ABSTRACT
Asking designers to consider the moral implications of design action might ruffle the feathers of many. It’s much cleaner (and far less daunting) to see designers’ roles as communicating other points of view, messages, or strategies. But I would argue that designers’ capacity for recognizing problems at different scales, and formulating alternative plans and propositions is exactly the reason their role is so critical. The capacity to imagine alternatives to existing conditions also gives designers an astute ability to recognize intended and unintended consequences. By exploring the three fundamental ways that morality and design are integrated we can better understand how designers might respond. One critical way that designers should consider the moral dimension of their work is by divorcing themselves from the nuts and bolts of the everyday design process. The focus on intervention, innovation, and ideation that drive the designers need to improve existing conditions overwhelms the ability to see the ultimate, and longer-term impact of those solutions. The rest of this chapter will be dedicated to the methods that designer might employ to speculate and imagine these longer-term impacts and the moral dimension of designs strategies. Through a series of topics such as design fiction, culture probes, and games and gaming, this chapter explores the ways that speculation and imagination can open up richer possibilities for considering the moral dimensions of design action.
