Evil

• Why do we need to think about good and evil when it comes to design?
• It’s easy as a designer to be caught up in the complexity of “am I doing good” or “am I not doing good?”
• It can be good for a design to have a certain naivety as it can lead to creation
• This idea leads to the thought that with creation comes destruction
• In creating something new… something old is destroyed.
• Types of Evil:
• Necessity
• When you create something, you make a conscious decision
• This is a pretty soft example… probably not something that would cause a person to go to jail.
• Accidental
• Very easy to do something bad… without meeting to do something bad.
• Probably the biggest of the categories
• You have the power to design, but you don’t have complete understanding over the consequences of what you’re doing
• Somewhat of a gray area… are you responsible for this or not?
• Cause without connection… are you able to predict something happening that is totally unrelated?
• Intentional
• Someone who is deliberate in their design… someone who tries to create something that is inherently evil
• In design, we are always faced with questions of good vs. evil.
• Can we really define a “universal evil” if we can’t define a “universal good.”
• If a designer tries to do something good and fails… is that evil?
• To be considered…
  1. Is the designer good / evil?
  2. Is the product good / evil?
  3. Is the process successful or not?
• There is a power in design… you can’t be a designer without accepting that power. Any design you participate in will change the world.
• As a designer, we will change the world.
• Some of us may have products and designs that will have a CONSIDERABLE influence on the future of the world
• The first step in many programs… is acceptance. You can’t get anything done if you can’t accept that you are what you are. In this case… a designer.

Ensoulment

• Things that are!
• A Ship
• Democracy
• Social Network
• Vietnam Memorial
• A gift (Leather Bag)
• Nature
• Things that aren’t!
• A plastic Bag
• A simple 5 function calculator
• A Nail
• Value vs. Meaning
• i.e. Erik found a rice cooker in a study that hadn’t been used in nearly 6 years. However, it was quite important to the person as it was a gift from her mother. Does this item have value? Obviously it has meaning to the owner.
• Designers often come in with the plan of redesigning. Often, the first thing they choose to redesign is something that they see as not having any value. However, they don’t understand what the people who use the product find meaningful about that feature and as a result, the entire project is doomed because the design removed that one, key, critical thing that the users wanted.
• Can you ensoul an object by design!?