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| Designing Justice into Products | | Date Created: May 08, 1988, 01:12 PM |
Presented as the lecture "What Eliot Noyes Didn't Tell Us"
Mid America Art Conference, 1988
by Greg Daigle, Associate Professor of Industrial Design
We are immersed in a "product environment". Manufactured products surround us at work, at play, we ride upon them, we even commute within them. This environment is one with which people are constantly interacting. When we use products they become part of the way we cognitively structure the world. When we use products to interact with other people it structures the way we relate to others. In everything from sharing a phone to using advanced teleconferencing systems, the form and function of a product can influence and indirectly mold our relationships with others and society in general.
The Golden Rule applied to products
A person who is treated ethically and with consideration by others has a higher potential for reciprocating that favored treatment towards others. It is another restatement of "reversibility of logic", the golden rule, and other social tenets through which people are expected to treat others with at least as much respect and sense of fair play as they have received. Similarly, consideration given to others through the medium of our designed products can make an individual feel either justly treated, or mistreated and abused.
Products can be designed to promote their fair and equitable usage or to make usage exclusive. Usage can be rigid and suitable to only a small segment of the population (e.g. left-handed users) or it can be flexible and used by almost everyone. Similarly, function can be abrupt, uncaring and impersonal or it can be personalized and made more bearable. For example, the ability to create personalized answering machine messages and allow unlimited recording time for incoming calls would make the experience of leaving a message less objectionable. Compare it to the joylessness of a terse and impersonal factory-recorded message with an inflexible 15-second interval to leave your message.
According to psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg, an individual will progress toward full development as a moral being to the extent that the quality of justice is experienced in the environment. Justice is at the heart of morality. In Kohlberg's model, moral judgments are integrated into a hierarchy. The hierarchy is not of decisions themselves but of cognitive structures for producing a higher or better quality of decision. "Higher" or "better" here meaning the "capability of understanding and solving more complex problems and/or providing more adequate resolutions of moral dilemmas or conflicts" (here I reference an unpublished dissertation by John Steward). Every conflict in interaction with the environment eventually reaches a form of "equilibrium in interaction" and provides the basis for creating another round of even higher cognitive structures leading to successively higher levels of interaction. As the judgments become higher, accompanying decisions possess a higher quality, are more differentiated, articulated, and become more equitable. They become more just.
If one of our roles as designers of products is to contribute to the development of every person coming into contact with our products, then we are obligated to impart into each design a sense of justness. Table 1. gives polar word pairs describing some qualities of justness. Lower levels of justness are on the left and higher levels on the right. Products imparting a sense of greater justness would exhibit the qualities shown in the right hand column.
Low Level High Level
edicts contracts
heteronomy homonomy
powerlessness enabled
rules principles
stereotype objective knowledge
undifferentiated differentiated
egocentric exocentric
diffuse integrated
Table 1. Levels of Justness
Let's look at specific examples of how products can be imbued with higher levels of justness. In the interest of brevity only the first two word pairs will be considered:
1) edicts versus contracts
2) heteronomy versus homonomy
Edicts versus Contracts: Beyond accessorizing
In a free market where choices exist and consumerism is allowed to operate freely, the purchasing of a product is an implicit contract between purchaser and manufacturer. The purchaser makes payment for an item and in return expects that it will:
1) function as described
2) include all promised features
3) cover defect with explicit warrantees
When there is no free choice in deciding which products to buy there is no genuine contract between purchaser and producer. It is an edict without appeal, interpreted as "buy or go without".
In most consumer goods the contract is minimally negotiable before purchase. The consumer does have free choice of which model to purchase. This is limited to the full line of models manufactured and by what is currently available in stock. Also, additional service agreements of variable terms might be available. After the purchase, contracts are much less negotiable. Any negotiation is usually limited to exchanges of merchandise, usually if the product is damaged, broken, or sometimes, the wrong color. However, a highly just contract would always be open for re-negotiation between parties, even after purchase. But how does one re-negotiate the features and functions of a product after it has been manufacturer?
One answer is to accessorize. Consumers of 35 mm cameras know that you can buy just about any add-on for your camera to make it the camera system you should have purchased in the first place. Lenses, filters, extension tubes, mechanical drives, all extend the functionality. But even though accessorizing provides many options, it still does not provide enough options or personalization for many dedicated users. The alternative is open architecture.
Products designed with open architecture lend themselves to post-manufacture modification and adaptation by owners or knowledgeable third parties. Consumers whose needs exceed accessorizing have limited choices. Personalized handles for arthritics and personalized wheelchair seat pads are examples where mere accessorizing is inadequate. For those users, post-purchase modifications of form and function are required. Products being modified today include orthodic inserts for running shoes, foam infills for downhill ski boots, even custom installation of car stereo equipment. Future product categories may include other athletic equipment, personalized office chairs, housewares, medical appliances and entire vehicles.
The need for "after-market" modifications is being filled by a new group of service entrepreneurs who have specialized knowledge to adapt and modify products to fulfill specialized needs. Such after-market customizers enrich the connections between manufacturer and purchaser. These service entrepreneurs may be former users or come from other service areas related to product use such as sports medicine, biomechanics, gerontology, physical therapy and nursing.
