How designers can re-shape our interaction with the world
Why designers have moral responsibility
How many times have you heard technology is going to ruin us all? How many times have you read we spend too much time on our phones, scrolling Facebook’s newsfeed and watching YouTube videos? How many times have you refreshed your News app to check nothing happened while you were reading an article?
Descriptions of a dystopian future aside, the idea that technologies are increasingly pervasive is quite widespread. On a larger scale, this pervasiveness concerns the very framework of social development. On a smaller scale, albeit not less compelling, our everyday habits and mores are involved. It seems younger generations don’t hang out with friends because they are constantly connected through their phones. Or simply take a look at your daily routine. I personally wouldn’t know where to go if Google Maps were to disappear.
I don’t think we benefit much from the scowling outcry against technologies. Technologies are also life saving and, within the limits of the science available, they have enhanced our possibilities since the beginning of time. The instrumental value of a majority of artifacts, be it ‘old’ technology (you are wearing glasses maybe?) or state-of-the-art tools, is the product of our natural tendency to make things easier for ourselves.
Here is the problem though: virtually any artifact is not a mere tool, but it is a mediator between us and the world. The more technology becomes pervasive, the more mediated the interaction with our environment is.
Some instances are more obvious than others: A winter coat and a phone seem to have little in common. The fact that phone calls, texts and chats have changed our communication with others is almost a platitude. The fact that a heavy winter coat has modified the frequency or the feelings that accompany my going out during winter times is a less overt role artifacts play in our lives.
Technological mediation has the unfortunate side effect of being sometimes maliciously intrusive. Data handling and privacy concerns are first page news and questions over the power of algorithms to get us hooked on our TVs are (rightly) pressing.
But before we throw out the baby with the bathwater, we should try to shut out the voices of anti-technology proselytisers and reflect on how designers can shape technologies that don’t force themselves on users.
This all amounts to a single question: what is the moral relevance of technological artifacts?
Technology and morality
Although technologies seem much more grounded into reality than the abstract concept of morality, the moral significance of technologies is an essential component designers need to factor in during their designing process.
The moral significance of technologies is an essential component designers need to factor in during their designing process
Roughly, moral philosophy seeks an answer to the question: ‘How should I act?’
I haven’t found any conclusive answer among the myriad of moral systems and their concepts of right and wrong. However, I think it’s worth shifting the attention towards the fact that there is no clear-cut distinction between man, technology and morality.
There is no clear-cut distinction between man, technology and morality
Morality is concerned with actions and, as human beings, we live as we act and we act as we live. If technologies mediate the way we are in the world, there is an undeniable connection between technology and morality.
Once we recognise that technologies shape our practices, we see that they have an active role in what we experience and how we experience it.
Going back to a previous example, not only have phones reshaped our communications, but they have also created new scenarios we wouldn’t have otherwise experienced. Fifty years ago, no one would have ever thought about texting their friend at 2am to tell them about the dream they just had. Better yet, no one would have ever thought about wanting to tell their friend about the dream they just had. That is, the value of technology is not simply its functionality, but it is also — I dare say ‘mostly’ — its power to influence people’s intentions and behaviours.
Designers have the power to influence people’s intentions and behaviour
In moral philosophy, intentions and autonomy are two paramount conditions for moral responsibility. If we take human beings to be moral actors, that means that they form intentions and they act autonomously.
If technology can and does influence our intentions and actions, technological artifacts are inextricably connected to our decision-making process. Hence their moral relevance and the need for designers to embed their work within a moral framework.
How does technology influence us?
Deliberate or unintended, technologies affect individual and social behaviour under three different accounts. Drawing on the work of Madeleine Akrich, Latour distinguishes between inscriptions, prescriptions and subscriptions, which together frame quite precisely the way we use technological artifacts.
On Latour‘ s account, designers inscribe an object with a message, i.e.: inscription, and this inscription usually implies a prescription, which, in turn, might compel a subscription. Latour’s famous example of the speed bumps explains how it works:
The inscription as thought by the designer is, roughly, ‘drive slowly and drive responsibly.’ The implied prescription is ‘slow down’, while the subscription that follows might be phrased as ‘I’ll slow down or I’ll damage the car.”
A speed bump deliberately aims at changing people’s behaviour. It addresses an undeniably relevant concern (i.e.: safety) by exploiting a relatively more mundane individual concern, i.e.: I don’t want to damage my car.
While this instance creates few qualms about intentions and autonomy because it attends to a collective (and legitimate) concern, the exploitation of individual concerns (like not wanting to damage the car) to trigger certain behaviours rightly puts design ethics under the spotlight.
Speed bumps bring about a desirable change. But how do designers decide what kind of influence to exert and how do they draw the line between coercion and influence?
Reality, responsibility and design
The virtually infinite potential of technologies to push users into channeled experiences changes the hermeneutics of perception, that is, it influences how human beings are present in the world. The constitutive role of technologies in co-shaping our experiences provides a new hermeneutic perspective over our representation of reality and thus creates both new experiences and interpretations. Thus the mediating role of technologies plays a fundamental role in establishing our relationships with our environment and in selecting what we count as ‘our reality.’
Morality, then, is not a backwards reflection over a product, but it is part of the product ideation and development.
We are used to assigning moral responsibility only to human beings, but the power of technology at the very least puts into question this exclusivity of attribution.
If technologies have the power to influence our intentions and behaviors, aren’t they — in a certain way — moral actors? Surely, we cannot assign the same moral status to a human being and a piece of technology. But I think we can at least agree on the non-neutrality of technological artifacts. Technologies have an active power that is unleashed the moment designers inscribe them with meaning.
But what should a designer’s moral stance be as the author of inscriptions?
The power of deliberately affecting our response to the environment and our behaviour requires designers to rethink their role as shapers of society
The power of deliberately affecting our response to the environment and our behaviour requires designers to rethink their role as shapers of society, not simply at the service of a client. The challenge hereon is to do it without elevating oneself to the role of moral censor.
