that this thesis presents for
investigating designers’ responsibilities.

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5. Study 2 – Investigating design responsibility in practising designers
5. Study 2 – Investigating design responsibility in practising
designers
Chapter 4 explained the development of a card sorting method to investigate designers’
responsibilities using a visual and interactive approach to act as a stimulus for generating
discussion surrounding responsibility. The cards developed were grounded in the results of Study
1. Following extensive pilot studies a method has been developed to elicit in a ‘designerly way’
ideas about responsibility in the design process. The method consists of two elements:
(1) Triad sort
(2) Three step card sorting task
This chapter will start by introducing the context of the Study 2 research; explaining the
developed method and the layout that it followed. This chapter will then present the data analysis
and results, and finally, a discussion of this study.
5.1. Responsibility in practice
In chapter 3 (section 3.3), the three groups of designers that this thesis would investigate were
highlighted. The study with practising designers aimed to offer an insight into the differing
perceptions that may exist between university students and experienced designers who design
products for the market. It was expected that the knowledge of practising designers would be
significantly greater than that of student designers. Also, based on the design literature that had
highlighted the use of the Dreyfus brothers model (skill acquisition – from novice to expert) it was
expected there would be differences in design skills. However, it was less certain how the
development of responsibility would evidence itself.
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Study 2 involved developing an approach with the objective; to get practising product
designers to talk more openly and naturally about design, and to discuss how responsibility plays
a role in their day-to-day operations. Study 2 was to continue research into perceptions and
understanding of responsibilities in design. Also, this study would investigate practising product
designers to establish if any changes in attitudes towards responsibility could be identified (by
addressing the core research questions identified in section 3.4). Study 1 guided the direction of
the research and led to further sub-questions which Study 2 aimed to explore;
(1) What are the most important responsibilities in design practice?
(2) Are practising designers more or less explicit about design responsibilities?
(3) Do the results of Study 1 regarding what designers say they ought to do and what they
actually do, evidence themselves in the same way in design practice?
(4) Just how far ahead are practising designers’ thinking - where do they think their
responsibility ends?
(5) Do practising designers have a more practical approach to responsibility?
Designers were selected by composing a design database. This was done using internet directories
of product design companies, and internet searches. The companies on the database were sent a
letter which broadly explained the research, the task, and time commitments that would be
required. The companies could then decide if they wanted to participate.
There were 12 practising designers17. The experiments were conducted at their place of
work. There were 11 designers working in the UK (two educated outside the UK - one in Canada,
the other in Germany) and one UK educated designer working in Hong Kong. Experience in
practice ranged from 1 to 27 years (see Table 13 for individual details of participants). The
youngest designer involved in the experiments was 23 years old. The experiments were conducted
during the months of May – September 2008.
17
The ethical paperwork for this study can be found in Appendix F.
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Table 13: Participants involved in Study 2 experiments
Participant Code Gender No. Years of Educated in Currently

Experience (Country) practising in
(Country)
St2_p1 F 27 Germany UK
Wales
St2_p2 M 6.5 UK UK
St2_p3 M 24 Canada UK
UK
St2_p4 M 24 UK UK
St2_p5 M 20 UK UK
St2_p6 M 1 UK UK
St2_p7 M 1 UK UK
St2_p8 M 2 UK UK
St2_p9 M 12 UK UK
St2_p10 M 16 UK UK
St2_p11 F 3 UK UK
St2_p12 M 1 UK Hong Kong
All interviewees were from SMEs18. The majority of the designers worked for businesses that
followed a consultancy approach to design, offering outside clients their product design services.
One of the participants interviewed worked as a single designer, running their own business. The
time taken to conduct the two step task varied depending on the participant; the task generally
lasted somewhere between 40-60 minutes (including general discussion after the task was
completed).
5.1.1. Procedure
The final method, as previously explained in section 4.6.2, was the procedure in which the
experiments were conducted. This section will provide a demonstration of the methodology and
examples of the triad and card sorting in practice.
Table 14 demonstrates how participant 9 (st2_p9) grouped ‘card triad set 1’. The table
shows how cards 30 and 35 were seen as the two cards that were alike because they represented
technology. These two cards were grouped to generate the construct ‘technology’ and are
highlighted by the red box. This participant suggested that the opposite of this was ‘not ordered
or defined, random thinking’.
18
SMEs: Small to Medium Enterprises.
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Table 14: Triad Set 1- An example of the construct and contrast assigned by st2_p9.
Construct Contrast
Card Triad Set 1
Technology Not ordered or

defined, random
thinking
20 30 35
After completing the triad task, participants worked through a three-step card sorting task. Before
the card sorting task began the cards were randomly shuffled before being given to the
participant. Each participant was provided with the same card set but the order was never pre-
determined. The card sorting task involved a three-step process;
Step (i); participants are given 18 word cards. They divide the word cards into three separate
groups; ‘not my responsibility’, ‘maybe my responsibility’, or ‘definitely my responsibility’. During
this step participants are encouraged to use the blank cards provided to record design
responsibilities they feel are missing.
Figure 35: Sort 2 – step (i) A sample of the word cards as grouped by st2_p11. The card in italics ‘environment’
was a card that was added by participant 11 using the blank cards.
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Step (ii); the focus now becomes the pile of cards in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category.
Participants are asked to select five cards and place them on a scale of 1 (most important) to 5
(least important). Participants are then asked to explain their selection and give reasons for the
order they have chosen.
Figure 36: Sort 2 – step (ii) A sample of the five responsibilities (word cards) selected and rated by st2_p11.
Step (iii); the five cards that have been selected in step (ii) are used as headings. The 18 image
cards are then given to participants for them to group under the five headings. While doing this,
participants are encouraged to discuss what each card represents for them, and if, or how the card
relates to their previous experience or design work.
Figure 37: Sort 2 – step (iii) A sample of the five responsibilities (word cards) which were used as headings by
st2_p11; the image cards were then grouped under these, and discussed as the task proceeded.
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During sort 2 some prompts were generated to ensure that the participants did not conduct the
task without explanation of their sorting. The experiments were audio recorded and photographs
of the participants sorting procedures were collected.
The 12 participants produced approximately 14 hours of audio data which were fully transcribed.
Conducting full transcriptions of the audio files allowed a detailed understanding (about the large
range of issues) of the experiments to be gained. Transcribing the experiments also enabled a
greater understanding of the language and terminology used by the participants. Mapping and
categorising was introduced to help manage the quantity of the data, and determine which areas
required further focus. The mapping and categorising of the data will be explained in more detail
in section 5.2.5.
This section will explain how the dataset was broke down and the initial findings generated
in Study 2. It will first present the results of the triad sorts, then the results of the three step card
sorting task. The discussions will then focus on the broader results of the dataset and provide a
more detailed picture of responsibility in practising designers.
5.2.1. Triad sorts
The triad generated both qualitative and quantitative data. As an example of the rich data that
was obtained Table 15 shows the construct and contrast arrived at by participant 8, in Study 2
(st2_p8). The red boxes around cards 6 and 33 indicate the two cards that were grouped.
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Table 15: Triad set 4 – An example of the construct and contrast assigned by st2_p8.
Card Triad Set 4
6 22 33
St2_p8: Well all three have a relationship for me Researchers Commentary:

because it’s all about the way the world works, you
need money, you need machinery, and you need Text on the left is a transcription of participant 8
laws. Probably if you were going to base it on that (st2_p8) responses to card triad set 4. The words
then money, I’d put 33 and 6 together because underlined are those that were of interest because
money and laws seems to be the one that have the they offered an insight to the construction of the
biggest impact on business and design. Whereas 22 world made by the participant.
is a sort of creative engineering, isn’t it.’ The construct and contrast are the single word
or sentences that the participant managed to
Researcher: So a word that describes this group? summarise them as.
(cards 6 and 33)
St2_p8: I suppose its influence, beneficial influence. During this triad the participant discussed how they
saw the relation between these, suggesting that ‘it’s
Researcher: And a contrast? all about the way the world works’. The participant
constructs the world as a place that requires money,
St2_p8: It all depends how you view this because if machinery, and laws. Explaining how money and
you’re working for Apple, yeah, you’re a very very laws have ‘the biggest impact on business and
successful brand and everything’s working for design’. This may offer an insight into responsibility,
you…and your money’s sorted out and you’ve got perhaps this participant is guided by ‘prescriptive’
routes to market and everything else…so you see elements of the law? The participant suggests that
that as a positive. If you’re an entrepreneur who’s money and the law as things that have an ‘influence’.
trying to bring their own products to market you In trying to explain an opposite to the contrast
see this as a bit of a negative because I see this as, generated, the participant expands on the concept
this can actually draw up barriers. So I can see for of business which they presented and talks about
me there’s a beneficial influence which is the the differences of being an entrepreneur or a large
construct and then there is…I suppose a sort of corporation and the different problems that are faced
barrier you know so it’s a negative influence…for when it comes to money and entering the market.
the contrast this is the negative influence…it The participant suggests that for the entrepreneur
becomes an heavy influence on the outcome, on there can be difficult times and money may be a
design. I don’t know if that’s particularly articulated barrier and actually have a negative influence on the
very well. design, because essentially the product will not make
it to market without sufficient funds. An issue that a
designer working at a large corporations like Apple,
may not have to worry about.
Construct Contrast
Beneficial influence Heavy influence on design
This type of data revealed the designers’ thinking and reasoning for grouping the cards, gave an
insight into the way they perceived the cards, and the associations and constructs that they
developed from those. This task demonstrates how designers first assign associations to images
and then piece them together to develop meaning which represents their understanding. Graphical
representations of the groupings generated in the triad sort are shown in Figure 38.
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_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
Card set 1 – triad; cards 20, 30, and 35 Card set 2 – triad; cards 8, 32, and 36
12 12
11 11
number of participants
10
10
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
20, 30 30, 35 20, 35 8, 32 32, 36 8, 36
card groupings card groupings
_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
12 12
11 11
10
10
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
10, 12 12, 19 10, 19 6, 22 22, 33 6, 33
_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
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12 12
11 11
10 10
9 9
8 8
7 7
6 6
5 5
4 4
3 3
2 2
1 1
0 0
24, 25 25, 27 24, 27 14, 17 17, 31 14, 31
For each triad set three different groupings were available and Figure 38 illustrates the number of
participants choosing each grouping.
There were two sorts where none of the participants made a link between specific cards. In
triad set 1, there was no grouping of cards 20 and 35. In triad set 4, there was no grouping of
cards 22 and 33 (perhaps this was because they were provoked by stronger similarities between
other combinations of the cards). Chapter 7 will come on to consider this later.
5.2.2. Card sorting – step (i)
Figure 39 shows how participants grouped word cards under the categories. Note that ‘new card’
means that a blank card was used and incorporated by the participant.
During the sort there was one participant who did not group two cards. These are noted in
Figure 39 – under the heading ‘not grouped’, these cards were: 15 ‘accident’, and 16
‘unintentional’. The participant was vague when explaining the reason for not grouping these
cards and just put it down to them not being appropriate for the headings. Cards that were not
grouped could be just as interesting to focus on as those that were grouped; these cards may
suggest issues in practice that need to be addressed and debated further. Chapter 7 will focus in
more detail on the cards that were not grouped and discuss patterns among the participant
groups.
The data analysis in this stage of the chapter focuses mainly on the quantitative data that
was generated. The raw quantitative data for all participants can be seen in Figure 39. This figure
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highlights the groupings that were made by each of the participants, and how they grouped the
cards into the categories of ‘not my responsibility’, ‘maybe my responsibility’, and ‘definitely my
responsibility’.
Figure 39: Study 2: Quantitative data – All participants results for Sort 2, step (i).
Sort 2, step (i) required the participants to be decisive, to decide on issues that are ‘their’
responsibility and to commit to and justify their reasoning. Most participants distributed the cards
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across the three categories; placing the majority of cards under ‘definitely my responsibility’,
followed by a lower number under ‘maybe my responsibility’, and fewest in ‘not my responsibility’.
Some participants generated new cards during the task. If a new card was generated it tended to
be placed in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category of cards. However, participant 3 did behave
in a different manner; creating four new cards, of which, two were place under ‘definitely my
responsibility’ and the other two under ‘not my responsibility’. Perhaps this participant wanted to
make clear that ‘deliberate abuse’ and ‘fluke’ are perhaps responsibilities, though not
responsibilities of a designer.
The data was transported into Excel to see how the card selections sat in relation to the
other cards in the particular groups. The results of the cards groupings are shown in Figure 40.
Cards grouped: 'not my responsibility'

experienced designers - not my responsibility
12
11
10
9
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16
word cards
The cards that were grouped in not my responsibility by all participants. Two new cards were
created: ‘deliberate abuse’ (st2_p3) and ‘Fluke’ (st2_p3).
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Cards grouped - maybe my responsibility

experienced designers - maybe my responsibility
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The cards that were grouped in maybe my responsibility by all participants.
Cards grouped - definitely my responsibility

experienced designers - definitely my responsibility
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word cards
The cards that were grouped in not my responsibility by all participants. Eight new cards
created: ‘transformation’ (st2_p1), ‘mild abuse’ and ‘predictable abuse’ (st2_p3), ‘cost’ and
‘schedule’ (st2_p7), ‘ethics’ and ‘improve life’ (st3_p9), and ‘environment’ (st2_p11).
Figure 40: Study 2: Graphical representations of the cards grouped into the three categories in sort 2, step (i).
Figure 40 highlights the cards that were placed under the three headings. The graphs indicate
how many designers placed each card in the three categories. New cards are not represented on
the graph because the focus here was to look at the cards form the card set. However, new cards
that were generated have been noted within the figure.
The data indicated that most designers felt that issues such as ‘9/11’ and ‘gun design’ were
not their responsibility. Many of the designers felt removed from the 9/11 situation and did not
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make links between it and their everyday design practice. However, other designers suggested
that such events ‘had an affect’ (st2_p8) on their design – this designer provided a specific example
of a design project that they were working on which was cancelled as a result of the events that
day. There was some discussion from other participants that it ‘maybe’ is their responsibility or is
‘definitely’ their responsibility because of the Westernised consumer society we live in which has
been created by design: ‘I suppose I’m part of a consumer society so I could say that I’m
responsible for them disliking what they see’ (st2_p10). Suggesting that we seem to have created a
culture of which design is an important part.
A number of cards fell into the grey area of ‘maybe my responsibility’. The most common
placed cards in this category were: ‘society’, ‘misuse’, ‘accident’, worst-case’, and ‘business’. The
categorisation of the card ‘society’ was perhaps unexpected because design is something that
impacts on our society, yet 7 practising designers were not convinced that they were fully
responsible for this, and instead diluted responsibility by making statements such as: ‘I can only
affect a small part of society’ (st2_p11) and one participant suggested that they were unable to
have the impact on society that other professionals could for example policemen (st2_p9).
The cards ‘misuse’ and ‘accidents’ were often linked by practising designers as being similar.
The word accident was taken very literally; ‘in the sense of the word accident, it cannot be my
responsibility’ (st2_p9). Some participants suggested that if a product was misused it becomes the
responsibility of the individual misusing it, not the designer who designed it.
There was some agreement that worst-case scenarios should be tested, but there was also an
element of shifting the responsibility to the people who test the product.
Five of the twelve designers interviewed did not regard business as ‘definitely’ their design
responsibility and placed the business card in the ‘maybe’ category because they felt that they were
not senior enough within their career to be involved with business aspects. Perhaps a sense of
responsibility for business develops as the designer bridges the gap from designer to manager.
One participant (st2_p11) expressed that their view may be different if they were a Director of the
company. Another designer (st2_12) understood how completing projects had an impact on
business finances, but still placed this card in the ‘maybe’ category.
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5.2.3. Card sorting – step (ii)
Figure 41 shows the five cards that were placed on the scale of importance to the designers (1
represents their most important responsibility and 5 their least important responsibility). It was
the ‘user’ card which most designers regarded as their number one responsibility. This card is
highlighted in the figure to show where it was placed during each of the participants’ sorts. It is
clear to see that the user was often regarded as a high priority, and often won a higher spot on the
scale than other responsibilities designers valued.
Figure 41: Study 2: Quantitative data – All participants results for Sort 2, step (ii).
The data began to illuminate some emerging patterns. Figure 41 shows that five of the twelve
participants (st2_p4, st2_p5, st2_p9, st2_p10, and st2_p12) selected card number 3 (user) as their
most important responsibility.
This step of the task required designers to make decisions about which design
responsibilities they regarded as the most important, they had to make trade off’s, and reduce the
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cards down to a choice of five. Two of the designers did not stick to the five card rule and instead
generated their own groups and headings (participant 3 and participant 8 – refer Figure 41). The
designers were not stopped from doing this because it was feared that it may stifle their creativity
and thought process during the task. They were allowed to continue with this way of sorting for
this step of the task. It is significant that each of these designers had a minimum of 20 years design
practice experience. This experience in design may have been the reason that they developed these
new headings; so they could provide a more extensive level of their understanding of design
responsibility. After they had developed the groupings they were offered the opportunity to select
just five cards (as the instructions had directed them). However, they both refused the opportunity
to do so and said they were happy with the selections they had presented. Either they
misunderstood the instructions or felt that grouping the cards offered a more sufficient picture of
their design responsibilities.
5.2.4. Card sorting – step (iii)
Step (iii) involved a discussion of practice. The participants were asked to relate the image cards to
the headings selected in step (ii). Figure 37 (p131) provided an illustration of this task.
The data in this sort identified how designers associated specific cards with certain issues.
Table 16 shows an example of such a pattern. It illustrates the headings that card 30 was grouped
with. The data indicated that designers associated card 30 with a number of different issues.
Table 16: Study 2: Card 30 - Grouped in Sort 2, step (iii). Outcomes for all participants.
Card Participant Grouped under 1-5 scale heading

St2_p1 Practice
St2_p2
St2_p3 ‘How we deploy ourselves and how we do things’
St2_p4 Change
St2_p6
St2_p5 Future
St2_p7 ‘Schedule’
St2_p8 ‘Core elements of commercial design’
St2_p9 Client
St2_p12
St2_p10 Standards
St2_p11 Needs
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Two participants made a connection between card 30 and practice. One of them suggested that
card 30 was about questioning practice and in particular: ‘questioning the practice of [designing
products which are quickly outdated, like] the mobile phone’ (st2_p1). This participant was very
interested in what we say we need as a society and questioned these needs in design practice; ‘who
said we need that’ and ‘whose practice was it that come up with that?’
The other participant (st2_p2) that made a connection with practice talked about card 30 in
terms of ‘good practice’ because of the ‘disassembly or ease of assembly and transportation that
has been followed’.
Two participants (st2_p9 and st2_p12) made a connection between card 30 and the idea of
the client. One participant saw card 30 as ‘all the pieces…that are in the jigsaw that I need to
bring together’ this participant explained how this related to practice ‘we often work with
engineering departments’ suggesting that the designer has to ‘come in and try and help them
improve [the product]…but they know their product inside out, much better than we do’. So in a
sense this is the idea of finding a balance between the working relationship of the designer and the
engineer in understanding the product.
The participant (st2_p12) who associated card 30 with the client talked about working
issues. So the client may want something that looks really good on paper, but ‘half of the trouble is
converting those fancy Dan drawings into something that can actually be made’. This participant
was ‘hesitant to do just more sketches’, and felt strongly about spending lots of time on sketching
ideas that have little feasibility of being manufactured. This was interesting because Study 1 had
indicated some issues where graduating designers seemed to see themselves as the ‘concept guy’.
This was also reflected by one of the Study 2 participants. This may be an issue because these
‘concept guys’ suggest a feeling of responsibility is quickly passed on to someone else.
The data from this sort highlighted the ambiguity of the cards that were selected and used
in the card sorting task, and confirmed that one card can generate several discussion points on
various design issues.
Data analysis of the Study 2 dataset revealed some image cards were not associated with any
group. Participant 7 (st2_p7), did not group image card 8. Participant 8 (st2_p8), did not group
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image cards 8 and 24, but highlighted a connection between image cards 17, 19, 8, and 24;
suggesting when it comes to these cards ‘it’s all about people’. Finally, participant 12 (st2_p12),
did not group image card 25. The analysis tended to focus on the cards that were placed, but it is
equally important to recognise that cards that were not placed may open up interesting discussion
of participants later in this thesis.
5.2.5. Analysis of transcripts
The preceding sections have presented quantitative data but the study also generated a large
amount of qualitative data obtained through audio recordings of participants as they completed
the card sorting. Transcripts of the audio files were made and content analysis carried out.
Grouping and Categorising
The initial data analysis involved working through the transcripts identifying all passages of
possible interest related to responsibility. The selected quotes and details of participants were
placed on post-it notes and then grouped and categorised on poster boards.
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Figure 42: Early categorisation and coding of the data.
Figure 42 shows how the post-it note method was used to group and code the data:
(1) ethical issues,
(2) technology issues,
(3) cards not grouped,
(4) hard and soft standards,
(5) how far ahead should designers be thinking,
(6) In theory/ in practice,
(7) transference of responsibilities,
(8) perspectives on change,
(9) culture and society that we live in, and
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(10) at this point the things in 10 were other issues emerging from the data, e.g., ‘control in
design’, ‘aesthetics’, and ‘psychology in design’, amongst others.
A ‘bottom-up’ categorisation of the data was then conducted. Coding in this way meant that
important details could be found by glancing at the board, meaning that familiarity with the
dataset was easier to accomplish.
‘The Life of a Card’
Another approach to help gain an understanding of the complexity of the data was to focus on
particular cards. Cards that were of interest for this approach were identified from the quantitative
data, which were tracked through the dataset – focusing on the qualitative data it generated, and
more importantly, the language that the designers used when discussing responsibility. Table 17
shows the life of card 20. This table shows which heading (on the 1-5 scale) this card was
associated with. This table highlights words (underlined) to offer an insight into designers’
perceptions of this card.
Table 17: The Life of Card 20.
Card 20 Participant Placed under heading on 1-5 Keywords or Comments

scale
St2_p1 Number 2 on scale – under … we need to be a lot more open in
card heading Needs terms of needs for all of humanity on
our planet…
what we say we need actually is killing

us…
St2_p2 Number 4 on scale – under … obviously its not a entirely
card heading Society unintentional you know landfill as
opposed to simple discarded rubbish
and these have been collected and
placed
St2_p3 Number 1 on scale – under Understanding consumer motivation is
heading ‘People that we are absolutely key… I would say that
helping’ there’s a kind of aspirational
sociological mission in here and actually
for many years I would say until 2 years
ago I would put that here (in between
change and future) so in other words up
to 2007 change and future. Now user
(place it under group 1)
St2_p4 Number 5 on scale – under I think it’s an issue that’s troubling us
card heading Society all especially you know the amount of
landfill that we design.
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St2_p5 Number 4 on scale – under … the need to consider what we do

card heading Future with our waste is becoming increasingly
important to us.
St2_p6 Number 2 on scale – under … as much as it is a company’s
card heading User responsibility to design something that
can be recycled it is up to the user to
then do something with that thing…
St2_p7 Number 5 on scale – under … constraints on us from an
card heading Wants environmental perspective… Kyoto and
the ‘REACH directive’ (Registration,
Evaluation, Authorisation and
restriction of CHemicals) is another
good one from the EU…
towards one end of the spectrum you’ve