Why should this concern industrial designers? Because service entrepreneurs are not "Maytag repairmen" waiting for a product to break down and be fixed. They are activists and advocates. Activist in that they actively seek the limits of the products they adapt and modify. Advocate in that if they find a product which lends itself well to modification and personalization then they will promote that product within their user group and to their clients. This can mean a dramatic increase in sales for the manufacturer. Many of them form their own user groups, similar to the thousands of computer user groups. These user groups can be very sophisticated, often publishing their own newsletters or magazines with very high circulation rates.
The implications for the industrial designer is that where after-market modifications when projected, the designer should develop a product which lends itself to modification by knowledgeable parties. Furthermore, the designer, knowing this potential, should recommend to their product managers that there is a potential to aid after-market modification (and enhance revenues) by designing the tools, technical information kits, supplies, etc. which will be needed by the service people to modify the products. This area in itself could provide a major business opportunity for manufacturers.
Heteronomy versus Homonomy: Modeling the behavior of nature
Heteronomy is a biological term. It is the state where an organism is at the mercy of the world, buffeted by the unjust caprices of the natural environment. The organism is almost inseparable from the influences of the environment. Infants, unable to fend for themselves, live in this world. They are defenseless and dependent upon their parents to keep them safe. As the child matures, a sense of autonomy develops. This autonomy separates the organism from the environment. They become independent actors. Eventually the child surpasses the forces of the environment and finally dominates, sometimes cruelly, over the environment. This is the state of personal autonomy. Further maturation coupled with the psychological development of self esteem and self assuredness finally culminates in homonomy. In the state of homonomy the self-assured individual can associate with others in a group, yet without the loss of self identity. The group could be a family, a religion, a community, a school or any other social organization. Homonomy recognized the inextricable interrelationships of self, others and nature while maintaining self identity.
Domination over nature is not a recent phenomenon. It has existed in Western culture for millenia. Yet since the 1930s the practice of industrial design has engaged the "machine aesthetic" to further separate us from the natural world. It is my feeling that such separation has somehow diminished us as a culture. With the growing influence of non-Western cultures and the breaking down of barriers to, for example, non-Western medicine, industrial design should similarly lower its barriers to allow influence from non-machine aesthetics.
This is not a call for the revival of Arts and Crafts or other decorative arts. A new approach would eschew static surface decoration as mere affectation. It would not be based upon reproducing grape cluster forms in plastic, or lampshades with abstracted petal forms, or even computer generated fractal landscapes. A homonomous approach would stress those relationships which are interactive and dynamic in nature. The study of animal behavior and ecological relationships are two such dynamic processes. Their analogues in industrial design are "product behavior" and "product symbiosis".
Product Behavior
As long as machines were relegated to printed output on paper, a CRT screen, or dials and displays we called it "information flow". But we forget that in the study of ethology (animal behavior in the natural environment) animals are also said to "display" behavior. As machine displays become more environmentally based (heard, smelt, felt, move) and as they become more idiosyncratic (refrigerators acting characteristically like other refrigerators) the perception of "information flow" will dissolve. Products will begin to be perceived less as functioning and more as "behaving".
Products talk. They say, "Add laundry softener", "The time is ...", and "Fasten your seat belt". The need for such messages is still very debatable in everyday non-critical situations. However, products also shout, "WIND SHEAR!" The need for such a message is clear and vital to a pilot. Products remind us, scold us, warn us. So far they do not wait for a verbal response, but that day is coming soon. Not long after that day, they may wait for a reply ... and wait ... finally responding, "Forget it, I'll do it myself!"
Do today's engineers and programmers of EEPROMs (talking chips) like those placed into washing machines and automobiles realize their profound impact on unaware users? As reported recently by a reader of a Minnesota newspaper ...
My 3-year-old son was playing at his grandparents' in Hopkins when he rushed into the house, terrified, tears streaming down his cheeks. "Outside ... outside", he sobbed. He led us to grandpa's car and pointed at the parking lights, which were on, then broke down into sobs again. We were puzzled, but finally my father figured it out. "Oh," he said, "Did the lady tell you to turn off the lights?" My son nodded, sobbing again at the memory. He had been playing in the car, pressing buttons and flipping switches to his heart's content, when suddenly the ethereal voice of the car's computer started saying, over and over, "Please turn off the lights. Please turn off the lights ..."
Even a mildly annoying rebuke can be terrifying to a child. A former administrator at Control Data told an anecdote of an early exploration with speech synthesis. He programmed his office terminal to speak a list of cleaning chores for the nightly custodian to perform. All they had to do was punch the return key. But his office did not get cleaned for a week. The custodian replied that he hadn't entered the office after hearing the instructions spoken aloud by computer that first night. "I understood the instructions just fine," he replied, "I was just worried what the computer would say if I did them wrong." Are the insights and training of software designers sufficient when even the most simple business software can be confusing and subject to misinterpretation? How should a product behave? How severely should they interact with us? How often? How persistently? Who will write the book of etiquette for products?
