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

Engineering ethics and design processes
‘Value Sensitive Design 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.’ [Friedman et al.,
2003, 1]
This definition does not imply that value sensitive design is only applicable
within software and computer design. Yet, the concept has until now been mainly
used within these fields and not with regard to the design of other kinds of
technology [www.nyu.edu/projects/valuesindesign/index.html]. In using a
philosophical analysis of values and sociological research into the use and
development of technology, value sensitive design is an attempt to make software
designs that account for moral values like privacy and autonomy.
The research under taken here may be considered research into the way
engineers deal with moral values during engineering design processes and
therefore research into value sensitive design. There is, however, a difference:
whereas researchers into values sensitive design are trying to develop a method
for dealing with moral values, I will concentrate on describing how engineers
deal with ethical issues like safety and sustainability. Another difference is that
some ethical issues that are very important in software design like, for example,
privacy and identity are not that important for my case-studies of engineering
design.
2.2 Design
The features of design problems and design processes relevant to the topic of
this thesis are presented in this section. At the end of this section I will present
the conception of design processes used in this work.
2.2.1 Design process
According to Cross, the design process can be seen as a process in which
products or tools are created to suit human purposes [Cross, 2000, 3]. The
starting point of a design process is usually some stated or perceived customer’s
needs. A material structure that meets these functional requirements is
designed. 3 The design process is usually constrained by economic and time
restrictions. A design should be finished by a certain date and the costs of the
whole design process should not exceed a certain amount of money.
In the literature on design methodology a lot of different models of design
processes can be found ([Cross, 1989], [Roozenburg and Cross, 1991] and [Baxter,
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3 One could also speak of the design of an organization in which an organizational structure is
designed rather than a material structure. I will focus on the design of material artefacts.
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