got performance and at the other end
you’ve got things like the
environmental requirements
St2_p8 Number 3 on scale – under …I think people get wrapped up that
heading ‘Results/ affects of suddenly designers have to sort the
design’ world out I don’t…we want to but you
know it’s not just down to us.
St2_p9 Number 2 on scale – under I’d probably put that down as practice I
card heading Client mean really it’s a case of what you don’t
want to achieve its kind of back to
misuse and waste and in terms of
practice its more of a what we don’t
want to achieve more than what we do
St2_p10 Number 5 on scale – under ready for the recycling is to do with the
card heading Future future of the planet
St2_p11 Number 5 on scale – under it’s a lot of litter
card heading New Card:
‘Environment’
St2_p12 Number 4 on scale – under I guess you have to design it for the
card heading Unintentional unintentional in that it could be
scrapped quite quickly…
20 is the disposable item you know you

use it once for a brief period of time
and it’s gone and that’s the reality of a
lot of electronic products now because
they are so cheap.
The ‘life of card’ analysis helped to gain an understanding of how particular cards were
understood, for example participant 1 talked about card 20 in terms of thinking of the planet and
suggested that the things that we think we need are the things that are actually killing us. In
contrast, participant 6 linked card 20 with users – this approach highlighted issues of transference
of responsibilities; where responsibility is suggested to transfer from the design company to the
user.
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Two of the participants placed card 20 under the heading ‘society’ – making links to landfill
and rubbish collection. Many of the designers associated this card with waste, rather than viewing
it as an opportunity to recycle. Perhaps that indicates something about current practising
designers’ mindsets or it may be that the experience of these designers has shaped them to be less
idealistic and to become comfortable with the fact that design involves consumerism, turn-over of
products, and continuous styling and developments to appeal to consumers.
Participant 3 pointed out there has been a shift in where card 20 should be placed.
Participant 3 suggested that if this task had taken place a couple of years earlier then card 20
would have probably gone under one of the other headings (change or future) on the 1-5 scale.
However, in the present day, environmental issues were perceived as ‘now’ issues – not to be left
and addressed in the future. The majority of the discussions stimulated by this card related to
landfill and rubbish. There were suggestions that recycling was important for the planet. When
environmental issues were discussed, there was a real sense of community; ‘our planet’, ‘us’, and
‘we’, perhaps because of the enormity of the task of combating global environmental issues. One
designer made it clear that although their intentions are good and designers want to partake, that
‘it’s not just down to us [the designer]’ (st2_p8); suggesting that responsibility can have many
layers. This participant suggested that sometimes things can be out of the control of designers.
A visual representation of text
Wordle is a piece of software that was used to generate visual representations of words
(www.wordle.net). The website allows words to be entered; the outcome is a visual depiction
which provides an insight into the distribution of words. Words that are repeated (and contain
higher number of instances) become larger so one can see at a glance the relative importance of
issues; these are displayed as ‘word clouds’. As an experiment, the transcript of participant 8’s
(st2_p8) card sorting tasks was input into the software. Analysing the data with this approach was
useful because it seems to suggest what in general forms, is on the participants’ mind.
Table 18 and Figure 43 demonstrate how the raw data was filtered (removal of common
words e.g., ‘and’, ‘the’, and so on) and re-entered into the software. The results showed that the
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most commonly used word by st2_p8 was ‘design’, it was used 36 times, followed by ‘people’ 26
times, then followed by the words ‘responsibility’ and ‘trying’ 13 times. Table 18 illustrates the
words counts19 for the words used in participant 8’s transcript, and Figure 44 (p150) shows the
resulting word cloud. This thesis has explored the use of word clouds to investigate individual
participant’s concepts of responsibility.
Table 18: Wordle input of st2_ p8. Full transcript of interview narrowed down.
Word Value (number of times it

appeared)
Design 36
Designed 1
Designer 9
Designers 9
Designing 4
People 26
Peoples 4
Responsible 1
Responsibility 13
Try 2
Trying 13
Want 7
Wanted 1
Wants 3
Money 11
Moneys 1
Moral 1
Moralistic 2
Morals 3
Need 8
Needs 11
Presentation 5
Presentations 1
Presents 1
Market 4
Marketers 1
Marketing 1
Protect 3
Protected 1
Protecting 2
Product 7
Products 8
Process 7
Processes 1
Intellectual Property 7
IP (intellectual property, but term 1
used was IP)
19
Note: the database has grouped similar words, but not combined them to be one input e.g., responsible and
responsibility remain as separate entities so that the word cloud does not lose the context of the dataset.
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The advanced function of the software enabled manual input of words and their values, as shown
in Figure 43.
Figure 43: Screenshot of Wordle, demonstrating how the values can be easily added using the advanced
20
version.
20
http://www.wordle.net/advance
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Figure 44: Word Cloud with a narrowed version of the topics that were discussed by st2_p 8 during the card
sorting task. The larger the word the more occurrences it had in the transcript (as shown in Table 18).
Wordle was adopted as a way of dealing with the data, the general impression was that
participant 8 was very driven about protecting property rights and thought that communication
was an important component in design. This participant also displayed an opinion that recycling
‘everything’ was a bit ‘hippy’ and ‘Blue Peter’ like; and raised practical issues, such as, not
everything can be recycled.
However, after the word cloud was generated the suggestion was that this designer was
very focused on ‘design’ and ‘people’ when discussing design responsibility. This information was
available from detailed data analysis, but the visual approach of Wordle quickly brought it to the
surface. This visual approach is very striking and the word clouds illustrated the depth of the
transcripts.
Participant 8 was an experienced designer, playing the bridging role of running a company
and practising as a designer. Both elements of business and money were important. Designers in
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this role (participants; p1, p4, and p8) had more consideration of responsibilities that encompassed
business elements. This was also reflected in sort 2, step (i), refer to section 5.2.2. All of these
designers grouped ‘business’ in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category.
Participant 8 talked about protecting Intellectual Property Rights (IPR); ‘intellectual
property, it’s huge, it’s the only thing that we have to sell...ultimately we’re selling intellectual
property… [it’s] important for us to understand how we protect it’. Participant 8 also discussed
property rights when talking about card 31 – the Dyson vacuum cleaner card. He stated that the
vacuum cleaner card: ‘represents his product, his intellectual property and he protected it and was
able to…bring it to market and sell from the back of that’. Participant 8 was so interested in this
issue that a blank card was used to create a new card; ‘Intellectual Property Rights’. Participant 8
explained; ‘its not coming out in your words (via the word cards) … People need to discuss it.
This is the biggest problem that people have.’ Participant 8 was the only designer to express such
a strong interest in this issue, although other participants acknowledged it as important. It seems
fair to suggest, given the passion expressed towards the subject, that this designer had
experienced issues relating to intellectual property in the past, though this was not explicitly
discussed.
The use of word clouds was useful for broadly identifying common topics in the data. It
provided a skeleton for the transcriptions, on which the detail of the dataset could be built on. The
greatest value of this method is when it is combined with the transcripts and categorisation to
offer both micro and macro levels of insight.
5.3. Discussion
The combination of the various approaches to analysing the data produced many expected themes.
Some of the more interesting findings of the data, however, came from the more subtle issues. The
results of getting beneath the surface of the statistics and standard text book answers. This study
illuminated several categories which surrounded designers’ concepts of responsibility;
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The Designer’s Role in the Larger Context
The Transference of Responsibility
What designers say and what they do (In theory/In practice)
Hard and Soft Standards
Internal and External influences on responsibility
Implicit and Explicit Ethics
Wants and Needs
This section will discuss each of these in detail.
5.3.1. The designer’s role in a larger context
The data indicated that there were some things that the designers perceived to be out of their
control, and therefore, out of their scope of responsibility. One participant (st2_p12) commented
that: ‘some things are out of my control…I can’t guarantee the plastic the factory uses will be
edible’. Providing, perhaps, an extreme example of safe material choices – in this case, a material
that is safe enough that a child could eat it, rather than choke on it, but nevertheless
demonstrating that there was a sense that the designers felt that there are limits imposed on the
things that they can control. One designer (st2_p3) asked: ‘where do you say it’s beyond your
control’. The experiments indicated that designers were aware of the things they felt they could
influence and should be responsible for and that many of these issues were highlighted in the card
sorting task.
The data revealed differences of opinions regarding design responsibilities relating to
business. Some participants considered it as something that they did not even need to question;
‘that’s very much [my responsibility]’ (st2_p2), or a simple word answer, such as; ‘absolutely’
(st2_p3), or ‘definitely’ (st2_p8) when placing the ‘business’ card in the ‘definitely my
responsibility’ category.
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This was echoed elsewhere: ‘definitely our responsibility, understanding our business and
how it fits with other peoples businesses, and understanding our clients and their clients’ (st2_p4).
Another participant (st2_p6) linked responsibility in relation to business with respect to personal
work that they are allocated by the company to complete. Participant 7 (st2_p7) felt that because
they are ‘responsible for the cost and schedule’ of a design project that business is definitely their
responsibility. Participant 9 (st2_p9) felt they had to ‘deliver something that is business viable
otherwise as a designer you’ve failed’ but also made the point that ‘if this product doesn’t sell to
projections that were made then we don’t generally get blamed’. They explained that this problem
would become ‘the manufacturers issue’ and in terms of ‘where the buck falls, it doesn’t absolutely
fall with me, it falls with the company’.
Participant 10 provided a further example of the designer distancing themselves from the
company; ‘the business side of the company is not really very much to do with me…because I
don’t quote for jobs’. And participant 12 (st2_p12) also made a link with finances: ‘I don’t have any
control over the finances [although] what I do is directly related to bringing in finances, so in a
sense I do’. Participant 11 (st2_p11) explained the level of responsibility to business based on
their role within the company ‘I’m only sort of part way through my career…I do sort of
represent the company, but as far as the business is concerned I know that there’s plenty of other
people that are [doing that]…I do think about it, but not in a way that the directors do’.
Participant 5 (st2_p5), who had a more senior role within another design company, suggested
business was: ‘maybe my responsibility’ because the designer: ‘can have some influence on our
client’s business needs, wants, and desires, but we’re not always able to influence.’ This designer
also discussed: ‘ISO9001 and ISO1345 accreditations’21 and explained that having such standards
in place: ‘signals to our clients that we take their business seriously’. Earlier in this chapter it was
highlighted that designers who played a more senior role in the company showed more of an
interest towards business responsibilities and after further consideration of the data that statement
appears to hold weight. Responsibility in design has both local and global components and the
21
ISO9001: Quality Management; ISO1345: Application module for Item definition structure. More information on ISO
accreditations can be found at www.iso.org
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broadening of responsibility to include considerations of business seems to develop with
experience of design practice.
The participants raised some interesting points regarding change and how their role as a
designer related to that change. One participant (st2_ p6) suggested that: ‘you’ve got to think that
you can make a difference’. Another (st2_ p3) said that: ‘we can do our bit to be ethical or to make
sure change is progress.’ There was a consensus among the participants that changing things for
the better was a responsibility of theirs, but that change is also slow: ‘when you come into an
industry you realise that change takes so long’ (st2_p6), ‘is hard’ (st2_p3), and is ‘difficult to
implement’ (st2_p10). The designers did not seem to be deterred by this, and still seemed keen to
make a positive impact through design, but were aware that change takes a long time.
The three step card sorting task also raised psychological issues in design. Discussion
surrounded the ethical and responsibility issues of designing seductive products. One designer
(st2_ p5) suggested: ‘I think its part of our job to be creative and design seductive products’. Are
designers being irresponsible by arousing these emotions in consumers, or are they being
responsible because they are generating successful products that profit their clients?
The data indicated that some designers use psychological methods for persuading the client
to opt for a specific product: ‘there’s a reason why that one is up there and that one is down
there…you’re trying to make that one appear better…so you’re playing all those tricks’ (st2_ p8).
Another designer (st2_ p11) explained how sometimes things can be designed in only, to be
designed out later: ‘sometimes you put a little bit of extra frivolous stuff in so that when [the
client] wants to trim it down a bit, you know which bit you’re going to trim off… a bit of give and
take, but you know exactly what you’re going to take off…you look like you’re compromising
where you’re not compromising really’. If designers are able to manipulate users and clients in
these ways then perhaps they are underestimating the influence they can have.
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5.3.2. The transference of responsibility
Transference of responsibility involved a focus on when and where responsibilities might transfer
from one party to another, for example from the designer to the user, or from the designer to the
engineer, or from the designer to the client. This category was about identifying these boundary
points.
The Study 1 data suggested that the graduating design students were grouped into three
camps when it came to transference of responsibility. These were ordered and coded as; (1)
responsibility shifting; the boundary points of this varied, but was based on responsibility being
passed to another person, e.g., once a product goes to market the responsibility is passed to the
user, (2) use of the product; some designers felt if the product was used in a way it was not
intended then that would be a design flaw, and (3) Responsibility dependent on knowledge; the
idea that if the designer knows there is an issue with the product then it is their fault if something
happens (e.g., the Ford Pinto case). The study 2 participants could not be broken into such clear
categories. Their thoughts on responsibility did not seem as black and white as the graduating
designers. Instead issues appeared to be more intertwined rather than clear cut off points of where
their responsibilities ended or transferred. It was difficult to identify examples which showed clear
transference of responsibility. Instead, designers went back and forth in their discussions while
building their arguments. Although often never making a solid commitment to one thing or
another. Participant 10 (st2_p10) offers a coherent and vocal construction of how grey areas can
exist when addressing an explicit issue regarding responsibility – gun design: ‘Well my initial
reaction is, no, I wouldn’t want to be involved in gun design but that’s a very easy answer… [if]
no more new guns [were] designed it might be difficult because the bad people who’ve got guns
might kill the good people…It may be irresponsible to not carry on designing good weapons or
maybe it’s more responsible to be brave and say no… If I got given a gun design project it would
be my responsibility to do it well’
In this discussion this participant is conflicted by a number of issues and at any point could
use other stakeholders as a way of transferring responsibility. The designer identifies that it is a
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design task that generates discomfort. However, the designer is conscious that some gun ‘users’
can use these products with damaging results. However, the designer does not focus on passing
the buck of responsibility here, but continues to verbalise the reasoning for the task and explains
that not designing the gun could result in a lack of protection for good people. The designer then
illuminates the conflict with the ‘client’ or ‘employer’ and the debate of where to draw the line and
refuse to design particular products (in this case guns). However, in the end the designer accepts
that if given such a design task that responsibility would not be transferred to other stakeholders
and that the designer would have a responsibility to do this design task well.
5.3.3. What designers say and what they do
What designers say and what they actually do is based on the idea of what they say they ought to
do and what they actually do. This theme involved concentrating on the data and the vocabulary
in terms of what in theory designers say they do (in theory), but then how in practice they conduct
themselves (in practice).
Cognitive dissonance was not something that the participants were necessarily aware of.
There was evidence in Study 1 that some of the graduating students were able to hold a particular
belief and conduct themselves in a contradicting manner. This study found that cognitive
dissonance did not diminish with experience. The issues that practising designers demonstrated
dissonance around did, however, vary. It was possibly because of the commercial aspect of their
work. It was interesting that some designers felt strongly enough about issues to generate new
cards, using the blank cards in the set, but did not deem them important enough to rate on their
top five responsibilities scale. Other participants expressed an interest in the environment, but
they were not always convinced by ideas of using recycled materials. The contradictions made by
the practising designers may have been less explicit than graduating students, because experience
habituates them to dealing with many conflicting issues at one time.
The Study 1 data indicated that there were a number of ‘this vs. that’ issues; (1) personal
ethics vs. employer ethics, (2) impact on environment vs. limited material choices that are fit for
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function, (3) designing environmentally friendly products vs. meeting market demands, and (4)
not wanting to contribute to a consumer society vs. having take a design job which involves
designing landfill types of products. The practising designers raised some similar issues. One
participant (st2_p8) highlighted designing products which are fit for function vs. using materials
that are beneficial to the environment. Participant 6 (st2_p6) echoed this concern being interested
in finding a balance between products that can be designed for disassembly, but also ones that do
not encourage the user to ‘throw it away…and buy a new one every week’.
Other designers talked about aesthetics when compared to cost, and function. There was an
awareness that if the aim is to have something which is very aesthetically pleasing, then the reality
of that is likely to be costly. Again, the idea of finding a balance between two conflicting elements
reflects the trade-off nature of design. Participant 6 (st2_p6) also commented on the conflict
between ethics and business: ‘you can have all your other ethics…but if you’re a company your
goal is to make money’. This participant often described things in terms of balance. The
participant, although ‘user-centred’ had to concede ‘you’ve got your client to satisfy at the end of
the day’.
Participant 2 (st2_p2) made a very interesting point when talking about design practice.
This participant suggested; ‘we create opportunities where there aren’t any other ones, but we try
not to create needs. I know this difficult problem of wanting to try and open up new revenue
streams for clients, but not abusing our position as providing design’. This participant was very
conscious of wanting to provide income for clients, but to find a balance in the way this was done.
5.3.4. Hard and soft standards in design
Looking at how designers follow rules relates to how standards in design govern the process. For
example, rules may be legislation (hard) or a more personal ethics (soft). Many examples that were
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provided were those relating to environmental legislation, such as the ‘WEEE directive’22 and the
‘REACH directive’23.
What happens when there is no legislation for a particular area? Where do designers turn
for guidance? Obviously design should not be a (purely) mechanical process of following orders.
Heskett (2002), suggests ‘a major question requiring an answer is whether designers will be
merely technocrats, devoting their skills to the highest commercial bidder without consideration
of the ends they serve. Or is there instead a dimension of social and environmental purpose,
requiring acknowledgement in their work?’
The data indicated that the practising designers were concerned about the possible effects
that they were having. Some of their actions were guided by hard legislation, but some designers
indicated that was not always enough. The idea of ‘common sense’ was mentioned and this is a
good example of a soft standard. One designer (st2_p12) explained ‘…something might pass a
standard…but then common sense is also needed…knowing users, they’ll use it differently and it’s
going to be very dangerous’. The problem here is defining common sense. In this context it
appears to combine design knowledge of right and wrong and relate it to ethical understanding.
Personal conscience is an important element of this. As participant 12 (st2_p12) explained,
quality control departments will ensure products pass relevant tests, even though sometimes the
product may still be ‘dangerous’. This participant explained; ‘it would be the designer’s
responsibility to design that out if we felt bad about putting it in…a lot of the time it’s purely
personal conscience’.
5.3.5. Internal and external influences on responsibility
The previous discussion, of standards, leads on to considering what are the influences acting on a
designer (either externally or internally imposed)? Figure 45 illustrates the factors that are
capable of having an influence on the designer’s responsibilities. The influencing factors are
22
WEEE directive: Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment
23
REACH directive: Registration, Evaluation and Authorisation of Chemicals
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described as external or internal factors, but some do occupy both dimensions. These could also be
referred to as concepts of ‘local and global’ levels or ‘micro and macro’ levels, concepts that were
presented in previous chapters.
Figure 45: Internal and external influences on practising designers. The responsibilities in the internal section are
the ones that are closest to the designer.
The data suggested that practising designers have a number of pressures which they felt,
sometimes, influenced their levels of responsibility for particular issues.
One participant (st2_p5) explained that: ‘the intentions come from the client, so I’d say it’s
not my responsibility’. The idea of the client or the brief determining the responsibilities that the
designer should address was common within the data. One participant (st2_p11) explained how:
‘sometimes it’s the client who’ll say don’t worry about that because it has to be this type [of
specification]’. This suggests that in this case responsibility was almost removed from the
designer. Another participant (st2_p9) explained that: ‘it depends on the brief whether it is my
responsibility’. These types of answers suggest that perhaps designers do heavily rely on clients to
guide them. Perhaps they are ‘technocrats’, as Heskett describes?
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5.3.6. Implicit and explicit ethics
The data generated a number of examples relating to theories of ethics. Discussion around ‘social
ethics’ tended to be explicit, for example: ‘I am responsible to society’ (st2_p1). Other designers
highlighted the importance of understanding cultures and the smaller communities that combine
to make up the society as a whole. One designer did not share this view of design (st2_p7). When
discussing work on a design, to be used by the British Army, this participant suggested that: ‘in
my job role, society doesn’t, to be honest come into it at all…unless I’m catering for [the] UK
population’. It seemed that this participant divided responsibilities for society into two parts; local
and global. Even though the product in discussion had the potential to cause fatalities, this
designer had drawn a clear line of responsibility for that. Perhaps this participant was able to
justify this because they realised that these products would be used in War. This raises interesting
questions such as; what do designers do if their personal and professional ethics clash? Many of
the designers interviewed talked about meeting the clients’ demands and that this was
encompassed within the concept of ‘professional duty’ and meeting ‘contractual obligations’,
although clearly there was opportunity for these to come into conflict with more personal
convictions about responsibility.
The participants showed an impressive understanding of the ever increasing legislation
relating to recycling and material usage in the design process. However, it was highlighted that
such issues have only recently, over the last ten years or so, become of real importance in the
world of design. They now guide the designer, and in turn can and do influence clients.
Implicit ethical viewpoints appeared subtly when the designers were constructing their
ideas, but there was an indication that deontological viewpoints and humanitarian viewpoints
were evidenced within the data. Deontological ideas of thinking were evidenced in the way that
designers discussed their duties to the client, or to do the ‘right’ thing for the user. Many of the
designers showed a caring approach, involving concepts of ‘helping people’, when talking about
their responsibilities. The environment was often discussed with a humanitarian outlook with the
realisation that helping the environment can help to protect the world and ensure the well-being
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of people. Much of the data that was coded under categories of explicit ethics, however, also
overlapped with other categories discussed earlier.
5.3.7. Wants and needs
There was some interesting discussion surrounding the wants and needs cards. Some designers
saw these issues as two separate things; they have a responsibility to meet ‘needs’, but not to
create ‘wants’. Other designers’ opinions contrasted with this feeling that addressing the wants of
the client or the user was their responsibility. There was also some discussion surrounding the
differences between wants and needs. One designer (st2_p1) classified needs as ‘essential’
elements, whereas wants are more like desires, things that users or client would like to have in a
product. Discussions of wants and needs led the designers to question the necessity of wants and
to justify their behaviour and responsibilities to address such demands.
5.4. Summary
The data analysis adopted in Study 2 highlighted many new areas within the data. The data
gathered in Study 1 appears to have been a good foundation for the generation of cards in the
Study 2 work. The practising designers (all from SMEs) did add some additional word cards, but
many were content with the card set as it was presented to them.
A key observation from this study was the wide-ranging perceptions of responsibility by the
participants. Also, guidelines and legislation on the environmental aspect of design have changed
rapidly over the last few years. There was even a suggestion from one designer (st2_p10) that
practising designers rely on graduating designers to bring new knowledge into the industry. This
is an important point to note. If practising designers rely on graduating students to provide them
with information, then there are two issues: (1) perhaps design practice requires professional
development programs for designers to ensure they are fully aware of legislation changes and
requirements within the industry, and (2) implications for design education to ensure that their
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students are aware of the latest changes. Study 1 found that the graduating design students were
well educated in this respect.
In this study of 12 practising designers, working in UK based SMEs, the method was found
to be effective at generating a ‘designerly way’ of discussing responsibility. It generated broad and
detailed discussions about active responsibility in the design process. The designers’ comments
after the experiments suggested that this was a task that they felt comfortable with and found fun
and interesting to complete. They particularly enjoyed working with the image cards as they felt
it reflected similar approaches to generating ideas that they have used in their previous design
practice.
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6. Study 3 – Investigating design responsibility in year 1 undergraduate students
6. Study 3 – Investigating design responsibility in year 1
undergraduate students
Chapters, 3, 4 and 5 have introduced and explained studies 1 and 2 of the research. After the
crucial grounding of the research, the results acquired in Study 1 were fed into the development of
Study 2. Chapter 5 then presented how the developed method was used with practising designers.
This chapter uses the same method as the one used in Study 2, but this time with year 1
undergraduate design students. The study presented in this chapter uses this same triad and
three-stage card sorting method using first year undergraduate students as participants. Chapter 3
explained the three study approach that this research aimed to investigate. This chapter focuses on
the final snapshot study and moves towards providing a more complete picture into the
development of responsibility across design experience.
This chapter will open by explaining how the methods and work of Study 2 influenced
Study 3. It then describes the conduct of the research, analysis and findings, and presents a
discussion of the study.
6.1. Method: How study 2 influenced study 3
Following the process of gathering the Study 2 data and preparing to plan for Study 3 the
opportunity to conduct research abroad (at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University) presented
itself. Initially the plan had been to conduct Study 3 in the UK, but when the opportunity to study
the perceptions of design responsibility on a wider scale became a possibility, it was embraced.
Design is a global practice and products are designed to be sold in international markets.
Additionally, students spoke English, so although not UK students, we reasoned that a sample of
Hong Kong undergraduates would still form a valid group for the purpose of this research.
The aim of Study 3 was to carry out a study of first year undergraduate design students to
complete the larger picture of the development of responsibility in product designers. The validity
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of Study 3 within the context of this research was tested by conducting a control study with
Masters students at the Hong Kong Polytechnic. The results of the control study could be
compared with that of the graduating students (in Study 1). In the literature review, this thesis
suggested that a particular role may guide responsibilities. Also design is an international
profession. Therefore, it was expected that there would be similarities around responsibility,
regardless of geographical location. Study 3 and the control group set out to test this theory as a
secondary task to providing a clearer picture of designers’ perceptions and development of
responsibility.
6.1.1. A control study with masters students
The control study consisted of 13 (11 males & 2 females) masters design students (MDes
students) from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where the study was conducted. The
participants were from a range of international backgrounds; 4 were from mainland China, 3 from
Hong Kong, 2 from South America, 2 from North America, and 2 from Europe.
The study took place during October 2008. The method followed was the semi-structured
approach, described in Chapter 3. The questions were based as closely as possible on those that the
UK graduating product design students were asked. Certain small changes needed to be made
because the environment the study was conducted in was not the same as Study 1. For example
the students were not interviewed at their design degree shows and were therefore not being
interviewed in front of their work.
The 13 participants produced just over 4 hours of audio data, the interviews lasted between
10 and 30 minutes; depending on how much they expanded on their answers or if they introduced
new directions to the conversation.
The question which became the focus of analysis for this dataset was the question: What do
you understand by the term responsible designing? Answers to this question were fully
transcribed to gain a greater understanding of the perceptions of responsible design from the
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international masters group and to compare their responses with those of the UK design students.
The initial responses to Question 1, gathered from the dataset, are illustrated in Table 19.
Table 19: Control Study: student’s first response when asked about responsible designing?
Classification of answers from interviewees in the control study Number of Students

