Guidelines for a transition phase
“Design is a creative activity whose aim is to establish the multi-faceted qualities of objects, processes, services and their systems in whole life-cycles” (ICSID 2005). A creative activity that is also the reflective one of choosing between different possibilities. The openness of the field of possibilities where designers are operating is one of the factors that characterises their actions. When there is no room for choice, because the solution is dictated by strong social conventions and/or technological constraints, there is no design.
Given this degree of freedom, designers have to adopt some criteria for choice and on this basis choose what, in their view, is better to do. That is, given that ethics is defined as dealing with “what is good and bad, right and wrong”, they have to make ethical choices.