Ethical issues in engineering design processes; regulative frameworks for safety and sustainability

Abstract

The ways designers deal with ethical issues that arise in their consideration of safety and sustainability in engineering design processes are described. In the case studies, upon which this article is based, a difference can be seen between normal and radical design. Designers refer to regulative frameworks to account for decisions about safety and sustainability in normal design processes. In normal design processes these regulative frameworks provide designers with minimal requirements, ways to make operationalisations, rules and guidelines. In radical design, on the other hand, designers do not, or only partly, use the regulative frameworks instead they rely on internal design team norms for making decisions about ethical issues.