why we need new ethics in design

Why we need a new design ethic
Seven sustainable design theories

At present, we can only imagine the degree to which a shortage of resources, destruction of the environment and an increasing global population will change our future lives on this planet. All that is clear is that these parameters are fundamentally changing our habits today and are creating a new form of product and consumer culture. As a result, the first issue we have to deal with in everything we do, as designers, producers and consumers, is always the issue of sustainability.

But how do we design our lives in a sustainable way? In order to do this, we need to be critical in our assessment of the role of design. The design discipline remains too closely linked to the industrial age, now drawing to a close, and, due to increasing market saturation, is orientated towards industrial sales policy, which primarily relies on product differentiation to penetrate new markets.

However, product differentiation is not the only solution to any of the pressing challenges of a sustainable lifestyle because most the benefits, in the true sense of the word, are only created superficially.

Sustainable design, on the other hand, pursues an integrated approach. For mankind, innovation is the motivational power behind products, manufactured, traded and disposed of in a socially and environmentally responsible way under fair conditions. When all these factors are taken into account, the result is a new ethics claim, which has to become reality before it can provide the basis of an understanding of sustainable design.

The self-evidence of the design discipline has always resulted from the claim that it has the ability to improve the world, in the context of dynamic research into improving mankind’s quality of life. This claim is elitist and frequently far removed from reality, particularly in this marketing-driven age.

But from a perspective of the radical ecological and social changes currently underway, which could develop into a civilisation-threatening scenario, it seems all the more important to reflect on the origins of our discipline, as well as on this claim, to reinterpret it and to deal with the challenges of the future based upon it.

Designing a more sustainable living environment, one that maintains its high quality for mankind or, due to a need to think in global terms, becomes high in quality is the great challenge facing design in this century.

Sustainability is becoming the new maxim, when it comes to our approach to design, the new work ethic. The purpose of the following seven theories is to construct the framework of this new ethic. We know that we are only just starting out but, as researchers into a better quality of life on our planet, we work on the assumption that our knowledge is growing and that we will be able to complete the framework over the course of time.

1. Sustainable design is ethical
We must think in an integrated way. Product benefits, social acceptability, lifecycle, production, distribution, consumption and disposal are issues which must be answered at the start of any design project and we will have subsequently have to accept responsibility for those answers.

2. Sustainable design is complex
Our world is digital. Back to nature, back to simplicity no longer works. Managing complexity, in the face of technological advances, channelling the requirements of the user in such a way to ensure that a product actually helps to enhance his or her quality of life is what it’s about.

3. Sustainable design negatively affects the environment as little as possible.
Every product created by man damages the environment, so our task can only be to reduce this damage to a minimum. As much attention must be paid to material and energy consumption and toxic emissions in the production process, the product lifecycle or during disposal as to the social context of the product, ease of repair and its consumer appeal as a product for long-term use.

4. Sustainable design is innovative
Design means research into better products and here the focus is not only on technological innovation. It is only through consistent, dynamic development in all product segments that sustainable solutions can be achieved. For example, new materials with innovative properties can also produce sustainable effects in low-complexity products.

5. Sustainable design is aesthetic
We all have different ideas about what is beautiful. Nevertheless we all experience the harmony of proportions, material, workmanship and detail to some extent as aesthetic. We recognise the quality of an object. The better this quality, the more aesthetic the object is and the greater our willingness will be to use it over a long period of time. It becomes sustainable.

6. Sustainable design is authentic
An authentic product is extremely socially acceptable. It stands for value and identity and has the ability to affect the user emotionally.
Dieter Rams described it thus in his ten good design theories. “It does not try to appear to be something other than what it actually is – more innovative, more efficient or more valuable. It manipulates neither buyer nor user, does not motivate him to self-deception. “There’s nothing to add to this.

7. Sustainable design will remain compatible in the future
Every product is part of a range, even if it appears to be an independent entity. Its context is that of a changing technology and the approach to use associated with it. Therefore, the most sustainable products are those, which retain their value and functionality over a long period of time. Choice of material, quality of workmanship, claims of aestheticism, ease of repair, construction or modular structure are potentially be the starting points for advanced technology rendering part of the product unusable but not the product as a whole.