Design for “Ethical Quibbles”

As a writer (uncited in the article) from the Economist experiences the MoMA’s “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibit, he begins to ponder the role of designers in the near future. One particular innovation-art piece, “Victimless Leather,” in which a miniature leather coat is “grown” around a polymer structure in a sort of life support system, caused him to realize that a “ethical quibble” has been put to rest over the use of animals for fashion.

Design, as does science, is often pushing on the edges of acceptable practices, material choices and intended use. Currently, these concerns are usually rooted in business value. Are plastic cars desirable in the consumer’s mind? Is plastic the most affordable material for beverage containers? Can we increase sales with an all-in-one device, or with multiple specialized devices?

The more rapidly our capacity for design and innovation advances, business value questions will continue to be intertwined with difficult ethical questions as well. Are we risking people’s safety with plastic automobiles? Can chemicals leach from plastic bottles into people’s drinking water? Is the world burdened by so many discarded electronic devices and their inability to be re-sourced?

There’s no time for consumers to decide these things for themselves. And people are unlikely to sacrifice their own pleasure and satisfaction by denying themselves things like cheaper cars, bottled water or iPods, despite the vague, remote consequences.

Where designers are finding a new, if unintended, role is in solving the world’s dilemmas one project at a time. Science and technology makes new products and experiences available to early adopters long before any sort of system or solution is designed to carry it to the masses. The result is often a clash of desire and consequence for consumers: I want safe drinking water available wherever I am vs I don’t want to destroy the planet. (hyperbole only partly intended).

Naturally, this conflict only exists after something has gone to market and the consequences are realized. It is then that massive design change often enters the picture to recover losses and disrupt the seemingly unstoppable negative effects of something as simply as water packaging. Light-weigthing bottles, biodegradable plastics, semi-permanent containers like Nalgene bottles, the solutions are sometimes as fraught with consequences as the original problem.

Are biodegradable bottles really harmless? Is it just throwing money away when conventional plastic, or even glass, could be recycled? Do they still leach chemicals? Are Nalgene bottles just a fashion statement with little effect?

Strategic design can certainly devise fuller systems to accommodate various use cases and help curtail poor design from literally junking up our world. But the most effective role for design is a matter of timing. As stated in previous entries, sometimes the most innovative thing a designer can do is perfect an already existing product or system. But in many cases, that only limits design to a clean-up crew. Establishing strategic design as a core competency in a manufacturing environment means starting with designers as partners, not reaching out when things go wrong. In this way, design can continue to solve our “ethical quibbles,” but before they become barriers to adoption in the marketplace.

So while the example of a leather coat is a matter of millennia between invention and design perfection, products entering the market today are increasingly new inventions. And the iPod is actually a fairly decent example of design making a better, more fully-conceived product, even though it meant not being the first to market. But the dangerous chemicals in iPod components are only recently being rethought. And what to do about all those planned obsolescent devices they’ve created in the meantime? A clean-up crew, indeed.