Katherine McCoy of Cranbrook Academy of Art has argued that "Industrial designers are the ... experts on the man-machine interface. Designers must position themselves as the experts at humanizing the machine for their users." So far, we have differed much of this control to software designers. But when displays leave the screen to become more ubiquitous, more interactive and more behavior-like, the industrial designer, etiquette book in hand, should be ready.
Comedian Woody Allen remarked about the poor manners of "smart products" in his monologue "Mechanical Objects", where he remarks about a regular television which can't be reasoned with and a smart elevator that won't be reasoned with ...
I'm watching my portable television set, and the set begins to jump up and down. I go up to it (I always talk before I hit) and I said, "I thought we had discussed this, what's the problem?" And the set kept going up and down, so I hit it; and it felt good hitting it. I beat the hell out of it. I was really great. I tore off the antennae ... And I felt very virile. Two days later I go to a dentist in New York (I had gone to my dentist but I had a very deep cavity and he sent me to a chiropodist) and I go into a building in midtown New York. And they have those elevators. I hear a voice say, "Kindly call out your floors, please." I say, "Sixteen", the doors close and the elevator starts going up to sixteen. And on the way up the elevator says to me, "Are you the guy ... that hit the television set?" I felt like an ass, you know? It took me up and down fast between floors and it threw me off in the basement, and it yelled out something that was anti-semitic.
Product Symbiosis
Over the entire history of tool making by the human species, cultures advanced with each successive modification of natural materials. Clays are turned into ceramics, ores into metals, metals into alloys, barrels of oil into plastics, and carbon into graphite fibers. Even resources which are biological have not escaped our intervention. Wild grain is bred into domestic wheat, wild oxen into more productive breeds of cattle, yeast fermentation into beer and wine production, hydrogenation of fatty acids to make margarine, and now selective breeding and genetic manipulation of microbes.
Each technological advance moves us further from the natural world, yet even the most simple addition of wood or raw stone to an otherwise "modern" product gives us a sense of connectedness to the natural environment. But application can be crass. Adding wood trim to a television or a stone base to a coffee maker is an inappropriate decorative application (however, a stone TV is okay if you're the Flintstone family!) Can products feature a dynamic relationship with a natural material while contribution more than simple static decoration? One possibility is product symbiosis.
Biological symbiosis is the mutually beneficial interdependence of two organisms. For example, the bacteria in our gut which help us in digestion. Product symbiosis is the mutually beneficial interdependence of an organism and a man-made product. Our culture is replete with examples. Beer and wine production comes from vats designed to ferment select strains of yeast. Similar vats produce vitamins, pharmaceuticals, even soy sauce. Artificial bee hives have been essential to domestic honey production for centuries. And without delicately seeding milk with just the right strains of mold we would never know the joy of Roquefort cheese.
But the modern consumer has been separated from this process. We enjoy the by-products of mold or yeast, but don't want them growing in our bathrooms. Understandable. But by removing ourselves from the processes of nature we lose some sense of its importance and vitality. With the advent of industrial-scale genetic manipulation the opportunities are rife for renewing that contract with organisms for better food production or antibiotics. But how does the industrial designer apply this knowledge? By taking a cue from the cheese maker and seeding consumer products with natural organisms.
A properly designed product seeded with selected bacteria could provide a suitable growing environment for a select organism which, in turn, could generate some by-product of value to the user. The outcome could add any of a variety of qualities to the product, making it sticky, slick, oily, fragrant, acidic, alkaline, fruity, etc.
For example, take a baseball bat with a grip region composed of non-skinning foamed plastic. It has millions of tiny cells left open to the air. Spray the area with a nutrient medium so that each cell has an interior coating promoting growth of only a specific bacteria. Seed the handle with resin-producing bacteria activated to produce a sticky residue in the presence of human sweat. The bat gradually generates resin when grasped with sweaty palms. The more sweat, the more resin is produced giving a more secure grip. The batter's grip is improved and the bacteria thrive. Storing the bat at the end of the season in a dry closet allows the bacteria to go dormant and resin production ceases until spring training begins.
In addition to resin for tool grips, other possibilities include mucous production to reduce drag on racing yacht hulls, or fragrance generation in the presence of specific chemicals associated with undesirable odors. By employing biological agents as part of the product function a direct connection back to nature is made. That connection is as alive as the biological agent. It is therefore somewhat fragile and needs care and attention to function properly. In some ways this is the bioengineering equivalent of the lessons of responsibility and animal husbandry taught through 4H clubs. Knowing that the biological agents require some minimal care and attention for proper functioning requires us to care for our products with the same responsibility as we do for our plants or pets.
This is the antithesis of designing "indestructible" products. Such products may be valued for their endurance, but they teach us nothing of caring for things. And caring for things instills lessons that can apply to caring for the environment and caring for each other. And as we have seen through Kohlberg's work, an imperative for care and stewardship can translate to lessons on how to become a more caring and fully developed individual and member of society. |
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