The development of responsibility in product designers

Abstract

Investigations of ethics in product design have been limited. This paper offers an insight into designer's perceptions of responsibilities over three levels of expertise; first year design students, graduating design students, and design practitioners. The paper presents the use of some novel methods including triad and card sorting to uncover perceptions of designers responsibilities. The findings give rise to categories of development including knowledge development, ethical development, and role context development. The result is a descriptive model of the development of responsibility in product designers