Challenging power dynamics and individual responsibility
Episode three. The world we live in is a complex phenomenon, where we can play different significant roles, but not determining. In other words, any person has a weight and therefore responsibility, but nobody can control the entire system. This statement is fundamental, but it can be misunderstood: saying that only one person operating is entirely responsible for what it does is a simplification. A complex system has several points of view.
As mentioned different times before, service designers could successfully challenge a new competitive edge. Technology and globalization are leading to more and faster disruption than ever. To stay ahead, smart companies are turning to design to better connect with customers and find their competitive advantage (some examples). In this scenario, a competent designer knows how to design through listening to things and people, recognize where he can contribute to the pathway being followed. Designing always means making value choices, and even when we are not aware of it, and hence we make ethical choices if by this adjective we mean choosing to evaluate according to the basis of the distinction between good and bad. In everyday life, how can we distinguish between bad and good? There’s no simple answer, in particular taking design choices in an unknown ecosystem without social conventions (digital environment and social media platforms?).
Therefore, I’m advocating the acceptance and evaluation of living into a complex system. According to Ezio Manzini (p52, Politics of the Everyday), this means not only accepting that every result of human activity should be considered provisional and reversible and that our actions on the world will always have unpredictable implications. It also means that designers are never external to the system in which they act. Being aware of that helps me to realize that in any case, we cannot be in control of everything and the power to do everything.
During the development of my dissertation, I spent so much time in contact with different genres of designers and some of them helped me to accept our role. Whatever it takes, we can do something and take the responsibility for our choices. That is the only way to see the world as an irreducibly complex reality. As reported in different of these interviews, redefining the designer role is a hard path to follow. Service design is still a commercial pursuit, dominated by the constant research of economic growth too, and currently, we can not do anything against that role. So what could be the long term visions’ role? How can they manage long-term implications? Giving representation to these understandings, it is a deeply personal thing.
“They might not necessarily align with your organizational vision” (Anonymous, Principal Service Designer).
Referring to designers, if there are ethical implications that they are not comfortable with they should not take that work. So if you are not ensured that you are designing something, which aligns to your ethics, you should walk away.
Another fundamental conclusion is concerning power dynamics. Taking ethical decisions is a power move and unfortunately, not everyone is in the same condition to follow entirely this direction. Even if a collective of designers share a common vision and are empowered by a revolutionary ethical framework, they are still sitting on the wrong side of power balance. I had the opportunity to discuss this condition with the Principal Service Designer at one of the prestigious consulting companies, and I have received the confirm design principles and guidelines only become powerful when they are adopted by regulating bodies or agencies. The designers still have to move positive intents to the other side of the system. They need to position these concerns in the correct part of the panel. As mentioned in the interview:
“To achieve that control designers need to be inside the machine and to be pointing out various things, specifically the parts of the machine that are malfunctioning and offering solutions at the same time”.
According to that, we can’t necessarily be radical in service design. Sometimes, it is sufficient to face small changes and then following an incremental approach until a complete vision of the scenario. Designers must be radical in the decision of how that problem space should be resolved or their solutions can be inevitably destructive to the entire system. To be comprehensible to others, service designers should work with actionable steps and offering pragmatic solutions to the clients (it could just be a matter of speaking the same language). The important is to find a way to communicate the right values and ideas, a clear position of the company empowers its employee to say no when it is necessary.
Concluding, setting up an ethical framework for designers is vital and necessary for tackling the impact on people’s lives. It should be a formative act and able to elevate the members of the team generating their principles and give them the freedom to be part of the shift. More importantly, the design principles always come from user research and they born of the problem space.
“That’s where the principles come from, where all they’re always rooted in and some of them are the essence of the human needs that we’re trying to address” (Anonymous, Principal Service Designer).
Besides, I suppose the first bear on ethics would be the idea to not harm and secondly looking to design safeguards into that system, in particular for vulnerable users. In some ways, the idea this research would introduce is a sort of Hippocratic oath.
“So this design kind of an oath where you take it, as part of that profession” (Anonymous, Principal UX Consultant).
On the other side, the introduction of limits and barriers could hold negative consequences. Pay attention to not disempowering service designers too. And if we set up too many barriers that stop them from getting into really uncomfortable problems, then the change won’t be and can’t be facilitated.
Even though the principles of service design are quite a broad-reaching and quite a long term.
“I still feel that the ask for most companies is short term. it’s difficult to get them to think the big picture at this time” (Anonymous, Senior Service Designer).
Considering the current period of uncertainty (social crisis and pandemic situation), some of these themes reported in the interviews, which the service design community is very passionate about unless the design can reinforce them with economic models and “unless we can show how we’re impacting the bottom line, it’s really difficult to get companies to pay attention” (Anonymous, Senior Service Designer). Even if any great ethics toolkits or frameworks are not reported yet, lots of ethical questions often come up and they are allowing to talk about some of these ethical considerations.
For that reason, it is even more important to embed ethical discoveries in the team mindset, something that should be part of the research plan and somehow it becomes a rhythm of the project work and not just a sort of appendix.
