This is a provocative talk on design ethics that might spark a debate with the audience. The presenter will show well-known design products and processes that promise to deliver unique experiences. His critique of these examples will uncover ethical questions related to oppression. Being a designer, is it ethical to design an experience for another human being? To what extent do we impose the aesthetic taste of our class, gender, race, or nation through our designed experiences? Can we design outside of taste regimes? How can we design against oppression and in favor of liberation? The experiences designed by the Design & Oppression Network will also be presented as a counterpoint.
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Ethics and aesthetics of the experience designed for the Other
1. Ethics and aesthetics of the
experience designed for the Other
Frederick van Amstel @fredvanamstel
Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO), UTFPR
www.fredvanamstel.com
5. DESIGNERS
People whose designs
are recognized as
designs
USERS
People whose designs
are NOT recognized as
designs
Designer experience
User experience
6. SELF
Privileged social
groups (Global North,
Men, White, rich,
able…)
OTHER
Underprivileged
social groups
(Global South,
Women, Black, poor,
disabled…)
Designer experience
User experience
25. The Other feel being heard when there is a Participatory
Design commitment (Frediani et al., 2014).
26. The synthesis of multiple voices needs to be very careful not
to silence or diminish any voice.
27. Designers need to defend the voice of the Other when the
Other is not present.
28. What if the Other says
something anti-ethical?
29. In Brazil, passengers and drivers agree on the option to ride
in silence in Uber Comfort. This is unethical because the
driver cannot express his preferences in the same way.
39. Behind every aesthetic, there is implicit ethics, that is, a
way of living in society (Verbeek, 2005). For example,
animojis allow you to express emotions to the Other
without showing your face, just like carnival masks.
40. The aesthetic choices of emojis also follow class, race, and
gender tastes (Barbieri & Camacho-Collados, 2018).
43. Modern, minimalist and clean graphics are some of the
common features of the aesthetics of the oppressor.
44. Postmodern, exuberant and diverse graphics are some of the
common features of the aesthetics of the oppressed.
45. Is it possible to train the senses
to criticize the aesthetics of the
oppressor and appreciate the
aesthetics of the oppressed?
46. The Design & Oppression network offers a Designs of the
Oppressed online course about that.
47. In 2021, we played Homage to Magritte dramatic game
(Boal, 2005): What if this coke bottle wasn’t a coke bottle?
48. In the Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO), we
learn to read and write the aesthetics of the oppressed.
49. In LADO pedagogical experiences, we train students to taste
something new every day.
50. What if none of this is
possible? What if the degree of
freedom to take ethical
decisions is next to zero? What
if you are being oppressed to
oppress the Other?
51. When there are no ethical decisions left to be taken, you are
being treated as a tool, not as a human. Better resign soon
than wait to be replaced by an A.I.
52. What if there are no remaining
job posts for designers?
53. You can delegate decisions to machines, but you cannot
delegate responsibility for these (MIT’s Moral Machine).
54. Designers are hired precisely
for that: to take responsibility
for the ethical and aesthetic
decisions delegated to Things.
55. Ethics and aesthetics is not just
a matter of design thinking.
It is a matter of design
consciousness.
57. References
Barbieri, F., & Camacho-Collados, J. (2018, June). How gender and skin tone modifiers affect emoji semantics in
Twitter. In Proceedings of the Seventh Joint Conference on Lexical and Computational Semantics (pp. 101-106).
Frediani et al. (2014). Change by Design London: Collective imaginations for contested sites in Euston. Available
at: https://issuu.com/asf-uk/docs/cbd_london_report_
Monteiro, M. (2017). A Designer's Code of Ethics. https://deardesignstudent.com/a-designers-code-of-ethics-
f4a88aca9e95
Verbeek, P. P. (2005). What things do. Penn State University Press.
Verbeek, P. P. (2011). Moralizing technology: Understanding and designing the morality of things. University of
Chicago press.
Marsh, D. (2015) For What It's Worth: Diamonds. http://dillonmarsh.com/diamonds.html
Gonzatto, R. F., & Van Amstel, F. M. (2017, October). Designing oppressive and libertarian interactions with the
conscious body. In Proceedings of the XVI Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp.
1-10).
Saito, C., Serpa, B.O., Angelon, R., and van Amstel, F. (2022) Coming to terms with design wickedness:
Reflections from a forum theatre on design thinking, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J.,
Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June – 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.668
Salmazo, Humberto William. (2021) Memorial Céu Brasileiro Bot: design gráfico, arte generativa, visualização de
dados e automação no Twitter. Trabalho de Conclusão de Curso (Tecnologia em Design Gráfico) – Universidade
Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Curitiba, 2021.
Boal, A. (2005). Games for actors and non-actors. Routledge.
58. Thank you!
Frederick van Amstel @fredvanamstel
Laboratory of Design against Oppression (LADO), UTFPR
www.fredvanamstel.com