Co-Evolving Towards Evil Design Outcomes: Mapping Problem and Solution Process Moves

Creative outcomes require designers to continuously frame the problem space and generate solutions, resulting in the co-evolution of problem and solution. Little work has addressed the value dimensions of design activity with regard to this co-evolutionary process and the role of the designer in acting upon specific and valueladen framings and/or solutions. In this paper, we identify how triads of student designers from user experience (UX) and industrial engineering (IE) disciplines frame the problem space and generate solutions, foregrounding the ethical character of their judgments in response to an ethically-nuanced design task. Using sequence analysis to analyze the lab protocol data, we describe the frequency and interconnectedness of process moves that lead the design team towards unethical outcomes. Based on our findings, we call for additional attention to ethical dimensions of problem-solution co-evolution, and identify key interaction patterns among designers that lead towards unethical outcomes.

[1]  Mary Lou Maher,et al.  Co-evolution and emergence in design , 1997, Artif. Intell. Eng..

[2]  H. W. Rittel,et al.  Second-generation design methods , 1984 .

[3]  Noëmi Manders-Huits,et al.  What Values in Design? The Challenge of Incorporating Moral Values into Design , 2010, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[4]  J. McDonnell.  Design roulette: A close examination of collaborative decision-making in design from the perspective of framing , 2018, Design Studies.

[5]  Colin M. Gray.  Evolution of design competence in UX practice , 2014, CHI.

[6]  Colin M. Gray,et al.  The Dark (Patterns) Side of UX Design , 2018, CHI.

[7]  Michael J. Rabins,et al.  Engineering Ethics: Concepts and Cases , 1999 .

[8]  Nigel Cross,et al.  Creativity in the design process: co-evolution of problem–solution , 2001 .

[9]  Peter Lloyd,et al.  Ethical imagination and design , 2009 .

[10]  P. Verbeek.  What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design , 2005 .

[11]  J. Herkert.  Engineering ethics education in the USA: Content, pedagogy and curriculum , 2000 .

[12]  Kees Dorst,et al.  Co-evolution and emergence in design , 2019, Design Studies.

[13]  BJ Fogg,et al.  Creating persuasive technologies: an eight-step design process , 2009, Persuasive '09.

[14]  Gabriela Goldschmidt,et al.  Linkography : Assessing Design Productivity , 1990 .

[15]  K. Friedman.  Models of Design: Envisioning a Future Design Education , 2012 .

[16]  Alain Findeli.  Rethinking Design Education for the 21st Century: Theoretical, Methodological, and Ethical Discussion , 2001, Design Issues.

[17]  Louis L. Bucciarelli,et al.  Ethics and engineering education , 2008 .

[18]  Sasha Costanza-Chock.  Design Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice , 2018, DRS2018: Catalyst.

[19]  P. H. Kahn,et al.  Human values, ethics, and design , 2002 .

[20]  V. Braun,et al.  Using thematic analysis in psychology , 2006 .

[21]  Erik Stolterman,et al.  The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World , 2002 .

[22]  Bernardine M. C. Atkinson,et al.  Captology: A Critical Review , 2006, PERSUASIVE.

[23]  Laura Forlano,et al.  Posthumanism and Design , 2017 .

[24]  David G. Hendry,et al.  Value Sensitive Design , 2019 .

[25]  C. H. Dorst,et al.  Frame Innovation: Create New Thinking by Design , 2015 .

[26]  D. Norman.  The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition , 2013 .

[27]  V. A. Howard,et al.  Varieties of thinking : essays from Harvard's Philosophy of Education Research Center , 1990 .

[28]  Ann Light,et al.  Editorial: Ethics, Values, and Designer Responsibility , 2018, DRS2018: Catalyst.

[29]  Lynn Dombrowski,et al.  Social Justice-Oriented Interaction Design: Outlining Key Design Strategies and Commitments , 2016, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[30]  Colin M. Gray,et al.  Analyzing Value Discovery in Design Decisions Through Ethicography , 2019, CHI.

[31]  Anders Albrechtslund,et al.  Ethics and technology design , 2007, Ethics and Information Technology.

[32]  Elizabeth Boling,et al.  Inscribing ethics and values in designs for learning: a problematic , 2016 .

[33]  Donald A. Schön.  Designing: Rules, types and worlds , 1988 .

[34]  H. Rittel,et al.  Dilemmas in a general theory of planning , 1973 .

[35]  Colin M. Gray,et al.  Dark Intentions or Persuasion?: UX Designers' Activation of Stakeholder and User Values , 2018, Conference on Designing Interactive Systems.

[36]  Rosa Storm,et al.  Reframing the Design Process: Integrating Goals, Methods and Manifestation into the Co-Evolution Model , 2019, Proceedings of the Design Society: International Conference on Engineering Design.

[37]  C. T. Hansen,et al.  The Design Process , 2015 .

[38]  Peter Buwert.  Examining the Professional Codes of Design Organisations , 2018, DRS2018: Catalyst.

[39]  Madina Tlostanova,et al.  On decolonizing design , 2017 .

[40]  Sara L. Beckman,et al.  Framing Innovation: Negotiating Shared Frames During Early Design Phases , 2007 .

[41]  Barton C. Massey,et al.  DESIGN METHODS , 2002 .

[42]  Johnny Saldaña,et al.  The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers , 2009 .

[43]  John S. Gero,et al.  An approach to the analysis of design protocols , 1998 .

[44]  Mary Lou Maher,et al.  Formalising Design Exploration as Co-Evolution , 1996 .

[45]  Austin Henderson,et al.  Interaction Analysis: Foundations and Practice , 1995 .