Description
Book SynopsisWhat is the true purpose of the design profession? What ends should professional designers pursue?
Firmly rooted in the design practice, this lively and accessible book offers a critical vision that enables designers and students of design of all disciplines to reflect on the purpose of their profession. This book makes the case that professional designers should contribute to the promotion of others’ well-being by designing a world in which people can flourish.
Using many examples, it helps practitioners and students to analyse the ethics of the work they are asked to do, and guides them in designing material and immaterial artefacts that are conducive to human flourishing. The book also empowers them to discover and analyse the possible moral consequences of their designs, and to act thereupon.
If design is, as Herbert Simon argued, ‘concerned with how things ought to be’, the influence designers have over the lives of others should not to be taken lightly.
The book’s timely and original perspective on professional design makes it a required reading for practitioners and students of design, and design scholars.
Trade ReviewIn a turbulent world where everyone designs, who are the professional designers? What characterises their specific role? Finally a book looks at these questions seriously. And it starts with the most difficult one: what ethics should apply to professional designers? Ariel Guersenzvaig offers an updated and critical track with which to discuss this crucial issue.
-- Ezio Manzini, Desis Network
Especially with today’s complex societal challenges, this engaging book is a must-read for all designers, be it a professional designer, a design educator, or design student. By diving into virtue ethics, Ariel Guersenzvaig clarifies and inspires designers to approach the design profession as a practice, and with their practical wisdom to care for and contribute to society. This book takes you on an inspiring and precious ethical journey that emphasizes the importance of learning and self-growth to become virtuous designers who can contribute to the goods of design and society.
-- Caroline Hummels, Full Professor in Design and Theory for Transformative Qualities at Eindhoven University of Technology
Table of ContentsIntroduction and Overview
PART I: The Design Profession
Chapter 1 Design, Designers and Normativity
Chapter 2 Professions as Moral Projects
Chapter 3: Is design a profession?
Chapter 4: Necessary Objections and a Call to Action
PART II: An Inquiry into Design Professional Ethics
Chapter 5: Charting an Inquiry into Design Professional Ethics
Chapter 6: A philosophical foundation for our inquiry
PART III: Towards a Practice-Centred Design Professional Ethics
Chapter 7: Uncovering a Purpose for Design
Chapter 8: The full circle: from responsibility to action
Chapter 9: Flourishing and Enduring as a Designer
Coda: Teaching Design Professional Ethics
