What and whose values in design?. The challenge of incorporating ethics into collaborative prototyping
| Published date | 04 March 2014 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JICES-11-2013-0054 |
| Pages | 18-20 |
| Date | 04 March 2014 |
| Author | Anne Gerdes |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information management & governance |
What and whose values in design?
The challenge of incorporating ethics
into collaborative prototyping
Anne Gerdes
Department of Design and Communication,
University of Southern Denmark, Kolding, Denmark
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to represent a response to the invited paper by Ellen Christiansen: “From ethics
of the eye to ethics of the handin participatory designand development of digital technologies”.
Design/methodology/approach – The response takes departure in Christiansen’s view points
regarding dialogue-oriented collaborative prototyping as a mean to address values in design.
Findings – The response points to the limitations of Christiansen’s approach in claiming that
dialogue cannot by itself ensure integration of ethics into the practice of design.
Originality/value – The response addresses methodological issues related to ethical design and
stresses the importance of a pro-active design approach in order to implement values in design.
Keywords Stakeholder engagement, IT ethics, Value-baseddesign
Paper type Viewpoint
Christiansen’s main claim is that a participatory design approach, focusing on dialogue
with users will ensure integration of ethics into the practice of design. The argument
reveals around Ricour’s use of the Aristotelian three-folded concept of mimesis, which,
in the work of Ricoeur, can be viewed as an epistemological tool enabling us to reach a
mutual understandingof existential issues,i.e. through mimesis the hermeneuticmerging
of horizonsbetween, in Ricoeur’s case, reader and textis realized. This observation carries
over to Christiansen’s ideals for doing ethics in design as emphasized in collaborative
prototyping, which provides a method to integrate user ideas and life worlds in design.
Throughoutthe article, Christiansen stressesthe point “that it is the collaborativemaking
and the eye to eye dialogue, which brings ethics into the project”.
Christiansen brings in an example, “the case of Eliza”; to illustrate the importance of
dialogue as it unfolds in two different ways in connection with Weizenbaum’s program
Eliza, which by means of simple natural language processing techniques gives the user
the impression that she is engaged in a therapeutic dialogue. Here, Christiansen claims
that Weizenbaum, in his eager to illustrate the shortcomings of AI, only had eye for the
system and thus failed to realize the therapeutic benefits, which were revealed in the
actual context of system-user interaction. Thus, Christiansen states:
[...] he kept seeing his program, instead of engaging in the making that the program and it
users establishes. Seeing it makes it appear as a fraud, while engaging with it makes it a
dialogue partner.
I think that Weizenbaum did indeed realize what was at stake in the sense-making,
which played out during users interaction with Eliza. The fact that we are highly
meaning-seeking and interpretative beings causes us to anthropomorphisize systems
and robots and intuitively interprets them as fellows. As summarized in a phrase by
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1477-996X.htm
Received 28 November 2013
Revised 28 November 2013
Accepted 29 November 2013
Journal of Information,
Communication and Ethics in Society
Vol. 12 No. 1, 2014
pp. 18-20
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
1477-996X
DOI 10.1108/JICES-11-2013-0054
JICES
12,1
18
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