In designing things for others we can’t possibly avoid interfering with other people’s lives as the things we design form part of the framework in which people live; that is, intervening in people’s lives is rather the point.
That we intervene in the lives of others is, I think, ethically problematic although unavoidable. Designers have reacted to this dilemma in a number of ways.
One approach, which we might call Total Design, has the designer taking total responsibility and designing the whole environment or imposing a particular utopian proposal. I find this ethically undesirable but it is often aesthetically successful. I guess there’s something which is often aesthetically pleasing about one idea carried through completely.
The other extreme we might call The Market. This is where the designers just give people what they want. This might be Disneyland, Redrow homes, design-by-committee or just following economic or marketing trends. This, at first sight, seems more ethically acceptable but really it is an abdication of the responsibilities of a designer – the designer might as well not be there. This abdication of responsibility is an ethical failure to add to the aesthetic mediocrity of The Market.
I think most designers occupy a ground between these two extremes. We tend to use drawings to have a conversation between designer and designed-for.
The difficulty with this is there are often so many stakeholders in a design that we can’t talk to or consult with all of them. Often we might only really talk to whoever has commissioned us. This is more or less fine for say a domestic extension but for a residential development we clearly miss something if we just talk to the client who might be the developer because he is not the end user. The developer has, needless to say, a very different set of concerns to the end user (who might not even be known).
In reaction to the multitude of stakeholders (the client, the user, the passer by…) designers have developed different ways of involving them – either in the designing of the proposal (e.g. participative design) or actually in the proposal (e.g. interactive architecture).
Are some of these different approaches to designing-for-others valid in different situations?
Or is there some ideal balance we should all aim at?
How can involving stakeholders within designing avoid the perils of The Market?