Ethical issues in engineering design - 3TU.Centre for Ethics and ...

Ethical issues in engineering design
After the interview and observation periods I gave a presentation of my
results to each of the design teams. This presentation was followed by a
discussion. Engineers could indicate whether I had made some incorrect factual
statements about the design process and whether or not they recognised the
results. The presentation was also a last opportunity for me to ask about some
details that were not yet clear to me. The reason for giving a presentation at the
end of the observation and interviewing period was that the engineers were
curious about, and interested in, my research and results. If engineers asked me
about the results, I told them that I would present my results, and give them the
opportunity to react to these results, later on. This gave me the opportunity to
postpone discussions on safety and sustainability until the presentation in order
to influence the design process as little as possible.
I have chosen to change the names of the participating engineers in the
descriptions of the design processes The engineers did not ask me to do this but
I have chosen to protect their privacy in the main text, see appendix 1 for more
concrete information. The exact identity of the persons involved does not matter
for the case descriptions, his or her arguments, decisions and formal position in
the design team are relevant for this thesis.
In doing the case-studies, I made the choice to present myself as an engineer
among engineers. A large advantage of this choice was that the design team
members knew that I could understand the “language” of engineers; and
although my participation was kept to a minimum during the observation and
interview period, the members of the design teams knew that I was a qualified
engineer; this made communication easier. The design team members did not
feel compelled to explain everything they were doing in a simplified way.
In line with keeping my participation at a minimum, I did not contribute to
the solution of the design problem. This choice was also made because
participating in a design process would require a lot from me as I had no
previous design experience. The design task would probably completely absorb
my attention and time, making it difficult also to observe what was going on in
the team. Therefore, I was involved but not as a member of the design team. I
had some input in the design process at the end of the data gathering period
when I presented my results.
With regard to the validity of my results, I tried to minimise the influence of
my presence. I did this by indicating that I was interested in ethical issues in
design processes without a thorough explanation of what I meant by the term
“ethical issues”. Roughly, engineers in the cases interpreted the term “ethical
issues” in four different ways. First, some engineers thought that I wanted to look
at human rights and wondered what I was doing in their company because they
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