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

Engineering ethics and design processes
might prove to be necessary to adjust or drop some requirements because no
solution meeting all the requirements can be found. So a design problem can be
under, or over, determined by the requirements. Either way, engineers need to
make choices during the design process for example regarding which
requirements can be dropped or which of the possible solutions to the design
problem is the best.
2.2.3 The design process as a social process
Most designs are made by a team of engineers. Designing is in these cases a
social process. Choices are made in, and by groups of people. During the design
process, communication, negotiation, argumentation, (mis)trust between
engineers and power differences between engineers influence the design. This
has consequences for design research as the design process should be
conceptualised as a social process. There is some research into actual design
processes with design teams [Bucciarelli, 1994], [Lloyd and Busby, 2001], [Lloyd,
2000] and [Baird et al., 2000]. Bucciarelli describes the design process as a social
process in which negotiation is necessary:
‘Contemporary design is, in most instances, a complex affair in which
participants with different responsibilities and interests…. must bring their
stories in coherence’ [Bucciarelli, 1994, 83]
The different engineers, with their different educational backgrounds and
experiences, will all conceive the design task differently. Take for example the
cage construction and bodywork of a car. A mechanical engineer looks at stresses
and strains within the cage construction and bodywork of a car. He or she tries to
design them in such a way that stresses and strains remain low during normal
use and absorb energy during a crash. An aerodynamics engineer might look at
the same bodywork and sees a body that needs to have a low frontal area and a
low drag coefficient. Although both the mechanical and the aerodynamics
engineer look at the same parts they see something different and think of
different requirements the parts should meet. All these different views have to be
‘brought in coherence’ [Bucciarelli, 1994], just like all the parts have to fit and
function together. This ‘bringing into coherence’ is done as a process of
communication and negotiation.
Other authors also recognise the importance of social processes during the
design process and stress the importance of communication. Lloyd stresses the
importance of storytelling within the design process [Lloyd, 2000]. Engineers
construct stories during the design process. These stories are used to come to a
common understanding:
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