Environment 4
Sustainable 2
User 2
Affecting lives 1
Project 1
Sociable design 1
Consequences of product 1
Ergonomy 1
The majority of the answers concerned the environment; four of them specifically used the word
‘environment’, and two students talked about the environment more specifically in terms of
sustainability. The control study also contributed a number of implicit issues that could also be
categorised under responsibility (and broader, ethics); ‘affecting lives’, ‘sociable design’, and
‘consequences of product’. A comparison between the control study and Study 1 can be found in
Table 20.
Table 20: Comparing graduating degree students and Masters students.
Issue – First response when asked about responsible Number of Students Number of Students
designing. (graduating students) (Masters students)
Environment (including issues of sustainability, materials 34% (17) 46% (6)
etc)
Design (including design methods, designing for people 30% (15) 31% (4)
etc)
Safety/legal/standards (e.g. Disability Discrimination Act 14% (7) -
etc)
Stakeholders (e.g. clients, markets, business, consumers, 8% (4) -
public etc)
Ethics (more generally) 12% (5) 23% (3)
As with the UK graduating students, the international masters students also valued the
‘environment’ highly. It was this issue that most students referred to first when asked about
responsible design which showed a consistency among the two groups. Their thoughts on
responsible design were similar and they used similar language to discuss the topic. The
approximate correlation (the similarities of perceptions of responsibilities) between the two
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datasets provided enough evidence for the validity of study 3 in the context of this research. The
international aspect of the study also offered potentially a greater insight into the development of
responsibility in product designers.
Analysis of the dataset as a whole implied that when talking about responsibility there was
some reference to their course tutors, a possible cultural orientation to adopt the views of the
teachers. However, the students had been previously educated at different geographical locations,
and the location did not seem to affect their appreciation and influence of the tutors. Nascimento
(1997, p115-116) makes reference to;
‘A masters thesis defended in 1978 at the Federal University at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Gustavo
Amarante Bomfim, the author of this work titled: “Industrial Design: Proposal for the
Reformulation of the Minimum Required Curriculum for Brazilian Undergraduate Design
Programs,” suggested very much in passing that design students, given the intrinsic nature of
design knowledge and that of its transmission in design schools in Brazil, tend to greatly
acquire the personal values of their closest professors ... the students also absorb an ethical
frame of reference and ethical models. This phenomenon is perhaps stronger in countries such
as Brazil in which the design literature is sparse, but to a lesser degree it seems also applicable
to other countries in which this is not so much the case.’
The data from the control study suggested that the absorption of ones professors ‘ethical frame of
reference’ and ‘ethical models’. Supporting claims that this may not only be restricted to countries
where ‘design literature is sparse’. When asked about responsible design the control study
students often made reference to specific course models and tutors who ran those classes. Many
seemed to have been influenced by the ideas and values that were presented in those lectures.
These were echoed in the Study 1 data where the students tended to have similar ideas to their
peers if they were studying at the same institute. The values and beliefs that were important to the
university and tutors are thus reflected in the students.
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The control study was conducted to ensure that the differences in education and the ways of
talking about responsibility in design, across these two Countries, would not be too dissimilar.
Hong Kong has been largely influenced by Western customs, during its time under British
control, but it has been under Chinese rule since 1997. There was a chance that this could
highlight some major differences in the different design education systems with respect to
responsibility and offer an insight into students being educated in a Country that long embraced
the capitalism of the West, but is now ruled by Communist China. The result of the control study
suggested that there are different cultures in the world and they do impact on the way people do
things, but that design is itself a culture and, like all cultures, the members of the design culture
have shared values and beliefs.
6.2. Study 3 – Undergraduate product design students
Study 3 consisted of 13 (6 males & 7 females) first year undergraduate product design students24.
All were studying for their qualifications at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where the
experiments were also conducted. All participants were from East Asia/South East Asia, with the
majority being from Hong Kong (8). In addition there were three from mainland China, one from
Vietnam, and one from Singapore. The experiments took place during November-early December
2008.
The task set was the same two step task (triad and card sorting) as the task stated in
Chapter 4 (section 4.6.2). As all the participants completed the experimental task in one place
audio and video recordings were made to provide a slightly richer material for further analysis.
The students in this study also varied on the time it took to complete the task. The task generally
lasted between 30-60 minutes.
24
The ethical paperwork for this study can be found in Appendix G.
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The 13 participants interviewed produced just less than 11 hours of audio and video data. The
procedure and data analysis for dealing with the Study 3 data was based on the same methods that
were used in Study 2. The data analysis conducted was based on the framework that was
developed in Study 2. Following the same procedure of triads and then focusing on the three-step
card sorting task. The most important method was the ‘post-it board’ method that was used for
categorising and coding the data which proved a good method for handling the richness of the
content.
This section will explain how the dataset was broke down and the initial findings generated
in Study 2. It will first present the results of the triad sorts, then the results of the three-step card
sorting task. The discussion will then focus on the broader findings of the dataset.
6.3.1. Triad sorts
An example of the data generated in the triad task can be found in Table 21. The table shows an
example of a participant (st3_p10) who grouped cards 6 and 33.
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Table 21: Triad Set 4 – An example of the construct and contrast assigned by st3_p10.
Card Triad Set 4
6 22 33
St3_p10: It is something we like to measure and the Researchers Commentary:

coins is this is used to measure systems
Text on the left is a transcription of participant 10’s
This one is something related to mechanic (card 22) response to card triad set 4. The words underlined
are those that were of interest because they offered
St3_p10: Construct; Measuring systems an insight to the construction of the world made by
the participant 10.
Researcher: and a contrast of measuring systems? The construct and contrast are the single word
or sentences that the participant managed to
St3_p10: Something like, without rules summarise them as.
During this triad the participant 10 discussed how

they saw the relation between these two cards. The
participant constructed their world around the ideas
of ‘measured systems’ and contrasted this idea
‘without rules’. It seems that this participant
constructs some elements of their world into these
two categories; (1) where things are ‘measured’ and
controlled, and others (2) ‘without rules’.
Construct Contrast
Measuring Systems Without Rules
This participant, like many of the first year students, took the cards very literally. The
participants tended to discuss what they saw on the image cards, rather than using the card as a
stimulus to discuss more abstract issues that they might have encountered during their design
process. However, the participants were strong at being decisive about what they wanted to name
their constructs and contrasts. Figure 46 provides the groupings of cards which were made by all
first year design students. This figure demonstrates the two cards which were grouped as being
alike by the participants and the most common groupings across the whole dataset.
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_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
13 13
12 12
11
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9 9
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20, 30 30, 35 20, 35 8, 32 32, 36 8, 36
_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
13 13
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10, 12 12, 19 10, 19 6, 22 22, 33 6, 33
_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
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13 13
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number of participants 11 11
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cards groupings
card groupings
What is interesting is that there is only one set of triad cards in which none of the student
participants grouped cards; card triad set 3 – cards 12 and 19. Perhaps the participants just did not
make a connection between these two cards.
6.3.2. Card sorting – step (i)
The first step involved grouping the cards into the three groups of ‘not my responsibility’, ‘maybe
my responsibility’, and ‘definitely my responsibility’. These can be found in Figure 47. This figure
also highlights the cards which were not grouped into these three categories.
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Figure 47: Study 3: Quantitative data - All participants results for Sort 2, step (i)
Figure 48 presents the quantitative data graphically so it is easy to compare the number of
participants who placed a particular card into a particular category.
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cards grouped: 'not my responsibility'

year 1 student designers
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The cards that were grouped in the ‘not my responsibility’ category. New cards were created
in this category: ‘technology’ (by st3_p5), and ‘resources’ (by st3_p11).
Cards grouped: 'maybe my responsibility'

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The cards that were grouped in the ‘maybe my responsibility’ category/ Two new cards were
created in this category: ‘politics’ (st3_p6) and ‘market’ (st3_p11).
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Cards grouped: 'definitely my responsibility'

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The cards that were grouped in not my responsibility by all participants. Seven new cards
were created in this category: ‘environment’ (st3_p1), ‘happiness’ (st3_p2), ‘environmentally
friendly’ (st3_p6), ‘aesthetics’ and ‘nature’ (st3_p7), ‘ideas’ (st3_p11), and ‘environment’
(st3_p12).
Figure 48: Study 3: Graphical representations of the cards grouped into the three categories in sort 2, step (i).
The data indicated that most of the student participants felt that the cards ‘gun design’ and ‘9/11’
were something that they were not responsible for. The responses to ‘gun design’ not being their
responsibility was reasoned and justified by the participants in different ways. One participant
placed it in the ‘not my responsibility’ category based on the fact that: ‘I won’t do that’ (st3_p2).
Another participant put it there because they ‘never think about this’ (st3_p4). Another one
suggested: ‘I hope it is there [in the not my responsibility category]’ (st3_p9). One participant
offered a bit more of an insight into their justification of why gun design was not their
responsibility and based the positioning of the card on the fact that: ‘I don’t think in Hong Kong
you can design guns for any kind of people’ (st_p11), basing the reasoning of placing this card on
the particularities of a geographical location.
There were differences between participants for why they placed the ‘9/11’ card in the ‘not
my responsibility’ category. One participant said: ‘although the building of 9/11 is architectural
design, I think that no one would think of a plane crashing into the building, right? So, it would be
not my responsibility, I’m not a terrorist’ (st3_p2). This is a further illustration of how the student
participants interpreted the cards very literally. This card was not incorporated in the pack as a
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way of getting designers to accept responsibility for the event. The objective of this card was
simply to generate discussion about ethics and design. As stated in the work of Kemper (2004), in
the literature review, the 9/11 event involves design and the manipulation of use. It is interesting
that the participant seemed a little defensive in suggesting ‘I’m not a terrorist’. Student
participants appeared to struggle with the abstract and metaphorical element that the cards were
aiming to generate.
One participant (st3_p11) suggested that 9/11 was not their responsibility because the
incident was related to: ‘political aspects so I don’t think this is really related to design’. Another
participant (st3_p13) did not discuss 9/11 in relation to anything, simply suggesting: ‘this is
totally none of my business’. Another participant (st3_p4) separated themselves on grounds of
Nationality, rather than anything to do with design: ‘if I’m American it should be mine, but I’m
not’. Another participant commented: ‘I don’t think it’s my responsibility because what is around
me in my society, or everyday, is not related’ (st3_p6). These participants suggest that active
responsibility may be accepted based on local or global contexts. In the literature, Szenasy raised
the importance of the interconnected world. However, these participants demonstrate that not all
students hold this view.
It is important to not only discuss and debate design responsibilities, but to understand the
subtle differences and ideas that designers have about them. Understanding designers’ perceptions
in this way can help to understand why certain responsibilities are rejected or accepted by the
designer.
The cards which were most commonly placed in the grey area of ‘maybe my responsibility’
were those of, ‘standards’, ‘9/11’, and ‘business’. Participant 1 (st3_p1) suggested: ‘even if you’re a
designer you cannot do whatever you want you have to follow some kind of standards and rules’
this participant suggested that these standards and rules may come from the ‘the boss’ or the
‘company’ or design standards; ‘you cannot make a chair which cannot be sat on’. This participant
was making the point that designers may want to design a product (in this case a chair) that
breaks the mould of traditional chairs by looking different, but that it still has to meet the function
of a chair (and the standards that are involved in furniture design). They are not free of
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constraints. Participant 13 (st3_p13) discussed the outside influences of standards by suggesting:
‘society and standards, they are related, I think, because when people design things they need to
respond to society and the society may have some standard … we should [design] according to
this rule, the standard of design’. Participant 10 (st3_p10) suggested that standards relate to
‘many people … not only [exclusively to] the designer’. Participant 6 (st3_p6) suggests that there
can be problems in trying to match the standards of the company with that of a client, it’s ‘quite
difficult to do the standards that match both sides’. This was echoed by participant 2 (st3_p2) in
relation to design stakeholders; ‘designs are always done with concepts and standards, of course,
but standards sometimes are done by engineers’. This seems to suggest that there are cut off
points for designers, where, standards, take over responsibility. For example, the standards that
relate to engineering or manufacturing, rather than a responsibility which the designer should
concern themselves with.
When placing the ‘9/11’ card in the ‘maybe my responsibility’ category, one participant
(st3_p3) suggested that 9/11 maybe their responsibility if they are involved specifically with
designs that relate to that event. In contrast to the student participants who did not associate
design with interconnectedness with the bigger picture, this participant was at a stage where they
were aware of the situation, but this participant was unwilling to acknowledge responsibility,
unless the specific design had a direct link to those affected by 9/11. This may demonstrate early
stages of development, starting to think outside the local space, but not fully appreciating the
global aspects of product design.
Another participant (st3_p5) placing the card in the ‘maybe my responsibility’ category
explained the role that design could play: ‘I think the detector at the airport on the security …
[and] our planes should be improved more to prevent this horrible attack [from happening
again]’. Participant 9 (st3_p9) had similar thoughts and suggested: ‘I would like to create
something that won’t let some people use it as a tool to do something like this again’. It was
unclear what the ‘it’ was that the participant was referring to, but both the participants
approached the idea of 9/11 by discussing preventive ethics and proactive precautions to these
types of world problems. However, another participant countered this approach by categorising
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the ‘9/11’ card with the accident card, suggesting that: ‘some accidents we can’t help’ (st3_p12).
This participant seemed to construct 9/11 as an accident, whereas, the other two participants
expressed it as an issue that could potentially be avoided or changed.
Ideas about participant’s responsibility towards business varied. Some approached the issue
by suggesting that design and business were almost two separate entities. One participant
(st3_p2) explained how ‘design is not really related to business’ because design is ‘just for people’.
When asked for an example of such a design, this participant suggested a ‘wheelchair’ emphasising
the helpful aspect of design. Other students expressed a passion for designing products that are
not driven by profits: ‘I just want to design something [with benefits] and I’m not talking about
benefits of money’ (st3_p5) and for this reason chose to place the ‘business’ card in the ‘maybe my
responsibility’ category. The idea that design should not be driven by profit was common.
Participant 12 (st3_p12) suggested: ‘the designer is not in it to gain any profits’, when asked to
explain this further they replied: ‘I think a boss wants the designer to help sell, to gain some
profits, but this is not our main responsibility’. This participant felt that their responsibility was
more focused towards helping needs, rather than helping profits. Perhaps this is an indication of
the idealistic viewpoints first year undergraduate design students hold. It also demonstrates that
design is perceived as a stand alone entity, rather than design in the context of business, which it
largely operates in.
Other participants made a connection with business and design based on the fact that they:
‘will deal with the customer so they sort of link with the business’ (st3_p6). One participant
(st3_p7) simply suggested that it was ‘about marketing’ and did not expand on this. Another
participant (st3_p10) demonstrated a greater understanding of the connection between design and
business and explained: ‘I think a designer’s job is to create something new and good for people,
maybe in the commercial society, it must relate to the business, but a designer should concentrate
more on the design work’.
The card which was most commonly placed in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category
was the card, ‘user’, indeed this was felt ‘obvious’. One participant (st3_p11) emphasised this: ‘so
this is obvious, because we need to user spec design, if you don’t know the user, how can you
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design the special type of product for them?’ This participant felt that it was important to have a
concise understanding of the people who will use your designs. Other participants also talked
about the importance of responsibility to the user: ‘user, definitely because this is our target, right,
to serve the user’ (st3_p2), ‘well I put the user under this category (definitely my responsibility)
because I think they are my target’ (st3_p7). Other student participants commented the
importance of designing for the people who will buy and use the design. One participant (st3_p12)
commented that: ‘because they are our buyers … we have to be concerned about them’. The use of
the phrase ‘we have’, suggests there is a type of designer duty to think about the user during
design. Other participants supported this position: ‘I design something for people to use, so user is
definitely in my concern when I’m doing design’ (st3_p9), ‘user is what we must consider when we
are designing so it’s very important’ (st3_p1), ‘the user is the one who will use my product’
(st3_p10), ‘design [is] related to the user’ (st3_p13).
Other participants talked about their responsibilities towards the user in terms of the client.
For example one participant (st3_p3) suggested: ‘[the] end user, this is my responsibility, [to]
explain why I designed this to the client’. Participant 5 (st3_p5) discussed responsibilities to users
in terms of needs: ‘it’s just about users needs, it is the need to talk about, do we need the product?’
This participant went on to suggest that although users have particular needs, there are also
questions about whether a product is actually needed. This was echoed by participant 6 (st3_p6): ‘I
have to understand what they need … why they need to use the products, if you know that you
will design a good thing for the user’. Another participant 8 (st3_p8) said: ‘users are definitely my
responsibility because design is going to fulfil the users’ needs’.
The Study 3 participants were given the opportunity to create new word cards and they
generated ten of these. The cards were then placed under one of the three categories. Table 22
shows the cards that were created.
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Table 22: New cards created by Study 3 participants.
Participant New card created Placed in category

St3_p1 Environment Definitely
St3_p2 Happiness Definitely
St3_p5 Technology Not
St3_p6 Politics Maybe
St3_p7 Aesthetics Definitely
St3_p7 Nature Definitely
St3_p11 Resources Not
St3_p11 Market Maybe
St3_p11 Ideas Definitely
St3_p12 Environment Definitely
The new cards suggested a range of issues that had perhaps not been covered by the existing
word cards in the card set. However, once they had created cards they did not automatically adopt
that card as something they should be responsible for. The new cards of ‘technology’, ‘politics’,
‘resources’, and ‘market’ were not placed in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category. It was
interesting to see the participants take the time to generate cards then to place them in the ‘not
my responsibility’ and the ‘maybe my responsibility’ categories. Perhaps students felt that they
were under pressure to be responsible for these issues, but that they did not want to be held
responsible for such issues?
6.3.3. Card Sorting – step (ii)
During sort 2, step (ii) the participants had to prioritise the cards. Figure 49, illustrates the
selections made.
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Figure 49: Card sorting, step (ii) - Selecting five cards and prioritising them.
Figure 49 shows that the most popular card selected as the number one responsibility was card 5;
‘future’. Four of the thirteen students placed the future as their number one responsibility. The
card ‘future’ is interesting because it is something which is not tangible, and cannot be predicted.
However, there seemed to be an appreciation that decisions ‘now’ can affect the future.
The participants had different reasons for selecting the ‘future’ card as their most valued
responsibility. Participant 2 (st3_p2) said: ‘design is about the future not the past’ and went on to
explain that the ‘future is in our hands so it’s the most important thing’ explaining how design
brings change, and that change must be linked to happiness because this is what this participant
wants as a result of their design. Participant 4 (st3_p4) suggested that future and intentions were
connected and formed their most important responsibility: ‘my intentions, my awareness of
everything around me [now and in the future] … that will decide my pattern of thinking’.
Participant 5 (st3_p5) suggested that the future takes the top spot: ‘because everything we design
[will] affect the future, so I think it’s the most important thing … we have to be concerned about
the future society.’ Participant 9 (st3_p9) said: ‘all of them are important to me, but ... this one
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(card5 – future), as I’ve said earlier on … [designing] something that is not going to be a waste
[is important] because you can design trends, design for obsolesce - design things to throw away.
I think there’s already enough rubbish in the world I don’t want to create more of that, but
actually that’s a clash with the business one so that’s a contradiction, a battle between these two
(future 5 and business 34)’. This participant demonstrated cognitive dissonance (of wanting to
reduce waste, but knowing that design for profit may conflict with that belief).
6.3.4. Card sorting – step (iii)
During Sort 2, step (iii) the students were asked to use their top five priorities as headings and to
assign the image cards to them, while expanding on their interpretations of the cards and design
responsibilities. A number of the image cards were not grouped to the headings, refer to Table 23.
Table 23: Study 3 - Image cards not grouped.
Participant Code Cards no. (not grouped)

