[Sigia-l] Are your intensions good/

[Dan Saffer]

On Jul 7, 2006, at 11:03 AM, Ziya Oz wrote:

> Or put another way, is it the client's responsibility to choose the  
> "right"
> designer for its own agenda or the other way around?  Once a  
> designer is
> hired, does that mean that the designer is now "cleared" to pursue  
> his own
> (additional) agenda? In addition to the project particulars, are  
> agendas
> supposed to be negotiated between the client and the designer? Who  
> is the
> "intensions" arbiter?

There needs to be a balance between the values of the designer and  
those of the companies the designer works for. Otherwise, more often  
than not, the designer simply extends the values of the company  
itself, whether or not he/she personally agrees with them. At  
Adaptive Path, we've occasionally turned away work simply because  
employees have objected to a possible client on ethical grounds.

The fundamental ethical baseline for interaction designers should be  
the quality of the interactions engendered by the design between  
people, both from the person initiating the interaction (the email  
sender, say) and the person receiving it.

We should always ask, are the designs we make (or could make) good-- 
i.e. good for the users, those directly or indirectly affected, the  
culture, the environment?

This is an important issue, and I'm glad it was brought up. I talk  
about design ethics in my upcoming book, if this is a topic of  
interest for anyone.

Dan



Dan Saffer
Designing for Interaction
New Riders, August 2006
http://www.designingforinteraction.com