Social awareness in design & engineer education and practice. The value of ethics in postgraduate education

Abstract

This paper describes how the practice of ethics and morality in design and engineering education can foster an industry which is ethically capable of tackling social issues. Through ethically aware design methodologies that postgraduate cross discipline students developed through workshops, this paper outlines and discusses possible directions and methods that design, and engineering education could evolve with further study. What can ethics awareness in postgraduate education trigger and how can it influence future design and engineering practice? For the major role morality and ethics have in ruling social coexistence designers and engineers are called to take responsibility of any action that shapes behaviour between people, products and systems. To respond to the need of a collective ethical etiquette that products and systems can encode, design research at the Royal College of Art has been supporting a practice that acknowledges impacts and people’s responsibilities. A series of workshops will describe the role of collaboration and engagement in drawing ethically aware design and engineering processes; it will be evidenced how these are strategic in modulating relationships and behaviours and in guiding the mapping of the interactions of people with people and machines to acknowledge roles, responsibilities and the ownership of decision making. The intention of this paper is not to draw conclusions on what ethics is and how it should be practiced, but to support the development of guidelines that can engage design and engineering education and industry with debates on responsibilities and decision making across the lifecycle of a product, system, service or infrastructure. This paper intends to be an engaged, collegial and collaborative contribution to the topic of ethics in design/engineering education and practice.