St3_p1 12, 31
St3_p3 17, 22, 31, 32
St3_p4 19
St3_p5 17, 35, 36
St3_p8 19, 25, 27
St3_p9 19, 35
St3_p13 19, 24, 36
There were some patterns amongst the Study 3 dataset. The most common image card not to be
placed by these participants was card 19. Four participants did not unite this card with any of their
headings. Cards 17, 31, 35, and 36 were also not placed by some participants. This could be
interpreted as a development issue. The first year student designers were limited in their
experience. Perhaps these cards lent themselves better to the experiences of practising designers
and that is why the first year students did not associate these image cards with the word cards.
There were some patterns among the cards that were placed. Four students selected the
‘future’ card as their most important responsibility. Common associations were made between
‘future’ and image cards 8, 20, 22, and 25.
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Table 24: Common image cards that were associated with the responsibility to the 'future'
Card 8 Card 20 Card 22 Card 25
Card 8 was associated with the future because of the connection of people and the future: ‘people
are the future’ (st3_ p5). Another participant hoped that the future would offer a: ‘balance for the
poor and the rich’ (st3_ p9).
Card 20 was associated with acknowledgements of designers’ behaviour, and concerns and
responsibility to not create waste for the future generations: ‘we generate rubbish’ (st3_p2),
‘people make a lot of this rubbish, so just think of the future, just not keep going like this, it’s hard
to change’ (st3_p5), ‘this is a reminder for me to not do something like this’ (st3_p9)
Card 22 was linked with time and the process of thinking. One participant suggested ‘time is
money’ (st3_p2). Another said: ‘I think this one is a system of thinking, it’s like this one rotates
[and] the other will follow’ (st3_p4).
Card 25 was associated with nature’s role and importance in the world and how that is
important for the future: ‘I hope that [in] the future we still get to see these things (green spaces)’
(st3_p9). One participant reflected on Pixar’s film, WALL-E: ‘in my opinion nature is our
beginning and it’s our end … I’m really scared [that] some day we really won’t have anything of
nature [left]. I mean I love the idea of the movie WALL-E’ (st3_p4).
6.4. Discussion
This study further illuminated designers’ concepts of responsibility. There were two themes that
were unique to this dataset. The first was what impact design education does, or should have, on
its students. Secondly, the dataset indicated that some students perceived responsibilities
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differentially depending on the reputation the designer has acquired. These two themes were
intertwined with the broader concepts of the other themes, consistent with studies 1 and 2:
The Transference of Responsibility
What designers say and what they do (In theory/In practice)
Hard and Soft Standards
Internal and External influences on responsibility
Implicit and Explicit Ethics
Wants and Needs
6.4.1. The impact of design education
The impact of design education themes involved how education had influenced and shaped the
students as designers. The first year undergraduate students were at the beginning of the degree
process, but the dataset suggested that even at this early stage, design education was moulding
students ideas and perceptions of responsibility. The students tended to discuss responsibility in
relation to designing for users and this element had played a significant role in their design
education up to this point.
The students ideas of their responsibilities were often justified by the projects that they had
worked on during their design education. In this study the students tended to focus on products
which they felt offered some kind of benefit to the user. One participant (st3_p10) described their
work on a project which included designing for wheelchair users. The product was a bag which
attached to the wheelchair and improved the problems wheelchair users faced when trying to
access their belongings. Another participant (st3_p2) provided a different take on helping the user
by talking about the happiness of the user. This participant discussed products designed for the
workspace. In Hong Kong, there are many open plan offices and this student was interested in
keeping the user happy by protecting their privacy from other people. The solution designed by
this student included four toys: (1) a message pigeon which would pass on messages to the user,
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(2) a cup and cup mat which is activated by heat to display hidden messages, (3) a toy with a
hidden surveillance camera, and (4) a UV light box and invisible pen combo for keeping your
schedule private. The student explained that in open plan offices the workers may be involved in
office politics and that these toys would make people happier when they were working. Both
examples provide an illustration of a sense of responsibility for designing for two very different
user groups. The design of novelty products contrasts with the UK graduating students who were
very focused on not generating frivolous products. Perhaps on the surface there were no stark
contrasts between students studying in the UK and Hong Kong, but the Asia markets are well-
known for novelty products and these students seemed to have no problem with these types of
products. Although both design groups were focused on designing for users they were doing so in
slightly different ways – one perhaps more playful, the other more serious.
6.4.2. When will I be famous?
There was evidence in the data that some students perceive that their responsibilities and amount
of project control are determined by reputation, an issue touched on in ‘the transference of
responsibility’. Fame may bring with it certain levels of control over situations which may not be
possible as a regular designer. This was evidenced in the Philippe Starck reality TV show; he was
portrayed as a designer who puts emphasis on design being much more than a product. In the
show, Starck conveys the message of design being something deeply engaged with society.
Perhaps on reflection the first year students in this study had a point. As a ‘famous’ designer,
people listen to the messages that designers have to tell. Would a less famous designer have
achieved a programme on a prime time TV viewing slot? Celebrity culture surrounds us and with
that status, perhaps ‘famous’ designers are capable of having a greater influence and thus bear a
greater responsibility to the world of design? John Heskett25 in response to a seminar talk at the
PolyU suggested that UK designers seem to have a celebrity view of design. He talked as if design
25
Seminar: ‘Connecting Design, Cultures, Artefacts and Heritage’ at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, December
2008.
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to UK students was a new form of Rock & Roll. It appeared to be a view of design which he did
not support. However, despite his large influence at the School of Design at the PolyU, this view
of design seems to be adopted by their first year students. This was emphasised with the
discussion of design masters and the aspiration of the students to achieve such a status. There was
the impression that famous designers have more freedom: ‘[a] designer who’s very famous …
does whatever he likes or he wants’ (st3_p5).
6.4.3. Transference of responsibility
Transference of responsibility occurs when responsibilities change from one party to another
during designing. For example from the designer to the user, to the engineer, or to the client.
This theme attempted to identify these boundary points.
As stated previously, the Study 1 participants (graduating students) were relatively easy to
classify into groups. The Study 2 participants proved more difficult. They often painted a more
complex and intertwined picture of responsibility and the boundary points of responsibility
between the designer and other stakeholders. If we readdress the issue of development here, then,
it would be logical to suspect that the Study 3 participants, the first year students, would either
have no real concepts about the transference of responsibility, or that they would be even easier to
classify than the graduating students.
Transference points were not clearly defined in this dataset. The students had little
experience of working with real clients, though there did seem to be some boundary points
established based on two factors: (1) the location of where an incident happens, and (2) the success
of the designer. The first year students interviewed tended to distance themselves from things
that were not relevant to their immediate location. They tended to adopt a ‘local’ (or micro)
approach to design responsibility. The other, interesting boundary point for responsibility arose
from the fact that as designers who are not famous, their responsibility for changing the world or
peoples views of design would be better accomplished by a more ‘famous designer’. Suggesting
that when/if they reach such a status, then, perhaps their responsibilities would change. One
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student suggested ‘maybe if I get famous or I get to know ... politicians then you can tell them
how you feel your design can help the world or improve something’ (st3_p6).
6.4.4. What designers say and what they do
The theme of what designers say and what they actually do focused on what ought to be done ‘in
theory’, but what actually happens ‘in practice’.
The two previous studies revealed the trade-off nature of design; in theory the designer
should do ‘x’, but in practice ‘y’ is adopted. Several examples were noted. The first year students
did not seem to generate such conflicting issues.
Perhaps the lack of experiences in design, and the limited design education had not yet set
in motion the conflicts which graduating students and practising designers later face. This is not
to say that the first years were not concerned with particular issues. Of course, they were. They
verbalised their concerns on global warming, landfill, material choices, universal design, etc. It
was just that these did not appear to conflict with any more practical aspects of design. In a sense
the first year students still had their idealism untainted by more ‘real-world’ issues.
6.4.5. Hard and soft standards in design
The participants in this study were very vague when discussing standards. For example,
participant 1 said: ‘even if you’re a designer you cannot do whatever you want you have to follow
some kind of standards and rules’. When asked for examples of such rules this participant
suggested that ‘there are some standards from your boss or from your company or something if
you want to sell … you cannot make a chair which cannot be sat on, so there’s some standards’
(st3_p1). There was an appreciation that hard standards exist in the world of design. However,
responses were very broad and not specific to a particular legislation or code. Another participant
commented: ‘I think design should follow some standards, some kind of EU or GB. In Europe
there is some kind of law called EU something, and in China there’s something. I know there’s a
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book of standards or the law guide of some kind’ (st3_p5). This participant was aware that
particular standards are in place for specific products: ‘I think that there’s a standard for making
cell phone parts’ (st3_p5). Another participant provided a broad, sweeping statement regarding
standards: ‘we have to follow some standards when we design, such as the thickness of the plastics
or some safety standards’ (st3_p3). The dataset certainly revealed an appreciation of, but also a
distinct lack of specific knowledge of the hard standards which are required within product design.
Other participants felt that ‘standards’ would be something to be thought of later in the
process of design. One participant suggested: ‘I think standards are not the priority at the design
phase (which this participant defined as the brainstorming and idea generation aspect of design),
during the production phase maybe we have to follow more of the standards … I think if there are
a lot of standards along the way, the design will not be really creative or innovative’ (st3_p9). This
participant seemed to be worried that thinking about standards early in the process of product
design may stifle creativity or that ideas may be disregarded because they conflict with hard
standards. Another participant who appeared to support the idea of delaying thinking about
standards suggested that standards are ‘sometimes done by engineers’ (st3_p2). Participant 11
also suggested that standards were ‘not only the aspect of the designer’ (st3_p11).
The participants did seem to struggle to identify clearly the hard standards that applied to
their discipline. They appeared to be much more composed when discussing soft standards. One
participant suggested that instead of standards we should ‘observe what we want and [make]
changes to the traditional rules’ (st3_p10). This participant later suggested that it was the
requirements of society which are important. There are many hard standards such as laws and
legislation which are enforced to benefit the society, but this participant wasn’t focused on those,
instead they were more interested in the requirements of the society. In a fast changing world,
these may change rapidly and this participant’s assertion that ‘we should not design something
that we want, but [that does] not [meet] the standard of the society (st3_p10) suggested a more
responsible approach to product design. So although students had little knowledge of hard
standards they seemed largely driven by their personal ethical beliefs, guided by their own ‘moral
compass’.
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6.4.6. Internal and external influences on responsibility
Figure 6 illustrates the range of internal and external influences acting on the designer.
Figure 50: Internal and external influences on first year design students. The responsibilities in the internal
section are those closest to the designer.
The first year design students faced broadly similar internal and external influences on their
responsibilities as the practising designers of Study 2. However, the context of the university
environment often reduces the impact of external responsibilities. If a product is designed within
the context of academia, it is not often developed into a final product. As a result standards,
legislation, and government policy may not have such a strong influence or be addressed as they
would be in design practice. The internal influences on the designer also varied from the previous
studies. University projects do not always involve designing for clients and the students do not
work within a business environment. However, the university does set standards that need to be
adhered to. These are explained in university guidelines, assignment briefs, and so on. These
procedures and the culture of the university have an influence on the student designers and their
subsequent behaviour in a design process.
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6.4.7. Implicit and explicit ethics
The study of implicit and explicit ethics involved looking at the data to see if there was evidence of
particular ethical viewpoints – deontological, consequential or a more social, or environment
ethics.
The student participants were very concerned with the well-being of people. They were
passionate about protecting and helping both society as a whole and users. They seemed to
demonstrate a humanitarian approach to ethics. The students openly expressed their opinion that
design and their role should involve helping others. One participant suggested: ‘we have to
consider the environment and everything … your product must have a big benefit for the society’
(st3_p1). This participant discussed the events of 9/11 in terms of what the designer could do to
help: ‘during 9/11 there were a lot of things being destroyed and hurt so I think as a designer we
can do something to make a change or do something to help.’ Broad suggestions included designs
which would help with ‘daily supplies’ and ‘designing something which can help them forget their
sadness’ (st3_p1). The discussion of needs from this student also focused on the idea of helping
others: ‘sometimes we have to help those people who need a solution’ (st3_p1). Other participants
demonstrated sincere approaches to helping others: ‘if there’s a problem happening in our society I
think that design is [a] very effective path to help society’ (st3_p11). The data revealed that there
was also a sense of wanting to better oneself, acquiring ‘knowledge to change our self to become
better (st3_p2). Other participants thought that the saying ‘practise makes perfect’ was an idea
that they believed in; the ‘more practise we have, the better [the] design’ (st3_p6), ‘the designer
should practise and practise and keep on practising to enable better work’ (st3_p8).
One student suggested that ‘a good design may create a better future’ (st3_p3). Another
participant discussed causal effects in another way, suggesting that designing products to make
the ‘environment better’ results in benefits for society, a consequential view (st3_p13). One
participant made the point that traditional causal links between design and profit may need to be
reconsidered suggesting that ‘if want a better future we cannot always be concerned about money,
we have to neglect this’ (st3_p12).
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Although the first year students lacked industrial experience, their concepts of responsibility
appeared to be well developed. They were quite explicit about the need to help others. It was
suggested earlier in this chapter that students with less knowledge of product design may rely
implicitly on their ‘moral compass’ to guide their decisions and although the students were very
caring and expressed a responsible attitude, they did talk in broad terms. They had a very
ideological idea of how things should be, but their lack of design knowledge meant that they found
it difficult to express how the role of design could provide the benefits for bettering society which
they were advocating.
6.4.8. Wants and needs
Some of the first year students made a strong connection between wants and needs suggesting
that the two were similar. Participant 2 suggested that needs are ‘definitely similar to wants, we
design because people need and people want’ (st3_p2). Another participant also made a link
between the two; ‘most of the time you have to satisfy your boss or your client’s wants, when
you’re designing your own product you’re going to just do whatever you want; because product
design is about solving others’ problems so and we have to meet their wants or needs’ (st3_p1).
This student felt that an understanding of wants and needs was required for problem solving to
take place in design. Participant 7 suggested that wants ‘are the same as the needs’ (st3_p7).
Another participant fluidly discussed the overlapping relationship between the two; ‘design is not
doing what I want, we have to fulfil human needs and [give] respect to peoples’ taste, their needs,
and the market trends’ (st3_p8).
The discussion of what defines a want or a need was perceived differently by the different
students. Some of them seemed to use the two terms interchangeably, a little like the discussion
about the ethics terminology in the literature review. Others made clearer definitions between the
two. One student suggested that ‘needs are more important than wants, wants are something like
desires, [something] not necessary to be solved’ (st3_p3). There was also evidence for the idea of
‘wants’ being a responsibility at the level of the designer or the design company: ‘It depends, I’m
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just a designer or I’m a design master? … a designer who’s very famous does whatever he likes or
he wants’ (st3_p5). Another student suggested that wants depend on what ‘the company wants, so
I can’t take the lead on what I can design exactly’. This student suggested that needs are less
company focused and more user focused (st3_p6). One participant was concerned that they were
creating new wants: ‘sometimes [the] designer can create wants but sometimes you need to
follow what the customer wants’ This student was aware that wants can be created by the
designer. The student suggested a similar concept for needs. The discussion presented designers
perceptions of which stakeholders needs and wants they have a responsibility to meet. It also
highlighted the battle of the terminology and which of these are identified as valuable, and need
addressing in the design process.
6.5. Summary
The study 3 data offered some interesting insights into first year design students’ perceptions
about responsibility in product design. The study involved a group with very little experience of
working in industry. Therefore, their ideas had been largely shaped by earlier education and the
short few months they had studied product design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. It
was interesting to conduct a study with students who were still being formed by education and life
experiences. The participants in this study were youthful but seemed to have a good grasp of
design responsibility and had no problem with the experimental task. They were able to talk about
the idea of responsibility and they were decisive in the choices they made. They appeared to have a
strong sense of empathy for users and society.
The next chapter will compare all the studies and look at the wider themes emerging in
relation to the development of responsibility.
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Phase three: Combining the three studies to provide an insight
into designers’ perceptions of responsibility in product design
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7. Combining the studies; a coming together of the discussions
7. Combining the studies; a coming together of the
discussions
The aim of this chapter is to provide an overall picture of the research results. These are presented
in two distinct sections. The first section of this chapter will focus on the ‘bookends’ of the
research; that is the point of entering design education (first year students) and the point of
practising product design (design practitioners). One reason for the focus between these points is
the variation of experience. Another is the fact that both of these study group participants (from
studies 2 and 3) were interviewed using the card sorting experiments. The discussion will
compare and contrast the findings of these two studies, offering comparisons in research design.
The second section involves a broader appreciation of the datasets and the discussion incorporates
the concept of development in relation to the three snapshots of experience.
The final section of this chapter will critically reflect on the methodology that was used in
this thesis and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of its design and use in this field of
research.
7.1. Comparing studies 2 and 3
This section will illustrate some of the similar and contrasting findings across studies 2 and 3.
Studies 2 and 3 consisted of the two ends of the scale in terms of design experience in this
research. Study 3 involved first year undergraduate design students; those at the first point of
entry into university design education. At the other end of the scale were practising designers;
those who had gained their university qualifications and had gone on to practise product design.
The use of the same methodology with these two sets of participants was interesting because the
groups were so very different in terms of experience. Therefore, it is relevant to directly compare
their triad and card groupings. In doing so, this section will highlight the similarities and
differences between these two groups approaches towards responsibility in product design.
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7.1.1. Discussion of triad sorts
There were some distinct differences between the participants in Study 2 and Study 3; it was much
more difficult to get the first year students (study 3 participants) to discuss similarities and
differences between the cards. Instead they were much keener on delivering the constructs and
contrasts. They lacked detail when composing these, which might imply that they are still
‘constructing’ their world views and that their perspectives are still being developed. The
practising designers (study 2 participants), on the other hand, talked a lot and composed ideas as
they were talking, but struggled to define constructs and contrasts. They often offered convoluted
constructs and contrasts and could not combine ideas into one simple group name. The data
indicated that the participants drew on various experiences and meshed these together. However,
because of vast and differing experiences it was often difficult to allocate one word to describe the
construct or contrast. Instead the participants grappled with a variety of ideas.
Aside from there being differences between the way the participants constructed their views
during the construct and contrast task, there were also differences between the way the two sets of
study participants grouped and constructed their worlds. Refer to Figure 51.
_________________________________________________ _________________________________________________
experienced designers year 1 student designers experienced designers year 1 student designers
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experienced designers year 1 student designers experienced designers year 1 student designers
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Figure 51: Triad sets - Comparing Study 2 and Study 3 triad groupings.
When comparing the results across the two studies there were three triad sets which stood out;
(1) Triad set 1
(2) Triad set 3
(3) Triad set 4
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These sets were interesting because of the inconsistencies across the datasets. None of the Study 2
participants, the practising designers, grouped cards 20 and 35 (in triad set 1). In contrast, two of
the Study 3 participants made a connection between these cards.
Table 25: Study 3: Triad set 1 - construct and contrasts (cards 20 and 35).
Participant code Card Triads Construct Contrast

St3_p2 20, 30, 35 Taste of songs Bitter
St3_p7 20, 30, 35 Music Silence
Participant 2 (st3_p2) grouped these two cards because the many cans in card 20 were seen as
symbolic of the different ‘categories and songs’ on an iPod. The reason these two were different to
the third was because the third (card 30) was perceived as ‘so technical’.
Participant 7 (st3_p7) also made a connection between the ‘songs in iPod [and the] colour
and style [portrayed in card 20]’. They explained that the ‘[cans] can be the songs in the iPod’.
Card 30 was deemed ‘too technical and boring’; this is why it was separated from cards 20 and 35.
The constructions of ideas about the grouped cards were very similar between these two student
participants. This construction of the cards was only generated by two participants in Study 3.
There was no connection of this kind made by the practising designers. Perhaps this construction
demonstrates the rawness and untarnished creativity of minds that are new to design. Their
unfamiliarity with design experiences and the internal and external constraints which designers
work within (as discussed in Chapter 2 when focusing on the work of Brian Lawson) may be one
reason for this.
During triad set 3, none of the student participants made a connection between cards 12 and
19. In contrast, four of the practising designers in Study 2 did. Their results can be found in Table
26.

St2_p1 10, 12, 19 Measuring up and Consumerism
strategy
St2_p 2 10, 12, 19 Physical/ metal tests Consumer society
St2_p4 10, 12, 19 Wooden, craft based Mass production,
mechanisation
St2_p 7 10, 12, 19 Leisure Functional or working
items
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The reason why practising designers were able to make associations, but the student designers did
not is unclear. Perhaps it was an experience issue, that is, it was more difficult for the students to
find a link between cards 12 and 19. However, it may have simply been that there was a stronger
connection between a different pair of cards in the triad set. However, later during the card
sorting analysis (sort 2, step (iii)) it was evident that image card 19 was not grouped by a number
of the student designers. Therefore, they may have struggled with this image. The grouping of the
image cards will be discussed in more detail in section 7.1.2 (p201).
In triad set 4 none of the Study 2 participants grouped cards 22 and 33. In Study 3 the
pairing of cards 22 and 33 was the most popular for that triad set. Many of the design students
made the association between cards 22 and 33 based on what they saw in the picture. See Table 27
for constructs and contrasts developed by the first year students.

St3_p1 6, 22, 33 Metallic/ metal Don’t know
St3_p5 6, 22, 33 Metal Plants
St3_p8 6, 22, 33 Complicated Easy
St3_p9 6, 22, 33 Cycle Flow
St3_p11 6, 22, 33 Grey colour Not functional
St3_p12 6, 22, 33 Systematic Break through
St3_p13 6, 22, 33 Circle Rectangle or Triangle
The data suggests that the connection between cards 22 and 33 was very card specific. When
explaining the similarities between the cards the students made associations, such as; ‘lot of metal’,
‘circle metal’, ‘colourful element similar – circle shape’, ‘round and systematic’, ‘same structure –
many circles together’, ‘circular things’ and ‘metal colour’. Often the likenesses between these two
cards were based on the similarities between the shape and the colour used in the image card.
These similarities were superficial, relating to a description of what was seen on the card, rather
than an insight into the construct the card generated. In this triad set the cards were taken very
literally and the student designers’ ability to apply abstract thinking was weak. It may be that the
students do not have a honed ability to think outside the box. The ability to think in abstract and
in metaphorical terms may be a skill that develops over time and with experience. Downing (1992,
p314) in discussing card sorting and architecture suggested; ‘Without memory, the desire to
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design future places may not even exist. It seems impossible to imagine a designer at work with
no reference to past experience.’ This might have been why the students struggled more than the
practicing designers; they had fewer design, and life, experiences to draw on. Another explanation
may be that these images were so far removed from their worlds that they were unable to make
connections in the context of their everyday procedures. However, it may be, as they grow and
develop their design abilities and skills, these images represent more than the printed picture; that
instead of gravitating towards describing the cards, their development enables the designers to
discuss issues that the cards may represent.
The reason that some of these triad sets lack particular groupings by certain participants is
unclear. General observations of the data suggest the first year design students interpret the
imagery very literally. The experienced practising designers tend to have a more abstract
approach to the cards. The ability to work beyond what is on the card may be something that
develops as designers become more experienced. As more projects are worked on so the ability to
think more creatively, and not be constrained to the image on the card, was evidenced. However,
during the analysis of card triad set 3 the data suggested that the practising designers struggled
to explain and articulate their groupings. This was unusual, since with other triad sets the
evidence of unarticulated verbalisation of card groupings was less prominent.
During the triad sorts, the student participants (in Study 3) tended to offer single words or
short sentences; these words functioned as markers in their thought process as they worked
towards developing constructs and contrasts. They did not offer well articulated or explanatory
sentences, as manifested by the practising designers. Previously in this thesis it was highlighted
that Gorman (2001, p22) had suggested that experts often have trouble articulating how they
make decisions because their knowledge is tacit and intuitive. However, the procedure of triad
sorts appears to have demonstrated that this method, using images, can induce free flowing and
well articulated discussions which demonstrates knowledge of how designers construct their
worlds.
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7.1.2. Discussion of card sorts
In previous chapters the quantitative data presented has been useful to reveal how the participants
grouped their cards, or in some cases how cards were not grouped. The number of cards that were
not grouped by the Study 3 participants was a lot higher than those not grouped by the Study 2
participants. See Table 28.
Table 28: Word cards not grouped. Focusing on Study 2 and Study 3 results.
Participant Code Cards no. (not grouped) Participant Code Cards no. (not grouped)
St2_p5 15, 16 St3_p3 16
St3_p4 9, 16
St3_p7 7, 11, 9
St3_p8 16, 9, 23
St3_p9 2
St3_p11 7, 16, 9
St3_p12 9, 11, 16
St3_p13 7
The design students struggled with a number of cards, but they tended to have the most trouble
with card 16; ‘unintentional’ and card 9; ‘misuse’. There may have been some language issues
which led to these cards being a problem; these may have been unfamiliar terms. However, it is
more likely that these words may have caused difficulties because at this early stage in design
education students do not have a big picture of design. Although the students had attended
previous courses, they were only a few months into their degree course. The amount of topics
covered, during the few months from them starting the course, would have been limited. The
dataset indicated that the students were familiar with thinking about people because they had been
studying ‘design for people’, but issues such as misuse and thinking about unintentional situations,
actions, or outcomes, did not appear to have been introduced to them.
Figure 52 compares the cards that the participants placed in the three groups during sort 2,
step (i); not my responsibility, maybe my responsibility, and definitely my responsibility. This
figure compares the cards that were grouped in Study 2 with those grouped in Study 3.
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Cards grouped: 'not my responsibility'

