The Challenge Of Responsible Design

Via Tabula Rosa what can be created? Anything. With no constraints what is possible? Everything. And, therein the difficulty.

In the world of science, technology, and society, a specific design discipline sometimes referred to as STS exists as the intersection of not only the social impact but also that of usability when evaluating sometimes radical design possibilities. Should something not exist then it cannot be used, but if designed, it can, and even if that design does come into existence it may not be allowed to be used for sometimes specific government, corporate or other regulation. The designers job then becomes the tacit navigation of the complex aspects of needs to produce X design and the responsibility of the evolution that comes from said design efforts.

The balance ( for products focusing on ground breaking design and via ) the STS toolset lets us consider Underdetermination, Realm(s) of Possibility, Consequentiality, Political Construction, Competing Images, Ultimate Ends, and the Embrace of Patterns in the creation of the future that is unfolding. Where product & service designers may be primarily concerned with direct and short term current end user needs, in different modalities of design ( conceptual, future, disruptive, etc., ) a shift based mentality can be enabled and in doing so, the STS toolset can be engaged to expand the capability for radicality to emerge. We see this in detail in The Challenge of Responsible Design and as further expanded by the work of Donald A. Norman and Roberto Verganti as they explore the ideas and implementations of how incremental and radical innovation can be investigated and applied in design research for technological advancement when changes of meaning are taking place and or in unintended ways due to the systems and products that we are launching at an alarming rate.