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The cards that were grouped in not my responsibility by all participants – Study 2 and Study
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Cards grouped: 'maybe my responsibility'

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Cards grouped: 'definitely my responsibility'

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The cards that were grouped in not my responsibility by all participants – Study 2 and Study
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Figure 52: Comparing Study 2 and Study 3: Graphical representations of the cards grouped into the three
categories in sort 2, step (i).
There were some patterns which emerged when comparing the two sets of designers’ perceptions
of responsibility based on their classifications of cards. The focus initially starts with the cards
that were grouped under the heading ‘not my responsibility’. The highest number of cards in this
category were card 18; gun design, and card 26; 9/11. A number of experienced designers (7
practising participants) and first year students (5 student participants) placed the gun design as an
issue that they felt was not their responsibility. Patterns were similar for card 26; nine experienced
designers and five first year students perceived these broad issues not to be their responsibility.
The cards were broad issues which had been raised by graduating product designers as issues
where design played a role, but the majority of the participants interviewed in studies 2 and 3 felt
there was little connection between such issues and their responsibilities as a designer.
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Figure 53: Designers’ awareness of their design responsibility and the connection with global issues.
What does this tell us about active responsibility in design? Perhaps it indicates that graduate
students have an understanding of responsibility which extends to an appreciation of global issues
and the extended role of design within society. It is possible to suggest that the first year design
students lack the knowledge to see such connections between the micro and macro of design. In
contrast, the practising designers benefit from design education and extensive design experience
(as illustrated in Figure 53). Perhaps, their rejection of active responsibility is a result of their
years of practice. It could be that their experience of trying to balance and trade-off a number of
conflicting issues has led to them having to draw boundary lines. This may indicate that
practising designers would benefit from professional development. Not because they need
training, but because they may benefit from keeping up to date with design research and issues of
importance which are being addressed by design academics. In addition, practising designers’
requirements and input into design research could benefit design research and knowledge transfer.
Further discussion of the three studies and development will be discussed later in this chapter.
The cards that both sets of participants were unsure about and placed under the heading of
‘maybe my responsibility’ varied. The student participants displayed their uncertainty
predominately towards issues of standards, 9/11, and business. Whereas, the practising
participants appeared to have a greater sense of these responsibilities and placed them in the more
clearly defined classifications of ‘not my responsibility’ or ‘definitely my responsibility’. However,
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business appeared to be more of a grey area. Five of the experienced designers felt that this issue
was maybe their responsibility. There appeared to be a correlation between the classification of
business as a responsibility and the role the designer held within the company. Designers who
were at a higher level and bridged the role of manager and practising designer within companies
illustrated a greater desire to accept the responsibility for ‘business’. What is interesting is that
seven of the practising designers were unsure about their role to society. The practising
participants had between 1-27 years experience. Eight of the twelve designers interviewed had 5+
years of experience. One suggestion for this uncertainty for society is the fact that some designers
may lack training in current issues that surround design and the society. The literature review
indicated that design education is making efforts to educate students of such changes. However,
designers who have not recently graduated may be out of touch on some topics. Therefore,
training and professional development could be the key to keeping experienced designers
informed with the current trends in design research and education.
There was strong agreement among both groups of participants that the user belongs in the
‘definitely my responsibility’ classification. This may seem like an obvious observation to make.
After all, product design is user focused. This finding demonstrates that for students who are only
just starting their design education, or for those who have many years of experience, designing for
the user appears to be a norm. However, the dataset indicates that the level of responsibility
accepted for the user varies on a number of factors. These were discussed in the sections of the
studies which focused on transference of responsibility. Therefore, they will not be reiterated here,
but the point will be noted that there were constraints set on the levels of responsibility which the
participants were willing to acknowledge and accept. As previously discussed, designers had
different ideas regarding boundary points and where their responsibility for the user started and
ended.
Other issues that both sets of participants agreed on were their responsibilities for the
future, practice, intentions and needs. They also believed that they were responsible for the client.
However, there were more practising participants than student participants who made this
suggestion. This is to be expected due to the difference in constraints between practising

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designers and student designers. The experienced designers are familiar with dealing with clients
on a daily basis, whereas, the first year students had very little experience of this and were likely
to place the client here, because design education and practice, either implicitly or explicitly,
suggests that responsibilities to the client are the ‘norm’. Also, there are unwritten rules, which
are likely to be grounded in business ethics (and in engineering ethics) regarding the client as an
important aspect of the process. The student participants demonstrated a stronger display of
active responsibility towards the ‘society’. This may have been because of their educational focus
on ‘designing for people’ or it may be because they are still developing their ideas and are still
idealistic. Perhaps more experienced designers, such as the ones interviewed, have a more jaded
opinion. Experience and occurrences of cognitive dissonance may have changed their opinions to
be more realistic with respect to the world in which they operate. Figure 54 offers a representation
of how the growth of experience may affect the idealistic and sceptical viewpoints which may be
held. A more detailed discussion of development will be addressed later in this chapter.
Figure 54: A graphical representation of how views towards the world in which designers’ practise may change as
experience increases.
There is one further issue to discuss in relation to the cards in the ‘definitely my responsibility’
category, which is that there were very few student participants who accepted ‘gun design’ or
‘9/11’ as their responsibilities. The majority of students had placed these cards in the ‘maybe my
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responsibility’ category. However, the cards placed by the practising participants were more
equally distributed. Perhaps this indicates that the experienced designers had a more global
approach to design responsibility (even if they will not actively accept responsibility for some
global issues, as shown in Figure 53). Some of the first year students were very dismissive of gun
design and 9/11 based on geographical location or nationality. However, the literature review has
indicated that design operates on micro and macro levels (or local and global). Therefore, an
appreciation of both of these is required to truly understand responsibility. The first year students’
lack of the intertwined local and global issues again demonstrated their black and white approach
to design responsibility. This seems to deteriorate and give way to more shades of grey and higher
levels of consideration from different stakeholder’s perspectives as experience increases.
The Study 3 participants, like the Study 2 participants, were also given the opportunity to
create new word cards; by using the blank cards in the set. There were ten new cards generated.
The cards were then placed under one of the three categories. Table 29 illustrates the cards that
were created by both sets of participants and where they grouped them.
Table 29: New cards created - Comparing Study 2 and Study 3 results.
Participant New card Place in Participant New card Place in

Code created category Code created category
St2_p1 Transformation Definitely St3_p1 Environment Definitely
St2_p3 Deliberate Not St3_p2 Happiness Definitely
abuse
St2_p3 Fluke Not St3_p5 Technology Not
St2_p3 Mild abuse Definitely St3_p6 Politics Maybe
St2_p3 Predictable Definitely St3_p7 Aesthetics Definitely
abuse
St2_p7 Cost Definitely St3_p7 Nature Definitely
St2_p7 Schedule Definitely St3_p11 Resources Not
St2_p9 Ethics Definitely St3_p11 Market Maybe
St2_p9 Improve life Definitely St3_p11 Ideas Definitely
St2_p11 Environment Definitely St3_p12 Environment Definitely
The datasets implied a range of issues that had perhaps not been covered by the existing word
cards. There were some cards that repeated, or echoed similar ideas, across the two datasets; e.g.,
topics such as the environment. During this step of the data sort the study was interested in
focusing on the cards placed in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category as a way of funnelling
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issues that would then be traded off in the next step. However, it was also interesting to look at
the cards that the study participants had created and placed in the ‘not my responsibility’ category.
In Study 2, participant 3 (st2_p3) created cards that were very specific to a particular issue.
This participant (st2_p3) felt that the card ‘misuse’ did not do justice to the possibilities that the
word could construe, and therefore created four new cards that defined the participants
interpretation; (1) deliberate abuse, (2) fluke, (3) mild abuse, and (4) predictable abuse. Two cards
were judged to be outside the responsibility of the designer; ‘deliberate abuse’ and ‘fluke’.
Deliberate abuse was classified with no explanation. Fluke was explained as ‘some things that just
do occur and you just think God, I could not [have seen that]’. This definition indicated that
‘fluke’ represented something that was out of the control of the designer. With issues that the
participant did acknowledge as their design responsibilities, they explained that it was ‘very
important to have probed these things (mild abuse and predicable abuse) to be able to demonstrate
due diligence’. The dataset of the practising designers demonstrated more of an appreciation to
ensure that products do not cause harm to the user. This participant was very specific about the
importance of probing ‘mild abuse’ and ‘predictable abuse’ before the design is completed.
Therefore these issues were presented as part of the design process. Student participants did not
talk of misuse or the importance of addressing this in the design process. In contrast, the
graduating design students (in Study 1) provided informed discussion relating to misuse and
provided examples when prompted. However, they did not demonstrate that investigating ‘misuse’
(either intentional or unintentional) had been a responsibility which they had addressed in the
design processes of their products on display at the degree shows.
In the Study 3 data, participants 5 (st3_5) and 11 (st3_p11) created cards that were placed in
the ‘not my responsibility’ category. Participant 5 created the card ‘technology’, explaining ‘I
choose this word because [the] designer will use many kinds of technology based on [the] design
and most of [the] designs are based on some kind of technology, but … we cannot make [the
technology]… because it is not our place to do this, it is a job for a scientist … but that relates to
our job and our design very much, Technology’. This designer acknowledged that technology
impacts on design and the designer’s job, but did not accept that the technology was a
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responsibility of the designer. Instead, the onus was placed on scientists. Again, this demonstrates
that boundary points were not just common for the user or the product, but operated on various
levels and related to varying issues of responsibility.
Participant 11 (st3_p11), created the card ‘resources’, and explained ‘the resources of the
Earth are scarce and also different places [have] different resources [and] different prices. So a
designer in a certain space can only use the certain types of resources or certain kind of resources
[based on] price. Resources can determine designers work. For example in mainland China, in the
villages, it’s very poor so you cannot use precious metal … to build a bridge or a house. [Instead]
you can use the local resources like stone or bamboo stick.’ This participant explained that the
designer does not always have control over the place they work and the resources they are limited
too or restricted by. Therefore, this participant was suggesting that resources affect the design,
but the designer cannot always be responsible for the materials and resources they use in their
designs.
Both the practising and student designers had clear ideas about design responsibility.
However, the dataset illustrated that designers felt that some responsibilities are within their
control and others are out of their scope of control.
Study 3 showed that the majority of participants selected card 5; ‘future’ (see Figure 49), as
their most important design responsibility. This contrasted with the practising designers in Study
2. The dataset of the Study 2 participants highlighted that card 3; ‘user’ was the most frequently
regarded as their ‘most important’ design responsibility.
In Chapters 5 and 6, it was noted that looking at the cards that were not placed may be
interesting to investigate. During Sort 2, step (iii) a number of the image cards were not grouped
to the headings that the participants had previously defined. Table 30 identifies the cards from the
Study 3 dataset and compares them with the Study 2 data.
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Table 30: Image cards not grouped. Focusing on Study 2 and Study 3 results
Participant Code Cards no. (not grouped) Participant Code Cards no. (not grouped)
St2_p7 8 St3_p1 12, 31
St2_p8 8, 24 St3_p3 17, 22, 31, 32
St2_p12 25 St3_p4 19
St3_p5 17, 35, 36
St3_p8 19, 25, 27
St3_p9 19, 35
St3_p13 19, 24, 36
The most common image card not to be placed by the Study 3 participants was card 19. Four
participants did not group this card under any of their headings. Cards 17, 31, 35, and 36 were
also not placed by some participants. The Study 2 data highlighted card 8 to be the one that was
most commonly ‘not placed’. Perhaps the cards not placed generated problems for the participants.
The set of common cards not placed by each of the participant study sets is different. Therefore,
the decision not to place the cards perhaps relates to the experience level of the designers. If the
‘not placed cards’ were similar in both studies then it may have been an issue with the cards
selected in this methodology, but this was not the case. Therefore, this thesis speculates that the
development of perceptions of responsibility may have been the reason. The next section of this
chapter explores the concept of development across the three studies in this research.
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7.2. Development across three levels of design experience
In the previous section the issue of development across the three groups of designers studied has
been raised in relation to concepts of responsibility to global issues and attitudes towards
responsibility (this is where the designer may demonstrate an idealistic or a sceptical approach).
In this section the investigation into development will involve a broader discussion of the
three datasets. Refer to Table 31 for a summary.
Table 31: Summary of the three study datasets
Study Primary Amount Data Format Location No. of

Data Format (output) participants
Study 1 Audio 11 hours Transcripts UK 50
Study 2 Audio 14 hours Transcripts UK/ Hong 12
Kong
Study 3 Audio and 11 hours Transcripts Hong Kong 13
Video
The datasets from the three studies were very rich in content providing both qualitative and
quantitative information. To contribute to the discussion of development of responsibilities in
product design the research had to focus on all three studies. Initially this was difficult to
comprehend and organise due to the variation of methodology. However, mapping of the issues
illustrated the connections which were present. This enabled an overall matrix to be developed (as
illustrated in Figure 55) which could be used as a foundation for addressing the question; Do
designers’ perceptions of responsibility change and evolve?
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Figure 55: Matrix of issues which emerged from the individual studies highlights connections between issues that
were multi-study issues throughout the research.
The three datasets generated a range of interesting issues that offer an insight into perceptions of
design responsibilities. However, the point of interest in this thesis is the story of development
which the transcripts began to reveal.
7.2.1. Design knowledge development - hard and soft responsibilities
There were a number of issues which could be classified as design knowledge development.
Design knowledge was largely associated with the knowledge development of design methods. In
particular, the topic of standards and designers’ responsibilities was interesting in these datasets.
The participants talked about responsibilities in two ways; hard and soft. Hard includes standards
such as legal frameworks. An example is the standards that a product must meet before going to
market. The Study 2 participants provided examples of such legislation; ‘WEEE directive’, ‘Kyoto
Agreement’, ‘REACH directive’, and ‘IPR’. The Study 1 participants also offered some specific
legislation, also naming the ‘WEEE directive’, ‘FMEA’, and ‘Stress Analysis testing’. The
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participants in Study 3 (first year undergraduate students) expressed an understanding that there
are legal frameworks and legislation in place, but they talked in broad terms; ‘I know there’s a
book of standards or the law guide of some kind’, and did not provide specific examples. This was
probably because they had less experience in industry and therefore their understanding of design
in that context was limited. They mainly discussed the issue of standards when prompted by word
card 11; ‘standards’. The practitioners did not rely on this card as a prompt to raise and discuss
the issue. Figure 56 demonstrates a relationship between acknowledgement and the verbalisation
of formal of hard standards in correlation with design experience.
Figure 56: Increase of knowledge in hard standards in correlation with experience.
Practitioners clearly understood there are a number of legal frameworks they must adhere to, but
they still appreciated that meeting standards is not always enough; ‘…something might pass a
standard…but knowing users, they’ll use it differently and its going to be very dangerous’ (this
point was illustrated with reference to the design of a safety gate). This raises interesting
questions such as; are hard frameworks enough to guide designers’ choices? In this case it would
appear that the answer is no. Design should involve understanding consequences. And in
exploring consequences, design should explore the issue of ethics and responsible decision-
making; ‘ethics is not an appendage to design but an integral part of it’ (Johnson, 2002). What is
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actually being discussed is the issue of what is ‘right’ and what the ‘responsible’ thing to do is in
such a situation. Another participant from Study 2 put it nicely when he explained that quality
control departments will ensure products pass relevant tests, stating; ‘Something may be outside
the guidelines and be very dangerous but they find a way to squeeze it through…it would be the
designers responsibility to design that out if we felt bad about putting it in…it’s purely personal
conscience’.
Soft standards are those more personal guidelines that designers might adhere to, such as
their own ethical frameworks and value systems. The dataset as a whole indicates that the first
year designers have an ideological approach to design and that they are very enthusiastic about
selecting the right materials and wanting to design products that provide benefits. The first year
designers, and some of the graduating designers have ethical views that they would like to
implement, but they struggle to apply them. The practising designers have experience of working
on projects on a daily basis and so their knowledge grows and develops. They displayed an
understanding of applied responsibilities more clearly than the two other levels. Perhaps design
education could do more to increase the understanding of ethics and responsibility in design.
7.2.2. Ethical development
The triad sort delivered both qualitative and quantitative data. It enabled an understanding of
how participants view the images and the relationships they construct between particular issues.
The same triad sets were presented to all participants in studies 2 and 3; this enabled comparisons
to be made across these two levels of expertise (see Figure 57).
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Card Triad set 1; cards 20, 30, and 35 13

12
11
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
20, 30 30, 35 20, 35
card groupings
Figure 57: Triad set 1 – Comparing the cards that have been grouped by the experienced design practitioners
and the first year design students.
The data provides solid constructs and contrasts (like those displayed in Figure 57 ). However, a
more interesting issue appears to be the differences between the way the participants from the two
studies verbally assemble their constructs and contrasts. The practising participants often presented
a mass of ideas and these changed as the designer talked. The outcomes tended to be more
complex and abstract. Participants often incorporated a lot of information and their reasoning
appeared to be convoluted. The student participants tended to think less abstractly. Instead, the
cards were taken more literally and words that represented the image on the card were used.
Levels of abstraction was something that was also evidenced in the card sorting task. Card
18 (gun design) not only represents the idea of abstraction, but also how hypothetical,
philosophical and moral imagination can be introduced when discussing design responsibilities.
Design practitioners generally offered a much more open and hypothetical approach. For example:
‘Well my initial reaction is, no, I wouldn’t want to be involved in gun design but that’s a
very easy answer…It may be irresponsible to not carry on designing good weapons or
maybe it’s more responsible to be brave and say no… If I got given a gun design project it
would be my responsibility to do it well’
The quotes from the practising designers tended to be longer and more detailed in their
explanations. The first year designers did offer some debate into the fact that ‘weapons can be
used in different ways [having both] a bad side and a good side’, however they never really got
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beyond the issue of good and bad. The practitioners’ answers seemed to weigh the pros and cons
of gun design and offered an insight into their ethical reasoning, judgements on responsibilities,
and ability to use their moral imaginations.
The graduating students (Study 1) did not participate in this task, but some did offer
opinions. Often the graduating students referred to case studies to expand on ethical issues in
design. Examples included (1) The design of the Ford Pinto fuel system – the issue of knowing
that the consequences could result in death and still putting the car on the market, (2) The issue of
designing guns that are undetected by metal detectors at the airport, (3) To what extent is the
engineer/architect responsible for anticipating the sort of terrorist attack seen on the Twin
Towers, (4) The design of the Ford Transit and the role they often play in robberies because they
can move large amounts of goods, and (5) Dyson – the moral issues of people getting laid off;
moving manufacturing to other countries.
The examples presented by the graduating students were often in relation to intentions,
actions, and consequences. Although the context is slightly different to the specific example that
has been referred to from Studies 2 and 3, there is an indication that ethical development
evidences itself through these three levels of expertise.
The data also indicated a relationship between the use of metaphors and the level of
expertise. The design practitioners used more metaphors during discussion than the first year or
graduating students (See Table 32).
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Table 32: Use of metaphors; across the three levels of design expertise.
Study 3 – First year design Study 1 – Graduating design Study 2 – Practising design
students students students
Card 22: this one is a system of You’re wearing two hats…you’ve Card 5: ‘Future’… because it’s an
thinking its like this one [will] got your uni hat on which is outcome…there’s no point talking
rotate [and] the other will follow meeting all their briefs; trying to about it it’s like winning a
get assessed and get your degree. game…you don’t talk about
And then you’ve got the client…it winning the game you talk about
is complex really. the tactics and the effort…
[If] you’re one of many small Card 22: its cogs and machinery
cogs. If enough cogs atop turning you take one of those bits out and
then…the machine is going to it’s not going to work…you’ve
have to re-oil itself or reset itself fundamentally got to understand
up… the needs of something and if you
take some of the needs away is the
rest of it going to work well.
Card 16: ‘Unintentional’ means
that you don’t mean something to
happen…I think it’s sort of
throwing the cards up and the
gamble I don’t see design like that
Card 32: sort of represents
knowledge and that we try and do
everything based on things…not
just sort of take a stab in the
dark…
Card 30: there’s so many different
layers in that image and there’s a
lot of different layers to what we
do…we try to think of it in quite a
complex way…to make sure we’ve
covered all the bases
Card 36: unintentional injury I
mean a boxing glove is a way of
protecting someone from more
damage so I suppose we have to
design boxing gloves into stuff as
well
Perhaps the use of metaphors is a skill that strengthens with design education. The verbal ability
to express ones perceptions of the world using metaphors may be a sign of developing
responsibility. As Dewey (1997, p185) explains, ‘language connects and organizes meaning as well
as selects and fixes them’. The increased use of metaphors with experience was not a predicted
outcome of this research. Although engineering design has illustrated that design engineers
sometimes use metaphors in their discussions, it was not initially anticipated that the use of
metaphors may indicate ‘development’ of responsibility in product design. Lloyd and Busby (2003)
explain in their research how ethics can be addressed in engineering design by conceptualising the
‘design as a baby’. The metaphor of the baby is adopted to express the characteristics which can be
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embodied by design; ‘this is the one I’m most proud of because it was the first’ for example. Lloyd
and Busby explain how the engineers pride in the design is similar to that which people adopted
when revealing a pride in their first born. Some examples of the use of the baby metaphor are
more explicit; ‘it was our baby’. Lloyd and Busby draw on the issue ‘that every baby starts off
unsure of itself, needs to be nurtured, fed, and looked after, but when it is sufficiently mature it
will have to start living its own life’. The same could be argued for design and the designers’
approach to addressing responsibilities. Parents may relinquish responsibility of their children
once they reach the legal age that they no longer require a guardian. Designers may relinquish
responsibility once a product reaches the market. However, there may still be a connection and a
sense of responsibility. This thesis has demonstrated how boundary points of responsibility can be
fuzzy and ill-defined. Perhaps if designers adopt the baby metaphor when thinking about their
designs they may consider longer terms of responsibility and what it means to be truly responsible
for something you create. The researcher agrees with Lloyd and Busby (2003) that ‘personifying
an emerging design … could play a vital part in ethical reasoning during designing’.
The participants in this research did not adopt the ‘baby’ metaphor or personify the design
when discussing design and their responsibilities, but they did talk about being a cog in a machine,
the involvement of the designer in the process, and the many pieces that are dependent on each
other to make something work. Discussions in relation to the cog metaphor (and card 22) were
evident across all three stages of development. However, practising designers did demonstrate
more examples of using metaphors to discuss design and their responsibilities.
One may argue, that the use of metaphors provides an example of development of
verbalisation and constructs. It is possible to speculate that metaphors may have links with a
person’s ability to demonstrate moral imagination. Both tasks require an abstract mental ability.
However, further investigation into metaphors used within the language of designers would be
required to substantiate these claims. All that can be speculated at this time is that there may be a
connection between the use of metaphors, designers’ development of responsibility, and moral
imagination.
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7.2.3. Role context development
There appeared to be a correlation between the level of experience and the ability to appreciate
design in a business context. The experienced designers, whose role could be argued as being ‘real
world’ were less apologetic about the fact that designers are there ‘to make money’. Less
experienced designers design within different constraints. Often they are designing to the brief of
a university assignment, usually with no real client. This can mean that their boundaries may be
flexible; one graduating student explained that his design would not use a harmful plastic if it was
for a real client, and the market, but ‘I needed to make it for the degree show’. It is not that
designers in the early stages of design experience are unrealistic, it is just that they often have an
over-optimistic view of design responsibilities. However, the belief that they can make a difference
through their design is important, but as practising designers reveal it may sometimes be
impossible. Some students expressed a worrying notion that to make a change, some level of fame
is required. One student even divided design into ‘designers’ and ‘design masters’ – explaining
that design masters are famous designers; if you are a design master your influence on design
responsibility may be greater.
7.2.4. What have we learnt about designers’ development?
Reflection on the three studies has created some clear insights into the perception of design
responsibilities by student designers and practising designers and it charts a broad developmental
process. More than that, there were indicators of development of ethical understanding; the ability
to think philosophically, hypothetically, and use of moral imagination. There were also indicators
that the knowledge and experience gained as the participants move through stages of development
correlated with an increased understanding of design in the business context. This is probably
because internal and external influences change as students and practitioners move through these
stages. The concept of working with stakeholders within a business context is much more
concrete for practising designers. The notion of developing business awareness ties in with the
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broader understanding of the designer’s role; what they can control, things they can influence and
where responsibilities may transfer.
The findings suggest that there are various types of development taking place for these
subject groups; the development of knowledge, ethical development, and understanding of the
designer’s role in varying contexts. These change and evolve over the three levels of expertise.
What originally began as an investigation into perceptions of design responsibilities at three
different levels of expertise has emerged as the charting of one continuous pathway of broadening
responsibilities. The narrow path that first year design students start out on broadens outwards,
as they progress through levels of design expertise. Thus the diagram presented in Chapter 4
(Figure 17) needs to be reshaped and re-presented as Figure 58.
Figure 58: The broadening of design responsibility as designers move through education to design practice. The
figure shows a re-presentation of Figure 17 to demonstrate how the research discussed in this thesis reveals a
broadening progression of design responsibilities.
The three levels of expertise selected for this research offer only snapshots of an emerging
understanding of design responsibility. However, taken collectively, they reveal a broadening
appreciation and application of what responsibility might entail in design practice. The findings
suggest that novice designers advance through this model, building their understanding of design
responsibilities and developing their abilities to discuss and intervene in the ethical and moral
issues of design.
However, does this model of development do justice to the research? Perhaps not. The
datasets have illustrated that there is a broadening appreciation of responsibilities as experience
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increases. But as Figure 53 demonstrates, the type of responsibility can be judged differently
within the constraints of the role or the experience level of the designer. Therefore, to offer this
simple model would not demonstrate the complexity of development in product designers. Instead
we must ask ‘what is the path of development that designers embark on?’ The next section will do
this by questioning the linear process of development.
7.2.5. Is development of responsibility in product designers a linear
process?
This research has explored to what extent perceptions and concepts of responsibility in product
design are affected by experience. The three snapshots of present day designers at the start of
their university qualifications, about to graduate, and practising have aimed to shed some light on
this. Generally, designers at these snapshots do have different ideas about their responsibilities in
the field of product design. The study with first year design students revealed that they regarded
their most important responsibility to be the ‘future’. This is the card that the majority of first
year students placed at number one on their 1-5 scale of most important (1) to less importance (5)
when selecting and sorting the word cards. The practising designers offered a different input. The
majority of them valued the ‘user’ as their ‘most important’ design responsibility. The graduating
students did not complete this scalar task, but informal data indicated that the environment was a
common issue at the forefront of their minds.
Table 33: The issues which the three groups presented as their most important responsibility.
First year design students Graduating design students Practising designers

Dominant responsibility Future Environment User
issue of importance
It seems clear that responsibilities differ in importance. However, do they evolve? And is this
evolution a steady progression? In chapter 2, there was discussion relating to the ethical
development of people. During this discussion it was noted that Kohlberg’s work suggests that
people move from one building block to another and without returning to previous stages.
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Although Dreyfus’ work on development focuses on development from a different angle, that of
‘situated involvement’, it still comprises of steps of development from novice to master –
continuously building on the knowledge in each stage. Lawson and Dorst (2009) in discussing the
work of the Dreyfus brothers, draw on the work of Kuhn (1962) to explain that once a person
develops, they do not forget the components of the skill that they have developed, but that they
think about things in a different way. Lawson and Dorst (2009, p94) explain that; ‘design thinking
does not throw away old modes but rather has a process enriched by a variety of thinking styles
offering more opportunities for tackling design solutions. Harré’s concept, as described by Krebs
and Denton (2005) suggests that different aspects of our social worlds are guided by different rule
systems, roles, and expectations for appropriate behaviour. This concept could be a useful
framework for design ethics to consider responsibility. Harré’s work reiterates an earlier dilemma,
from the literature review, posed by van der Burg and van Gorp (2005, p249) when they
illustrated that the creator is not only a design engineer; they are also parent, friend, neighbour,
road-user etc. Harré suggests that people can work on different moral stages of Kohlberg’s model
(Figure 9) depending on the situation:
the business world is guided by a Stage 2; moral order based on instrumental exchange
marriage is guided by a Stage 3; moral order based on fulfilment of mutual role
expectations
the legal system is guided by a Stage 4; moral order based on maintaining the institutions
of society.
In Harré’s terms, the reason why people make different kinds of moral judgments in response to
different kinds of moral dilemmas is that the dilemmas involve different moral orders. People
move in and out of moral orders, not stages of moral development. In contrast, Kohlberg’s work
on moral development implies consistency of moral judgment across contexts (Krebs and Denton,
2005, p633).
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At this point it is important to clarify and address three questions;
(1) Is moral development a linear process?
(2) What path does development follow?
(3) What are the implications for product design?
If we define linear as a journey of development represented by a line, then we can start to imagine
how such a journey may be visually represented. We can speculate about the different visual paths
that development might adopt, see Figure 59 for possible, but not limited, visual representations.
Figure 59: Possible visualisations of paths of development mapped onto Kohlberg’s six stage model. Path 1
represents Kohlberg’s concept of development. Path 2 represents a step approach. Path 3 represents a steady
continuous line of development. Path 4 represents an iterative approach through the stages.
Path 1 represents a path of development that may represent Kohlberg’s concept of moral
development, as presented by Harré in Chapter 2 of this thesis. Path 2 represents ‘steps’ of
development where the individual moves progressively from stage one to stage two and so on
through the six stages. Path 3 does not distinguish steps, but still represents the movement
through the stages. Path 4 represents more of an iterative approach with returns to an earlier
stage as well as moving on to higher stages, similar to the process of design.

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In comparison, Harré’s work suggests that people can move in and out of different moral
stages of Kohlberg’s model depending on the situation. He suggests more of a sporadic and less
regimented path to development; a path that is based on the role and exchange which takes place
within moral orders. The suggestion of a path is not necessarily confined to development from one
stage to the next, but instead, moral orders are guided by stages of Kohlberg’s development
model. Figure 60 illustrates the mapping of the business world, marriage, and the legal system
onto Kohlberg’s six stage development model.
Figure 60: A visual representation of moral orders, described by Harré, and mapped onto Kohlberg's six stage
development model. The figure shows how Harré’s moral orders of the business world, marriage, and the legal
system are guided by stages 2, 3, and 4 of Kohlberg’s development model.
If we now turn attention to development in product design, it must be noted that Harré’s moral
orders are very broad: business, marriage, legal. Product design consists of business elements and
legal elements, but it also consists of many more. The complexity of design needs to be taken into
consideration if we are to map a more detailed picture of responsibility development in product
design. This would be a task for future researchers to take into consideration. Although this thesis
favours Harré’s explanation of development, it does not suggest that this should be used
exclusively to explain development of responsibilities in product design.
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Designers perform many roles. They are users as well as designers. They are members of
society, and are consumers. This complexity is mirrored in their development process. The
findings indicate that students, less experienced and developed than practising designers, held a
rather idealistic view surrounding issues of responsibility. This echoes findings in the literature,
especially those of Perry, as demonstrated by Holt (1997, p121), that students typically begin their
university years with a dichotomist view of the world in which things are either right or wrong
and black or white.
What does this mean for design education? Is it inevitable that students will always start
with this very clear separation of issues where no shades of grey present themselves? Is it just an
aspect of human development which design cannot influence? This thesis suggests that the
development of responsibility in product designers actually operates on a number of levels. There
are philosophical levels of development which are broad and involve finding one’s boundaries,
tweaking one’s moral compass, and appreciating the ethical viewpoints of others. Then there are
examples of responsibility development which are more focused on the practice of design; they
involve appreciating the role of the designer, understanding the impact their decisions can have on
local and global scales, and defining what their responsibilities are in that role. It is the role of the
designer and the moral orders that this brings with it which distinguishes the definitions of
responsibility of a designer from other fields. The datasets indicated that designers’ perceptions of
responsibility differed across the three stages. The main suggestion for this was because of the
context of their role. For example, first year designers face different constraints to those
graduating, or to practising designers. The moral norms within these settings also varied and it is
suspected that this impacted on the participant’s perceptions; an example is the issue of standards.
There was an increased knowledge of standards which correlated with an increase of design
experience. This demonstrates just one of the many multi-level overlapping layers which consist
within responsibility development of product design. The layers consist of very broad issues and
very specific issues. It is only by understanding both the micro and macro levels of design
responsibility that one can truly begin to understand how development of responsibility manifests
itself and evolves.

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In the field of engineering ethics research there has been a call for engineers and
philosophers to work together to solve ethical problems in engineering (Gorman, 2001, p23).
Would design education benefit from collaborative projects between product design students and
philosophy students? Or perhaps the inclusion of philosophy leading to a more holistic approach
to ethical issues within design education might be a more productive approach to producing
responsible designers?
7.3. Critical reflection on the methodology
A large element of this research involved the investigation and design of a method that could be
used to gain a better understanding of design responsibility. Therefore, it is important not only to
reflect on the outcomes of the research studies, but also to analyse the methodology which was
incorporated into this thesis. This section will now explore this methodology and highlight
successes and limitations it may have had on the research. This discussion should be beneficial to
future researchers who may want to adopt such a methodology.
The methodology used in this research had a number of advantages; (1) study 1 provided a
grounded approach to the research, the substance and relevance of this study was incorporated
successfully in the two studies which followed, (2) the two further studies (studies 2 and 3)
provided an interactive and relaxed procedure for participants to talk about their personal design
experience and practice, (3) the cards acted as stimuli providing discussion points for participants,
(4) it enabled and generated reflections on practice and in doing so allowed participants to open up
about their day-to-day tasks, (5) it got participants to talk about responsibilities, and construct
relationships between responsibilities. However, it was not without its drawbacks. The volume of
data produced over the two data sets was very large; Study 2 produced approximately 14 hours of
audio data, and Study 3 produced approximately 11 hours of audio and video data. The data was
very rich in content providing both qualitative and quantitative information. Initially it was
difficult to comprehend and organise. Previous chapters demonstrated the framework of issues
which were common between studies 2 and 3.

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7.3.1. The three study approach
As previously stated the building block approach offered many advantages. The subject of ethics,
and more specifically responsibility, is difficult to uncover. The three study approach allowed a
large amount of data to be gathered. However, it was the first study that played a vital role in this
research. The literature revealed that terminology regarding the subject was diverse and that
terms were often used interchangeably. Therefore, if this thesis was to investigate and discuss
responsibility, then an understanding of terminology and perceptions constructed by the designers
themselves would be inevitable. Study 1 followed a traditional survey methodology; interviewing
participants. However, the approach was a little different. Instead of interviewing design students
in the classroom, they were interviewed at their degree shows, in front of their design projects,
where they were asked to reflect on responsibilities in relation to their projects. This approach was
useful as it offered a focused point of reflection if students drifted too far from the aims of the
questionnaire. The degree shows meant that there was often the possibility to interview several
student designers in one visit. The environment of the degree shows meant that the designers
were happy to talk to people about their products and embraced the opportunity to develop their
communications. The relaxed environment made the degree shows a favourable place to interview.
However, future researchers should note that opening nights of shows should be avoided as they
can be too busy for effective interviews.
The questions developed for the semi-structured experiments were grounded in the
questions raised in the literature. The questions and some broad issues raised by the participants
developed a rich dataset. The study led to three main findings which have been documented in
chapter 4. However, it also provided a secondary function. The data from Study 1 was used as a
foundation to develop a better tailored, more ‘designerly’, and experimental way of investigating
the interface between design and ethics, and to more specifically focus on the descriptive element
of design and ethics; to understand what designers actually think and claim they are doing in
relation to this issue.
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Study 2 used the keywords and phrases that the student designers used to discuss
‘responsibility’. The process of developing the methodology was grounded in the results of Study
1 and was therefore representative of current views and perspectives in 21st Century product
design. This ensured that the cards that were developed and used in studies 2 and 3 were
grounded in current perceptions. The cards could be viewed by other designers at different stages
of design experience and still there was a connection and relevance, because of the ‘designerly’
quality which they inherited from the graduate participants who were interviewed during the
experimentation and development of the methodology which forms the core of this thesis.
The cards developed and used in studies 2 and 3 met their objectives; they covered a range
of issues which were highlighted in Study 1, they were ‘designerly’ with their visual approach, the
blank cards offered flexibility and interactivity, and they were flexible in interpretation. They
worked as an effective conversation tool and they generated discussion surrounding a wide
number of issues. Table 34 illustrates a sample of the cards and issues that participants associated
with image cards 27, 30, and 36.
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Table 34: Card Interpretations (cards 27, 30, and 36).
Mass manufacture, consumerism, interlocking, society – power of
supermarkets, a solution to save space, conform, user orientated
design, can be misused, displaying personal lifestyle
27
Design for disassembly, complexity layers in a design brief, recycling,
manufacture, designing to an exact specification so all the pieces fit
together, design for function, explore every part of your brain
30
Hard work, discipline, training (going to university), knocked down
by clients, brutality of practice, patience, strength of mind, sport or
a weapon to kill, protection – building safety into products
36
The ambiguity that the image cards contained was very useful for the investigation. It was
assisted by the broad scope of keywords provided and the image selection. The initial large set of
image cards was reduced to achieve a manageable set which could be used in the studies.
The iterations and testing of the layout which the methodology would incorporate was
beneficial. It ensured that the strongest and most productive procedure for conducting the task
was established. The methodology developed for studies 2 and 3 generated around 25 hours of
audio data. The job of transcribing it was arduous but the benefits of full transcriptions of all the
audio files outweighed this; providing a strong understanding of the issues of responsibility,
recurring themes, and patterns within the datasets.
The design of the methodology meant that the task was able to break the data gathered into
two sets; (1) the triad sorts, and (2) the card sorting. This meant that there was a clear division of
the two tasks when writing up the results. However, the data was largely focused on viewing the
data as a whole when focusing on the issues of development. Overall, the method provided a rich
and revealing insight into designers’ perceptions of responsibility which allowed the thesis to
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contribute to the descriptive interface of design and ethics. The option to allow participants to add
their own cards offered the opportunity to build a greater understanding of responsibility and to
incorporate such concerns into the discussion of responsibility.
7.3.2. Design of the research methodology
On reflection, the research suggests that designers regard responsibility as particular ‘issues’ they
are confronted with in product design. So there are responsibilities to society, clients, users,
environment, and so on. The responsibilities as ‘issues’ was a result of the Study 1 data. The
graduands’ dataset led to the adoption of these issues. The concept was to use these as a stimulus
to get designers in the subsequent studies to discuss design responsibility in more depth. This
begs the question; was this objective met? The answer is; not exactly. The design of the method
which had allowed participants to add cards was successful. It meant that further issues that
presented themselves at different stages of expertise could be revealed. However, the participants
were still very focused on the specific issue. Although they did talk around the issue describing
ways of working, design responsibility still presented itself as a number of issues (some
interconnected) which had to be addressed during the design process. A holistic approach to
responsible design which offered a broader ‘design philosophy’ was rare. This may be because of
the many conflicting issues that designers have to face. The research acknowledges that this ‘list’
element may have been reinforced by the design of the methodology and the use of the word cards.
The image cards offered more flexibility, but could still have contributed. The method was
successful at getting the designers to discuss responsibility. There is a concern that designers may
actually have more of a holistic approach than this research demonstrates, but their lack of ability
to verbalise design responsibility overshadowed this. A different design of the method may have
resulted in a different conclusion being drawn. To ensure a well constructed investigation into the
field of responsibility in product design, further studies should be conducted to test the hypotheses
of a checklist approach to responsibility by product designers.
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Study 1 suggested that responsibility was about particular issues, rather than a particular
philosophy. So it involved the environment, safety, usability, accessibility, and so on. It was this
element of the research which was incorporated into the design of studies 2 and 3. However, after
further analysis it seems that design responsibility is defined by a number of themes. As a result,
design may be a holistic approach, a philosophy of design, but it is often verbalised as a list of
issues.
Some of the first year design students discussed the cards in a less abstract way than
anticipated. They tended to describe what they saw on the card, rather than using it as a stimulus
to discuss responsibility on a more flexible level. Their behaviour may have been influenced by
their lack of experience. Practising designers benefited from a range of experiences and they
appeared to have fewer problems with the cards. Future researchers wanting to investigate design
using the card sorting methodology may want to consider other options for gathering their card
content. This study used qualitative data and used keywords and phrases as the foundation for the
creation of cards. However, another option may be to get the participants to submit their own
cards, using a participatory design method to develop a database of words and images to generate
a card set. If this was designed to gather data from the three snapshot points that were
investigated in this thesis, it may offer more insight to the images and words that product
designers favour to express their responsibilities. This approach may provide a larger card
database to work from and it may highlight further consistencies and inconsistencies across the
levels of expertise. The new database of cards would then of course have to be tested to see
whether it was efficient for investigating the topic of responsibility in product design.
7.3.3. Data analysis – Other methods
The card sorting methodology generated lots of rich data. It provided both quantitative
(categorisation of cards) and qualitative (explanations of categorisations) samples. Chapters 5 and
6 have presented the data in a fashion that is representative of this and which provides the reader
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with the essential elements of the analysis. However, a number of ways of presenting the card
sorting data were experimented with.
During the card sorting task, step (ii) there were experiments of presenting the data with
the designer at the core and their most valued responsibilities (selected for the 1-5 scale)
surrounding them. The ring closest to the core indicates the design responsibility the participant
valued the highest.
Figure 61: An alternative visual representation of st2_p1. Displaying cards selected for the 1-5 scale in step (ii).
Displaying the data like this offered visuals that could be scanned quickly to generate an
understanding of how the participant valued their responsibilities. The suggestion is that the
values which are closest to the participant are the ones that they regard to be the most important
and indicating the core values of present day practising product designers. This type of visual
technique is one that has been adopted in marketing to represent the influences on the consumer
(the rings closest to the consumer being the most influential). It may be that these responsibilities
are the ones that the designer feels the strongest sense to address during their design process.
Perhaps, in design where the nature of the task involves trade-offs and dissonance, this
understanding of responsibility may shed light on what designers regard as core responsibilities
and these may dominate over other peripheral responsibilities which may present themselves in
day-to-day practice. This layered ‘onion’ approach has also been used in marketing to show ‘five
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product levels’ (Kotler, 2002). Similar types of approaches have also been adopted in design (Siu,
2007), to visually display ‘the spatial dimensions of culture’.
During steps (i) and (iii) there was some experimentation of visual layout of data. Although
not used in the thesis as the main presentation style of the data, pie charts and distribution graphs
were generated.
Figure 62: Comparing cards categorised in 'definitely my responsibility' with those categorised in 'not my
responsibility' – An example from all participants in Study 2.
Figure 62 shows an example of experimentation with the Study 2 data. In this figure the green
circles are all the positive amounts (those placed in the ‘definitely my responsibility’ category) and
the red crosses represent negative values (the cards placed in the ‘not my responsibility’ category).
This figure represents the word cards for the card set (all participants in study 2) and assigns -1
value for each card in the ‘not my responsibility’ category and +1 for those cards placed in
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‘definitely my responsibility’. Coding the cards in this way and presenting the data in this manner
enables a snapshot of the two ends of the scale. At one end the rejection of responsibility and at
the other acceptance of responsibility. This visual representation quickly demonstrates that ‘user’,
card 3 (marked by a green circle) was the card most associated with ‘definitely my responsibility’.
Whereas, ‘9/11’, card 26 (marked with a red cross) was the card that most participants felt that
they were not responsible for. This research has explored different visual data outputs and
recommends this process to fully appreciate the extent of the data collected using this type of
approach.
7.3.4. Reflection on the participants
Early in the thesis, Kohlberg’s descriptive contribution to moral development was highlighted.
His work was based on extensive research which spanned 20 years. Such lengthy research meant
that the same participants could be monitored and conclusions regarding their moral development
drawn. Unfortunately, this research was not subject to such flexible time scales. As a result three
snapshots of design expertise became the focus; first year design students, graduating design
students, and practising designers.
The participants involved in the three studies were from a number of locations. Study 1 was
conducted at design degree shows in the UK. This was reflected in the nationalities of the
students. The majority of them were English, however, not all, a small number of students were
from Ireland, Scotland, and Eastern Europe. There were no significant differences in respect to
responsibility based on the nationality of the students.
Study 2 was also a UK based study. Most of the designers were born and educated in the
UK. However, there was one participant who had been born and educated in Germany, another
who was Canadian; educated in Canada and then further educated at a post-graduate level in the
UK. One designer interviewed had a UK education, but was working as a designer in Hong Kong.
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Study 3 was a Hong Kong based study. The majority of the participants interviewed were
born and educated in Hong Kong. There were a few exceptions, a small number of participants
were from China, Vietnam and Singapore.
These participant locations combined with those students who were also interviewed as part
of the control study (with masters students in Hong Kong) meant that this research involved,
collectively, participants from four continents; Asia, Europe, North America, and South America.
This provides what can be argued as a small and limited, but nevertheless a geographically vast
sample which provided an interpretation of responsibility by product designers in the 21st
Century.
This thesis was never designed to be a cross-cultural thesis and when the opportunity to run
experiments in Hong Kong became an option, the thesis made the assumption that a culture of
design exists, rather than dividing designers by cultural differences. This was based on the fact
that most doctors, psychologists, engineers or other professionals often adhere to codes of their
profession and therefore design would act in a similar way. It was established early in the thesis
that codes of ethics in product design are rare, but nevertheless, there was an expectation that
there are unwritten codes which exist; ways of working which are influenced by design research,
legal standards, and norms within product design. The control study data indicated that students
respond to the environment as the first thing when asked about design responsibility, regardless
of their geographical location (it is not an issue restricted to the concerns of UK students).
Indicating that location is not important, but interest lies in the values that designers hold. This
work was hoping to provide a larger picture of design responsibility. Initially establishing this was
the objective, now this has been done the researcher supports the concept of cross-cultural studies.
The literature review has demonstrated how engineering design research into the field of ethics
has been largely guided by Western philosophy, but perhaps there are ‘better’ ways of generating
responsible designers and these may involve the incorporation of Eastern philosophies into
Western education. However, further research in this concept would be required to support such
claims.
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Although the researcher feels justified in the varied locations of the designers interviewed,
there needs to be some reflection on the impact it may have had on the data gathered. The point
has been raised about Western and Eastern philosophies. The students interviewed at the Hong
Kong Polytechnic University demonstrated an understanding of responsibility. Their lack of
expertise was evidenced, but their ways of thinking illustrated no stark contrasts to that of UK
participants. It seemed that they had similar concerns to UK participants and discussed these
concerns in a similar manner. This may have been a result of the design education framework in
place at the university. Hong Kong is a very diverse City and this is reflected in the university’s
design department, with the School of Design composed of lecturers from around they globe.
There is, however, a large European influence within the School.
7.3.5. Summary of methodology
The research strategy has been wide-ranging and the data accumulated diverse. Nevertheless, it is
possible to identify a broad development of responsibility within the education and practice of the
product design community. The semi-structured questionnaire adopted in Study 1 had the benefits
of being very flexible and exploratory. This was advantageous at that stage because it revealed
what graduating designers regarded as important in terms of their responsibilities. This
information allowed a foundation to be generated for Studies 2 and 3; these studies were much
more focused and sought to probe the issues of responsibility, such as how designers construct
relationships between things, how they select and talk about their design responsibilities, which
responsibilities they value the most, how they categorise and group particular responsibilities, and
how they discuss responsibilities in relation to their own experience.
The triad and card sorting techniques had a number of benefits. They generated a rich body
of data which comprised both qualitative and quantitative data; providing both detailed insights
into designers’ thoughts on design responsibilities and statistical data that could be compared
across the two studies. The amount of data generated from the tasks was substantial, possibly too
much. However, it provided a relaxed and uncontrived way of talking about design responsibilities
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and the triads and card sorting meant that the participants had to apply some level of
categorisation and in doing that explain their reasoning for the choices made.
7.4. Summary
Chapter 7 has combined the results of the three studies of this research to provide a picture of
responsibility development across three levels of design expertise. This chapter has focused on
these three snapshots, offering discussion regarding development and how that was achieved by
the methodology that was developed and applied in this thesis. The next chapter will build on
previous chapters to draw conclusions about responsibility development in product design.
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8. Conclusions
8. Conclusions
This thesis has explored the nature of responsibility in the field of product design. It has
particularly focused on individual designer’s perceptions of responsibility to establish how the
term ‘responsibility’ is defined by present day designers. It began with the core research questions;
what are designers’ perceptions of their responsibilities? and; do designers’ perceptions of responsibility
change and evolve? To study the change and evolution of responsibility within the field of product
design has required the involvement of designers at different stages of experience. Chapter 3
proposed that this could be achieved through snapshots. Design education is of course an
important element of development for would-be product designers. It is the gateway to practice.
Therefore, this entry point into design presented itself as both appealing and important for study.
Further down the scale is the practising designer, who has achieved skills and qualifications,
entered industry and is designing products which are being manufactured for the market.
Investigating these two points allowed comparisons to be made between two very different levels
of experience. One might hypothesise that there would be differences between the perceptions of
students entering design education and practising designers. But what are the differences? This is
what this thesis set out to investigate, specifically with a focus on design responsibility. Chapter 1
indicated that as a society we are becoming more socially aware, particularly in relation to design
and its impacts. If this is the case and people in general have perceptions of what constitutes
responsible design, then the question is do students entering design education have a good grasp of the
responsibilities of design practice? Do their perceptions of ‘responsibility’ differ from design practitioners?
Investigating these two points has begun a process of piecing together a picture of development of
responsibilities in product design.
However, to achieve a greater understanding of how change and evolution occur, it is
important to look at other points on the scale. Figure 63 identifies the point of entering education
and practising. However, there are a number of points in between. The point of entering education
is obvious one to focus on, but the points between then and practising are varied. The length of
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8. Conclusions
university courses vary, some universities offer placements or sandwich courses which allocate
placements. Placements can range from short 6 week projects to 1 year for those registered on a
sandwich course. Practising designers experience can also range from just entering the profession
to professionals who hold 20+ experience. These variables resulted in many possible ‘snapshot’
opportunities, throughout the product design career journey.
Figure 63: Identifying points that would provide an insight to the development responsibility in product designers.
This research was aware that the points of investigation could vary, but felt that to offer a broad
and yet complete picture of responsibility in design that the three snapshots that would offer the
greatest insights would be;
First year design students (entering design education)
Graduating design students (just about to leave design education)
Practising designers (designing products which are being manufactured)
Therefore the research would be able to provide insights and contributions to both design
education and design practice.
In Chapter 2, the concept of development was raised. The literature review discussed skills
development and moral/ethical development, with the work of Dreyfus, Kohlberg, and Harré
introduced. As design researchers have tended to adopt the Dreyfus’s concept of development this
has been drawn on to explain how designers develop from novices to experts. In psychology,
moral development has been investigated by Piaget, Kohlberg, Gilligan, and Harré. Their
concepts have been conflicting and questions of how one develops morally have been explored. In
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8. Conclusions
response to this Chapter 7 asked, in the context of product design, is development of responsibility a
linear process? This thesis hypothesised that one would see developmental differences between
those entering design education and those practising as designers; therefore, making it a linear
process from one point to another. However, what path would that linear process adopt?
Chapter 2 explored a developmental concept suggested by Kohlberg involving a six stage
model; three levels each comprising of two stages;
Preconventional level (Stages 1 and 2)
Conventional level (Stages 3 and 4)
Postconventional (Stages 5 and 6)
However, a visual representation of how this development might present itself was lacking.
Kohlberg’s concept of development involves moving from a lower level to a higher level, and not
returning to previous levels. Chapter 7 discussed how Harré’s theory of development varies from
that of Kohlberg and is not necessarily a progressive path, but instead that moral orders define the
attribute a person may exhibit. Chapter 7 speculated on how development may be visually
represented, that is, trying to imagine how an individual actually progresses through Kohlberg’s
suggested stages of development. This questioned a commonly accepted view of development and
contrasted it with Harré’s concept of how one might develop. Both of these are interesting because
the datasets evidenced both concepts of development; from designers understanding
responsibilities in terms of black and white and developing to more complex shades of grey to
responsibility development being well understood and constructed in some areas, but lacking in
others. However, Harré’s concept is particularly interesting to product design because of the issue
of moral orders and the complex nature of design that involves many contexts and operates within
the larger context of business, politics, and so on.
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8. Conclusions
8.1. Contribution to responsibility development in product designers
The studies have demonstrated that there are some situations where the designer appears to be
more responsibly developed than others. For example, the environment is an issue that many of
the participants had a good grasp of. They were clear that this is an important responsibility in
product design and many actively accepted it as their responsibility as a product designer, as were
the issues of working for the client and designing for users. On the other hand, responsibility
towards safety issues seem to be less developed and the points and boundaries of transference of
responsibility were often blurred, with some participants believing that engineers, the
client/company, or users must take responsibility once they have completed their designs. The
study data suggests that moral development specific to the product designers and their
development of responsibilities could be visually represented more like that illustrated in Figure
64.
Figure 64: Suggested responsibility development of product designers. The figure shows how different moral
orders in product design may be mapped onto Kohlberg’s six stage model. Demonstrating that development of
responsibility in product design may be more reflective of Conklin’s pattern of cognitive activity (Figure 4) –
where a designer moves from different stages of responsibility development dependent on the design situation
(e.g., design situations may be classified as environment, safety, business, and so on).
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8. Conclusions
In Harré’s terms, the reason why people make different kinds of moral judgments in response to
different kinds of moral dilemmas is that the dilemmas involve different moral orders. While, the
works of Kohlberg and Harré are not specific to the field of product design, Harré’s concept of
moral orders and his concepts of development demonstrate similarities to the nature of design. It
consists of many elements and designers perceive their responsibilities to be vast and wide-
ranging. The role of the designer incorporates many moral orders and as the literature review has
revealed, it is not uncommon for these to conflict and generate design problems and different
dilemmas for the designer. If one thinks of design responsibilities as moral orders we might be
able to start mapping development more effectively, and use this knowledge to contribute to
teaching design responsibility.
Although this thesis favours Harré’s explanation of development, it does not suggest that
this should be used exclusively to explain development of responsibilities in product design. As
this research has demonstrated, both the works of Kohlberg and Harré can be useful for thinking
about design development. However, responsibility development in product designers consists of
complexity and nuances which are not dealt with by Kohlberg or Harré. Therefore, this thesis
does not advise a simple mapping of designers’ development onto these existing models, but
instead calls for product design to generate its own models, and to consider the principles of these
theories of development as a foundation.
Original concepts of responsibility development from the data gathered in this research
suggested that a model for representing responsibility in product design may be like that
presented in Figure 58. However, the data contains conflicting evidence which leads us to draw
the conclusion that responsibility in product design is more complex. This thesis suggests that
rather than development being a single layer model which increases with experience, it is in fact a
multi-layer model. If we incorporate Kohlberg and Harré’s concepts of moral development with
this research then we can start to develop a more complex picture of responsibility development in
product designers.
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8. Conclusions
Figure 65: A proposed model of responsibility development in product designers. The figure takes the key
elements of moral development from Figure 59, Figure 60, and Figure 64 and presents them here to
demonstrate the layers of responsibility development evidenced in this thesis.
This model incorporates the idea that designers’ development happens in a variety of ways. The
top layer is based on Harré’s moral orders and considers that people operate differently depending
on the situation. In the dataset this was demonstrated by the role of designers and specifically
with the example of business. Those designers who were more involved in the business aspects of
design did display differences to participants who were less involved in business.
The middle layer involves a progressive development, based on the work of Kohlberg (and
ideas proposed by Dreyfus), moving from one stage to a higher stage. Where the participants
build up their understanding of responsibilities and how they are applied. The data demonstrates
this with how participants reference the confines of their work, the legal frameworks that guide
them and how they learn about these in education and explain these responsibilities in more detail
once they go into practice.
The bottom layer is the most representative of the data, it is the idea that designers move
between moral orders and that development is not necessarily driven by building on lower levels
to higher levels of moral development. This is particularly important in design because of the
changing world. Technology plays a large role in design and often technology presents unknown
challenges. Therefore understanding responsibility in these unknown environments requires

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8. Conclusions
consideration of lots of elements and that may result in designers being very responsibly
developed in some aspects of design, but lack higher levels of development in others. One example
from the data demonstrated that an appreciation of and an active responsibility for global issues in
design did not necessarily increase with design experience (see Figure 53).
This thesis suggests that responsibility development in product designers can be explained
broadly as operating on a number of levels. There are philosophical levels of development which
are wide-ranging and involve finding ones personal boundaries, establishing an individual’s moral
compass, and developing an appreciation of the ethical viewpoints of others. Then there are
examples of responsibility development which are more focused on the practice of design; they
involve appreciating the role of the designer, understanding the impact that their decisions can
have on local and global scales, and defining what their responsibilities are in that role. It is the
role of the designer, and the moral orders that brings with it, which then distinguishes the
definitions of responsibility of a designer from other fields. The datasets indicated that designers’
perceptions of responsibility differ across the three stages. The main evidence for this came from
the context of their role. For example, first year designers face different constraints to those
graduating or, practising designers. The moral norms within these settings also varied and it is
suspected that this impacted on the participants’ perceptions of responsibility; an example is the
issue of standards. There was an increased knowledge of standards which correlated with an
increase in design experience. This demonstrates just one of the many multi-level overlapping
layers which exist within responsibility development of product design. The layers consist of very
broad issues to very specific issues. It is only by understanding both the micro and macro of
design responsibility that one can truly begin to understand how development of responsibility
manifests and evolves. This thesis has offered an insight into development and established a
foundation on which future studies of responsibility development may be built.
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8. Conclusions
8.2. Using the descriptive interface to contribute to the prescriptive
interface
Discussing the layers of development in responsibility brings us nicely back to the model of
prescriptive and descriptive design and ethics (see Figure 66), which was originally introduced in
Chapter 2 (Figure 12) of this thesis.
Figure 66: (the same as Figure 12) Concepts of Design/Ethics combined with concepts of
Prescriptive/Descriptive.
This thesis has aimed to provide a descriptive contribution to the interface between design and
ethics in the field of product design. Specifically by focusing on individual designer’s perceptions
of responsibility and how these change and evolve with experience. In generating this descriptive
contribution, this thesis is able to now contribute to the prescriptive interface of design and ethics.
The research offers suggestions for design education, design practice, and design literature.
8.2.1. Design education
The datasets suggests that designers’ responsibility development is a complex process which
operates on multiple levels. The thesis does not identify this as a particular problem, but suggests
that university assignments may try to increase responsibility development by incorporating
multi-disciplinary projects. The fields designers may particularly benefit from would be working
with students from the philosophy department, in order to develop their broader understanding of
ethics and in order to shape their moral selves. Further benefits may come from working with the
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8. Conclusions
business schools; undergraduates and graduating students typically lack knowledge of business
and how, as commercial designers they are part of the business process. Triangulation of product
design, business studies, and philosophy may ensure a greater appreciation of other stakeholders’
roles (especially the clients’) and a broader appreciation of ethics and responsibilities.
This research has also revealed that design students may benefit from more involvement
with design practice (possibly all product design courses should incorporate a work placement)
this would allow the students to develop their experiences of real world practice and to gauge the
internal and external influences on the responsibilities they actively accept responsibility for. The
role of the design student is very different to that of the design practitioner. If students had a
compulsory placement this would perhaps increase their appreciation of design in the business
context, design for real users, design that meets legislation (hard standards), and so on.
Design educators need to be aware that the messages they project are important and should
be considered. The black and white mentality of students means that they define things very
starkly. Design educators need to ensure that they make students aware of the grey issues in
design. The research speculated that perhaps students tend to adopt the same ethics as their
lecturers. This would need further confirmation, but this research did reveal that students who
attended the same university demonstrated similar ideas to their peers. It is likely that these
concepts of responsibility had been influenced by their education. Therefore, design educators
need to ensure that they are aware of responsibility in product design and that they provide a
balanced approach which actively engages students and encourages them to question and reflect
on their design decisions and thinking. Students would benefit from discussions that increase their
vocabulary of design responsibility and encourages them to apply such philosophies to their
design projects; nurturing both responsible design thinking and practice.
8.2.2. Design practice
Designers in practice (at present) should not expect that the graduate students they employ will
fully understand responsibilities in the same manner that they do. The experience gained by
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8. Conclusions
practising designers means that their perceptions of responsibility may be more business focused
and vary from those of graduating students (or placement students in other years of their degree
course). Therefore, design practice has a role to play. Design practice must be responsible and
adopt ethical ways of working. It is believed that this could be achieved by responsible design and
by design companies being proactive. The dataset from the practising designers suggested that
the client, via the brief, can define a designer’s responsibilities. However, this thesis urges product
designers to adopt a proactive role in which they negotiate with the client to develop a responsible
design, rather than be the ‘technocrats’ that Heskett warns of. This thesis suggests that designers
do need to look beyond the ends they serve and to think responsibly about the impact which they
can have, both on the world of design, and on the physical world that we all share. Of course, this
is not the sole responsibility of practice, design education also needs to play its part. Business
(clients) working with design students could help here and allow student designers to gain the
confidence they need to generate responsible design solutions.
8.2.3. Design literature
This thesis has provided valuable new understanding. The contribution has been two-fold. First
the research has highlighted a gap in the design research literature in the field of design
responsibility. This thesis has addressed this by offering some descriptive insights into product
designers’ perceptions of responsibility. This thesis has also identified development across the
three snapshots of expertise that were investigated. It can form a foundation block for future
research in this field to build on. The findings in this thesis have been presented at two
International conferences where the research topic as been embraced by the design community.
The second contribution that this thesis offers is the methodology that was designed and
developed to investigate responsibility of product designers. This methodology has moved away
from some of the more traditional methods adopted in product design research and moved
towards developing a unique method for this unique research field. It has taken its lead from
psychology and knowledge elicitation and built on these to develop a ‘designerly’ driven
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8. Conclusions
methodology. This methodology has been successful at tapping into design responsibility and
development of responsibilities. This work has contributed a lively and interactive approach for
investigating responsibility, without using some of the ‘drier’ methodologies adopted in business
ethics (e.g. Ethical Positioning Questionnaires)
8.3. Key findings
This thesis has generated a number of key findings:
(1) Designers are interested and willing to address issues of responsibility;
(2) The concept of responsibility changes as designers move through their careers;
(3) The language that designers use to articulate the scope of responsibility and ethics
becomes broader, richer and more abstract with professional maturity;
(4) The design of products is a complex process and models for addressing design
responsibility need to reflect this complexity; and
(5) The work has produced unique and designerly methods to explore responsibility in
design.
8.4. Limitations of the research
The research has provided an insight into new knowledge in relation to the field of responsibility
in product design. It has exposed the complexity of ‘responsibility’ in the minds of present day
product designers. It has also explored development and contributed new knowledge about the
development of responsibility in product designers. It did this by utilising an exploratory and
grounded approach. This led to the development of a method which adopted a ‘designerly’ way of
interacting with designers, by incorporating images into the task and using card sorting to tap
into tacit knowledge.
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8. Conclusions
However, it is important to acknowledge that the research is not without its limitations. If
this research were to be conducted again then there are a few things which could be improved or
done differently. These will be discussed in the sections that follow.
8.4.1. Design participants
The reader of this thesis may express concerns that the research studies were conducted both in
the UK and Hong Kong. However, this thesis presents this as more of an advantage than
disadvantage to the research. The sample of graduating students and practising designers that
were interviewed were not all British born (or educated). Therefore the introduction of the Hong
Kong Polytechnic study provided a greater diversity of participants. There was also the control
study (with the masters students) which was conducted in Hong Kong, this means that this
research offers an, admittedly small, international sample; covering four continents Asia, Europe,
North America, and South America. An insight into the global context of design responsibility can
only be advantageous given that design is now a global process. However, the samples of
participants from each location are too small to provide a detailed picture and to map development
based on geographical locations. Following up these studies with more participants globally could
be something for future research to address.
Another limitation of the research is that all participants interviewed were from SMEs.
Although many of them had experiences of designing for clients of large brand names, they were
employed by small to medium design companies or consultancies. Future work would recommend
that designers’ perceptions from larger companies are also investigated. This may offer some
insight into whether there are differences among designers who are employed by SMEs and those
who work for larger companies.
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8. Conclusions
8.4.2. The card sorting method
The card sorting methodology was a successful tool for putting participants at ease and enabling
them to discuss responsibility using the constructs of their own world of design. The image cards
used were selected to raise discussion surrounding a number of issues and the image cards aimed
to be ambiguous in order not to generate contrived discussions surrounding design responsibility.
The card sorting methodology was developed following the first study, with the graduating
students, the issues and keywords they presented in relation to responsible design were placed in a
database. It was this database that was the foundation for the design of the card sorting task.
However, one point that was raised earlier in this thesis is that this might lead to a segmented
view of responsibilities in design. This leads the researcher to urge design education and design
practice to look to philosophy to try and incorporate a more holistic approach to the subject. In
doing so designers would not be looking to list issues of responsibility that they have, but instead
explain more of a design philosophy of how they view their role and the role of product design in
the world.
However, it must be noted that the nature of the card sorting methodology may have led to
this view. The design of the cards which consisted of single words and images may have tacitly
encouraged a fragmented verbalisation of design responsibility.
8.4.3. Guidance for future researchers
The methodology created for this research was grounded in the first study and allowing the
dataset the freedom to guide the direction of the research was advantageous in this case. It
exposed issues that may not have been foreseen purely from the literature review. Therefore, this
exploratory and bottom up approach was the right choice for this topic, where little research
exists in the field of product design.
It has been established that the card sorting methodology was a successful tool at getting
designers to discuss responsibility and to reveal which issues they actively take responsibility for,
value, and how those responsibilities relate to their practice. The researcher would have liked the
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8. Conclusions
participants’ reflection and relation of responsibility to have been stronger. However, it is difficult
to diagnose if this was lacking due to the design of the methodology or because the participants
lacked experience in discussing design responsibility.
The method of analysis for this research generated the post-it note board method. This
worked in the same way as software such as NVivo in terms of colour coding and grouping
information, but it did it in a physical ‘hard copy’ fashion rather than electronically. This provided
instant access and easy movement and coding of the data. Also this visual way of representing the
data allowed a broad understanding of the issues relating to responsibility in a visual, and easy to
capture fashion. This method may not work for all researchers and others may wish to adopt
NVivo or other software which codes in a similar way. However, the researcher preferred this
more visual way of working.
The three datasets generated approximately 38 hours of audio data. The method of
transcribing varied. Study 1 included a sample of fully transcribed files and then more focused
transcriptions of specific questions. Studies 2 and 3 involved fully transcribing the 25 hours of
audio data which was collected. The data files were personally transcribed by the researcher. This
had its advantages and disadvantages. The major disadvantage was that this was a very time
consuming task which involved many months of transcribing and checking the transcription files
with the audio recordings to ensure there were no errors. The advantage was that this
transcription process allowed a strong understanding of the data to be developed. If future
researchers were in any doubt about conducting their own transcriptions of audio files, the
researcher would suggest that they should conduct this task themselves. The advantages of
understanding the data in this level of detail outweigh the arduous task of transcribing.
The field of design responsibility naturally shifts and evolves based on the changes that are
happening in the world. There are constant political, environmental and technological changes
which impact on the broader issue of ethics and raise questions of responsibility. The research has
been trying to keep up with these shifts as the work was conducted. The evolutionary nature of
the world and the impact that has on design is an important point to keep in mind if a long-term
study with the same participants is conducted.

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8. Conclusions
8.5. Future work
There is still a long way to go and further research is required to fully expose and investigate
designers’ perceptions of responsibility and the ethical development of designers. And more work
is required to develop a coherent body of descriptive research in this field. However, there are
some important points to be noted. One is that designers’ responsibilities are addressed on
different levels; these could be characterised as micro and macro levels, or local and global levels
or, as explained by the likes of Harré or Hart, and are based on roles and varying levels of moral
situations. The role of the student designer during their first year undergraduate studies varies
from that of a graduating student, or a practising designer because the constraints on these roles
are different and, in turn, so are perceptions of responsibility. However, across the snapshots of
expertise investigated and the ‘West’ and ‘East’ parameters of the studies, there appears to be core
values and norms of what design responsibility consists of. Although, sometimes the emphasis of
responsibility varies there appears to be a strong display that designers do want to achieve better
design for their users, protect the environment, and reduce damage to society. They seek to help
those less fortunate than themselves, to be recognised for their designs, and to generate profits for
their employers. However, often responsibilities conflict. An important question to ask in
developing our understanding of design responsibilities is; does cognitive dissonance hinder or
help ethical development? Cognitive dissonance is something that all people experience at some
point, but in the role of a designer, a role where conflicts are common and accepted as part of the
process, can it affect development? There has been little research which focuses on cognitive
dissonance in product design. Future work on design responsibility, may consider investigations
into this topic.
The environment is one issue for which many participants were able to demonstrate a sense
of concern and an active acceptance of responsibility. There is no denying that this is an important
issue. However we must be careful about understanding important issues individually. No issue
operates in a vacuum and design involves balancing and determining a solution from a
combination of competing factors. Therefore, this thesis suggests that a holistic, rather than
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8. Conclusions
segmented, approach to design responsibility is required. Designers, both students and practising,
were interested in designing for and understanding their users. However, this thesis suggests that
understanding ones own psyche is just as important and would be beneficial during decision
making. Future work which focuses on the designer, cognitive dissonance, personal construct
theory, and philosophy should address the issues of designers’ thoughts and behaviour, Exploring
and reflecting on these may help the designer to understand what they value and why. It would be
hoped that a greater understanding of oneself and the micro and macro levels of design would
generate more consciously aware and responsible product designers.
The aim of this research was to provide an insight specifically into descriptive design
responsibility. Therefore, it is important to ask: what else might be done in the future to develop a
descriptive understanding of design responsibility?
On reflection of the completed work, the researcher would suggest that there could be a
number of ways to develop this work: (1) take the methodology produced in this thesis and track
the same set of people over a substantial period of time. For example, Kohlberg’s work on moral
development spanned 20 years, (2) develop the methodology by incorporating Kohlberg style
dilemmas. To ensure that the research would be specific to design education, dilemmas could be
generated within design education and design practice. However, rapidly changing technology,
policies, and global environments, may mean that dilemmas relevant to present day design could
date over a long period of research. If this happened and the designer no longer felt able to
connect to such an issue, this may generate irrelevant data. The suggestion would be that the
dilemmas would have to be broad, and be able to stand the test of time. They may have to be
broader than just the field of product design, but this then raises the question; why not just use
Kohlberg’s dilemmas. This is a circular argument and may not actually provide a contribution to
new knowledge. Also, to understand development, the methodology of using dilemmas as
Kohlberg did would only shed light on one aspect of responsibility – a more detailed focus on
moral orders in design (influenced by the work of Harré) would also be recommended for future
researchers wanting to build on the research in this thesis, and (3) investigate design
responsibility and development with Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) and functional
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8. Conclusions
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). Monitoring brain activity to see how the brain works when
addressing responsibility in product design. Dreyfus (2003) suggested that: ‘what is important is
that the novice is not emotionally involved in choosing an action, even if he is involved in its
outcome. Only at the level of competence is there an emotional investment in the choice of action.
Then emotional involvement seems to play an essential role in switching the learner over from
what one might roughly think of as a left-hemisphere analytic approach to a right-hemisphere
holistic one.
Amidzic et al. (2001) have confirmed that amateur and expert chess players use different
parts of the brain, reporting: ‘activity is most evident in the medial temporal lobe in amateur
players, which is consistent with the interpretation that their mental acuity is focused on
analyzing unusual new moves during the game. In contrast, highly skilled chess Grandmasters
have more […] bursts in the frontal and parietal cortices’. These marked the differences in brain
activity between Grandmasters and amateurs during play. Therefore, does this mean that product
design could adopt the use of brain scanning to investigate development? There have been
movements in design to investigate designers’ brain activity (Alexiou, et al., 2009; Gilbert, et al.,
2010). However, it’s questionable whether this methodology could provide useful insights into
responsibility in product designers and help to generate a more complete picture of development
across levels of expertise.
If the theory by Harré is correct and people do move around levels of development
depending on context, then brain scanning of product designers may reveal a more detailed
picture of what concepts of responsibility product designers have more or less developed in
relation to their experience level.
8.6. Summary
This thesis has sought to clarify how responsibility is defined by 21st Century designers. It has
offered snapshots into three levels of expertise and given an insight into the conceptualisation and
construction of responsibility by undergraduate students, graduating students, and practising

255
8. Conclusions
designers. In focusing on these three levels of expertise the research has revealed the nature of the
development of responsibility in products designers. Using an experimental and ‘designerly’
approach to methodology it has been able to map development and introduce a multi-level model
of development that product designers displayed in this research. As a result, this thesis has been
able to offer useful contributions to design education, design practice and design literature.
256
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Appendices
265
266
Appendix A - Kohlberg’s Six Stage Development Model
267
268
A detailed description of Kohlberg’s Six Moral Stages
Content of Stage
Level and Stage What is Right Reasons for Doing Social Perspective of
Right Stage
Level I: Preconventional To avoid breaking Avoidance of Egocentric point of
Stage 1 – rules backed by punishment, and the view. Doesn’t consider
Heteronomous punishment, obedience superior power of the interests of others
for its own sake, and authorities or recognize that they
avoiding physical differ from the actor’s;
damage to persons and doesn’t relate two
property. points of view. Actions
are considered
physically rather than
in terms of
psychological interests
of others. Confusion
of authority’s
perspective with one’s
own.
Stage 2 – Following rules only To serve one’s own Concrete individualistic
Individualism, when it is to someone’s needs or interests in a perspective. Aware that
Instrumental Purpose, immediate interest: world where you have everybody has his own
and Exchange acting to meet one’s to recognize that interest to pursue and
own interests and people have their these conflict, so that
needs and letting interest, too. right is relative (in the
others do the same. concrete individualistic
Right is also what’s sense).
fair, what’s an equal
exchange, a deal, an
agreement.
Level II: Conventional Living up to what is The need to be a good Perspective of the
Stage 3 – Mutual expected by people person in your own individual in
Interpersonal close to you or what eyes and those of relationships with other
Expectations, people generally others. Your caring for individuals. Aware of
Relationships, and expect of people in others. Belief in the shared feelings,
Interpersonal your role as a son, Golden Rule. Desire to agreements and
Conformity brother, friend, etc. maintain rules and expectations which
“Being good” is authority which take primacy over
important and means support stereotypical individual interests.
having good motives, good behaviour. Relates points of view
showing concern about through the concrete
others. It also means Golden Rule, putting
keeping mutual yourself in the other
relationships, such as person’s shoes. Does
trust, loyalty, respect, not yet consider
and gratitude. generalized system
perspective.
Stage 4 – Social Fulfilling actual duties To keep the institution Differentiates societal
System and Conscience to which you have going as a whole, to point of view from
agreed. Laws are to be avoid the breakdown in interpersonal agreement
upheld except in the system “if or motives. Takes the
extreme cases where everyone did it,” or the point of view of the
they conflict with other imperative of system that defines
fixed social duties. conscience to meet roles and rules.
Right is also one’s defined Consider individual
contributing to society, obligations. (Easily relations in terms of
the group, or confused with Stage 3 place in the system.
institution. belief in rules and
269
authority; see text.)
Level III: Being aware that A sense of obligation Prior-to-society
Postconventional or people hold a variety to law because of one’s perspective.
Principled of values and opinions social contract to make Perspective of a
Stage 5 – Social that most values and and abide by laws for rational individual
Contract or Unity and rules are relative to the welfare of all the aware of values and
Individual Rights your group. These protection of all rights prior to social
relative rules should people’s rights. A attachments and
usually be upheld, feeling of contractual/ contracts. Integrates
however, in the interest commitment freely perspectives by formal
of impartiality and entered upon, to family, mechanisms of
because they are the friendship, trust, and agreement, contract,
social contract. Some work obligations. objective impartiality,
nonrelative values and Concern that laws and and due process.
rights like life and duties be based on Considers moral and
liberty, however, must rational calculation of legal points of view;
be upheld in any overall utility, “the recegnizes that they
society and regardless greatest good for the sometimes conflict and
of majority opinion. greatest number.” finds it difficult to
integrate them.
Stage 6 – Universal Following self-chosen The belief as a rational Perspective of a moral
Ethical Principles ethical principles. person in the validity point of view from
Particular laws or of universal moral which social
social agreements are principles, and a sense arrangements derive.
usually valid because of personal Perspective is that of
they rest on such commitment to them. any rational individual
principles. When laws recognizing the nature
violate these principles, of morality or the fact
one acts in accordance that persons are ends
with the principle. in themselves and must
Principles are be treated as such.
universal principles of
justice: the equality of
human rights and
respect for dignity of
human beings as
individual persons.
270
Appendix B - Study 1: Ethical Approval
271
272
273
The Open University guidelines suggested that ethical approval from HPMEC was not required.
Further discussion with the research ethics contact confirmed this. However, as a sign of respect
for good research practise, the following details are provided which demonstrate that ethical
considerations regarding the project were taken into account.
Research Considerations
Department and Faculty: Design, Technology

Location of Activity: UK Universities
Activity: Interviewing graduating design students
PhD Title: Ethics and Design: Understanding the

Responsibility of Product Designers
Supervisors: Dr. Peter Lloyd and Dr. Steve Garner
Name of Researcher: Stacey Birkett
Brief summary of project aim and method: The research will involve visits to 10-12 UK
universities to attend design degree shows, where
graduating students present their final year
projects. At these shows, interviews will take
place. The aim is to interview roughly 5 graduates
per show.
The method will involve a prepared questionnaire

and audio recordings of the discussions with
participants. No personal data will be gathered.
Verbal permission will be sought before interviews
take place. Students will be informed of all
possible usage of the data; used in presentations,
papers, and thesis. However, all quotes will be used
anonymously, without indication to the specific
university where they were collected. Also, if
students have worked for outside clients, these
details would be omitted from any future uses, to
ensure no student can be identified.
Location of Activities: UK Universities.
Time Scale: May - July, 2007
How will consent be obtained: Verbal consent. Without this the interview will
not take place.
Does the procedure involve any possible This should not be an issue. The interviews aim to
distress or harm to participants: gather information on the design process and
responsibility. The content to this should not be
sensitive. However, the students will be told before
the interview that if they wish to terminate the
interview at any point they can. Also if they
decide after the interview that they do not want to
be involved in the study that their data will not be
used.
How can participants withdraw from the study: The participants can withdraw at any point during
the interview or at the end. Also business cards
274
will be handed out to ensure that the students
have the details of the researcher, should they
have any further questions or concerns. The
students are told before taking part what the data
will be used for. If data is used in a published
paper then it is difficult if the participant then
wants to withdraw. To ensure that the print article
has no way of identifying the student; anonymity
will be ensured.
How are confidentiality and/or anonymity to See previous notes.
be maintained:
What information will you give participants in Students will be thanked for their time. They will
the debriefing: be reminded of the uses of the data and given
another face-to-face opportunity to withdraw from
the study. The students will also be provided with
a business card, including contact details, to
ensure that they can contact me to withdraw. This
enables students who may feel uncomfortable
withdrawing face-to-face to do so via telephone, e-
mail or in writing.
Any other ethical issues: No photographs of the participants will be taken,
or video recordings made. Instead audio
recordings will be made. These will need to be
kept on a password protected computer and
backups kept in a secure, safe, place.
Hazards/Risks: Fire – familiarise myself with fire procedure on
arrival at the university.
Data Protection: Audio recordings will be kept. They contain no
personal information of the participant or the
university which the data was gathered.
Contact Details
Name: STACEY BIRKETT
Unit: DESIGN
Address: THE OPEN UNIVERSITY
Telephone: ---
e-mail: ---
Signature:
Date: April 2007
275
276
Appendix C - Keyword Database
277
278
List of keywords, phrases and issues from Study 1 database

Accessible Accessible Consumerism
Anthropometrics Accident Design for disassembly
Design brief Communication Eco Design
Design to help DDA Ecology
Ease of use Ergonomics Energy
Ecological Design Evaluations Environment
Emotional Design Health Environmentally friendly
Ergonomics IPR Frivolous
Function Law Global Design
Good design Legal Green design
Inclusive design Legislation Landfill
Interoperability Product failure Longevity
Methods Safe Manufacture
Needs Standards Materials
Practice Testing Melt down
Purpose Validate Product life cycle
Requirements Warnings Recycle
Sensible design Reuse
Simple Sustainability
Target Audience Wastage
Technology
Unique design
Usable
Wants
Business Actions Accident
Client Aesthetics Aesthetics
Community Attitudes Branding
Consumer Benefiting Chain of distribution
Designer Benefits Change
Market Choices Choices
Money Consequences Cog in a machine
Society Consumerism Competitive advantage
Target market Decisions Compromise
User Emotional Impact Conflicts
Ethics Cutting the future
Fair trade Decisions
Frivolous Education
Human needs Emotional Design
Intentions Emotional Impact
Landfill Future
Morals High road/Low road
Nobody is exploited Longevity
Place of manufacture Marketing
Purpose Measuring up as a designer
Society Misuse
Sweatshops Money
Unethical design Past
Unintentional Psychology of design
Useful Products Rat race
Value of design Research
What happens when the product is Target Audience
279
out there in the market Trade offs
Two hats
Worst case scenarios
Examples
Bathmat - elderly women died using it the wrong way
Ford Pinto - intentions, actions, and consequences of the fuel tank design.
Ford transit vans - use in robberies
Tesco - ripping off farmers
Papanek – Environment contributions and influence on students ideas of responsibility.

University lecturers – Stories and teachings which lecturers have pasted down regarding responsibility, law suits,
preventive design etc.
280
Appendix D – Images for developing a card set
281
282
Image cards and representations/associations of issues of responsibility
Life cycle Sustainability Energy Materials

Manufacture Compromise Future
Global Design Change Change
End of life Development Function
Waste Ethics
Recycle
Energy Fair trade Ergonomics Consumerism

Change Helping others Anthropometrics Frivolous
Future Benefits Function Landfill
Past Society Accessible Psychology
Business Longevity Standards Emotion
Society Chain of Legislation Purchasing
Attitudes distribution Useful products Business
Trade offs Misuse
Sustainability
Landfill Sweatshop Ethics Validate

Consumerism Exploitation Kant Standards
Waste Global design Morals Testing
Recycle Place of Actions Legislation
Damage manufacture Intentions
Environment Ethics Consequences
Unethical Change
283
IPR Conflicts Design for Accessible
Change Trade offs disassembly Purpose
Manufacture Game play Product life cycle Function
Ease of Use Strategy Manufacture Global design
Simple Planning Technology Standards
Technology Future Function Legislation
Unique Design Standards Benefit
Branding Research Society
Advertising Consumer Communication
Aesthetics Community
Wants DDA
Business Conflicts Consumerism Conflict

Client Trade offs Mass manufacture Battle
Market Balance Simple Determination
Professional Justice Purpose Training
Money Ethics Anthropometrics Commitment
Legal Ergonomics Materials
Standards Inclusive design
Ethics High road/Low road Money Two hats

Change Two paths Currency Two mindsets
Law Choices Global markets Choices
Legal Decisions Culture
Ecology Consumer
Environment Designer
Client
Business
284
Branding Business Branding Recycle
Global Design Community Place of Reuse
Manufacture Society manufacture Life cycle
Recycle Combat Unique design Future
Landfill Friendship IPR Society
Business Bond Aesthetics
Purpose Deal
Change Helping
IPR
Manufacture Client DDA Recycle

Change Business Accessible Reuse
Society Inclusive design Longevity
Helping
Legislation
Legal
Helping Choices Community Safety

Community Decisions Society Standards
Society Aesthetics Global markets Legislation
Wants User Laws
Needs Legal
Communication
Warnings
285
Ford Pinto Energy Measuring up as a Recycle
Accident Sustainability designer Landfill
Worst case scenario Longevity Ergonomics Waste
Ethics Anthropometrics Change
Morals Testing Reuse
Unethical Melt down
Intentions Environment
Materials
Sustainability
Energy
Sustainability Cogs in a machine Branding Change

Environmentally Time IPR Consumerism
friendly Movement Sweatshops
Change Place of
Complexity manufacture
Function Purpose
Fashion
Consumerism
286
Appendix E - Card Set (including numbers)
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
Card Image Card Source
Number
6 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/shebalso/108279806/
Uploaded on: March 5, 2006
8 Available at: http://flickr.com/photos/amsterdamned/2060974024/
Uploaded on: November 24, 2007
10 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/114430223/
Uploaded on: March 18, 2006
12 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jedistemo/344792390/
Uploaded on: January 3, 2007
14 Available at: http://flickr.com/photos/tussenpozen/125564907/
Uploaded on: April 9, 2006
17 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pgoyette/168076182/
Uploaded on: June 15, 2006
19 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/georgyh/2164247468/in/set-
72157600229687264/
20 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kingdesmond/477389196/
Uploaded on: April 29, 2007
22 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dtp999/330845300/
Uploaded on: December 23, 2006
24 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/86598108@N00/184720748/
Uploaded on: July 8, 2006
25 Available at: http://flickr.com/photos/ash2276/704913014/
295
Uploaded on: July 3, 2007
27 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/auntiep/154473436/
Uploaded on: May 27, 2006
30 Available at: http://flickr.com/photos/frischmilch/2237505344/
Uploaded on: February 2, 2008
31 Available at: http://flickr.com/photos/destructogirl/242368536/
Uploaded on: September 13, 2006
32 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenccwu/316669375/
Uploaded on: December 7, 2006
33 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bexy87/152587999/
Uploaded on: May 24, 2006
35 Available at: http://flickr.com/photos/jpetraliax/2290186626/
Uploaded on: February 24, 2008
36 Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/glasgows/2200685325/
296
Appendix F - Study 2: Ethical Approval
297
298
299

Location of Activity: UK product design companies
Activity: Card Sorting and Interviewing task

Brief summary of project aim and method: The research will involve visiting between 10-15
practising product designers at their place of
work. They will be presented with card sorting
task – this will consist of two sorts. First the triad
sort which involves six 3 card sorts (the concept is
developed for psychology and the work of George
Kelly). The second sort is influenced by
knowledge elicitation (KE) and involves a card
sorting task which is more focused specifically on
the topic of responsibilities in product design.
Location of Activities: UK product design companies (with the possibility
for incorporating participants in other Countries)
Time Scale: April - September 2008
How will consent be obtained: Verbal consent. Without this the task will not take
place.
Does the procedure involve any possible This should not be an issue. The card sorting task
distress or harm to participants: aims to gather information on the design process
and responsibility. The content to this should not
be sensitive. However, the participants will be
informed before the interview that if they wish to
terminate the task at any point they can. Also if
they decide after the interview that they do not
want to be involved in the study that their data
will not be used.
will be handed out to ensure that the participants
have any further questions or concerns (in this
study the companies contacted will also have
received a letter with the researchers details). The
participants are told before taking part what the
data will be used for. If data is used in a published
has no way of identifying the participants;
300
anonymity will be ensured.
How are confidentiality and/or anonymity to No names will be allocated to the data.
be maintained:
What information will you give participants in Participants will be thanked for their time. They
the debriefing: will be reminded of the uses of the data and given
the study. The participants will also be provided
with a business card, including contact details, to
enables participants who may feel uncomfortable
mail or in writing.
Any other ethical issues: No photographs of the participants will be taken,
but photographs of their card movements will be
aimed for. However, I do not plan on gathering
any pictures that would allow the participants to
be identifiable. Audio recordings of the time spent
with the participants during the task will be made.
Photographs and audio recordings will need to be
kept on a password protected computer and
backups kept in a secure, safe, place.
arrival at the company.
Data Protection: Audio recordings will be kept. They will contain
no personal information about the participants or
company name etc.
Contact Details
Unit: DESIGN
Telephone: ---
e-mail: ---
Signature:
Date: March 2008
301
302
Appendix G - Study 3: Ethical Approval
303
304
305

Location of Activity: Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU)
Activity: Card sorting and Interview task (same as that
conducted in Study 2, but with students)

Brief summary of project aim and method: The research will involving conducting the card
sorting task with 10-15 first year product design
students at HKPU. They will be presented with
card sorting task – this will consist of two sorts.
First the triad sort which involves six 3 card sorts
(the concept is developed for psychology and the
work of George Kelly). The second sort is
influenced by knowledge elicitation (KE) and
involves a card sorting task which is more focused
specifically on the topic of responsibilities in
product design.
Location of Activities: Hong Kong Polytechnic University (HKPU)
Campus.
Time Scale: September - January 2008.
How will consent be obtained: Verbal consent. Without this the task will not take
place.
Does the procedure involve any possible This should not be an issue. The card sorting task
distress or harm to participants: aims to gather information on the design process
and responsibility. The content to this should not
be sensitive. However, the participants will be
informed before the interview that if they wish to
terminate the task at any point they can. Also if
they decide after the interview that they do not
want to be involved in the study that their data
will not be used.
will be handed out to ensure that the participants
have any further questions or concerns (in this
study the companies contacted will also have
received a letter with the researchers details). The
participants are told before taking part what the
306
data will be used for. If data is used in a published
has no way of identifying the participants;
anonymity will be ensured.
How are confidentiality and/or anonymity to No names will be allocated to the data.
be maintained:
What information will you give participants in Participants will be thanked for their time. They
the debriefing: will be reminded of the uses of the data and given
the study. The participants will also be provided
with a business card, including contact details, to
enables participants who may feel uncomfortable
mail or in writing.
Any other ethical issues: No video recordings of the participants will be
taken, but video recordings focusing on their card
movements will be aimed for. However, I do not
plan on gathering any data that would allow the
participants to be identifiable. Audio recordings
will also be made, to ensure that sound quality is
at its highest, during the task. Video and audio
recordings will need to be kept on a password
protected computer and backups kept in a secure,
safe, place.
arrival at the University.
Data Protection: Audio recordings will be kept. They will contain
no personal information about the participants or
company name etc.
Contact Details
Unit: DESIGN
Telephone: ---
e-mail: ---
Signature:
Date: August 2008
307

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________________________________________________________________________

The Development of Responsibility in Product

Department of Design, Development, Environment, and Materials

product design has received less attention.

responsibility in their work as product designers.

responsibility change and evolve as levels of expertise in designing develop.

highly relevant to future research with designers as participants.

This is to certify that:

100,000 words in length, inclusive of all footnotes, bibliographies and appendices.

developed, and are incorporated in this thesis:

In Proceedings of International Association of Societies of Design Research conference

(IASDR09), COEX Centre, Seoul, South Korea.

towards design responsibility: a survey. In Proceedings of International conference on engineering

believe that anything is possible if you work hard enough.

both at the OU and in Milton Keynes.

this task. I therefore, dedicate this thesis to him.

Phase one: Introducing and exploring design and ethics ....................................................................1

1. On design and ethics ...........................................................................................................................3

1.1. The interchangeability of terms..................................................................................................... 4

1.2. Towards a definition of terms......................................................................................................... 6

1.3. Responsibility in product design.................................................................................................. 11

1.4. Towards an interface between design and ethics..................................................................... 19

2. Interrogating the interface between design and ethics .............................................................27

2.1. Distinguishing between the prescriptive and descriptive...................................................... 27

2.2. The prescriptive in design and ethics ......................................................................................... 31

2.2.1. Prescriptive practice: Codes of ethics..................................................................................... 36

2.2.2. The prescriptive in education ..................................................................................................39

2.3. The descriptive in design and ethics ...........................................................................................44

2.3.1. How individuals make ethical judgements ........................................................................... 47

2.3.2. Descriptive accounts of design ethics .................................................................................... 55

2.4. A framework for the research ....................................................................................................... 59

3.1. Towards a descriptive approach................................................................................................... 64

3.2. The beginnings of a research question ....................................................................................... 66

3.3. Planning and developing study 1................................................................................................. 68

3.4. Core research questions.................................................................................................................. 70

3.5. Study 1 – Responsibility in graduating product designers ................................................... 70

3.6. Method of data analysis and findings.......................................................................................... 72

3.6.3. Differences in what participants said and did...................................................................... 78

responsibility in product design ............................................................................................................. 85

4. A new method to investigate design responsibility ................................................................... 87

4.1. How study 1 influenced the development of study 2.............................................................. 87

4.2. Using study 1 data to develop a method for study 2 .............................................................. 89

4.2.1. Developing a card set from the database .............................................................................. 92

4.2.2. Producing a manageable card set ........................................................................................... 95

4.3. A card sorting exercise – How to sort?...................................................................................... 99

4.4.1. Task 1 .......................................................................................................................................... 103

4.4.2. Task 2 .......................................................................................................................................... 110

4.4.3. Task 3 .......................................................................................................................................... 112

4.4.4. Task 4 .......................................................................................................................................... 113

4.4.5. Discussion of pilot studies ...................................................................................................... 115

4.5. Repertory grids and the construction of meaning ................................................................ 116

4.5.1. Triads and personal constructs............................................................................................. 118

4.6.1. Card sorting task and thesis research questions............................................................... 124

4.6.2. Final method.............................................................................................................................. 124

4.7. Summary.......................................................................................................................................... 125

5. Study 2 – Investigating design responsibility in practising designers.................................127

5.1. Responsibility in practice............................................................................................................. 127

5.2. Method of data analysis and findings........................................................................................132

5.2.1. Triad sorts ..................................................................................................................................132