Ethical Design Education

" Good design is responsible design"

The presentation discussed how we should decide what to design, or if we should design it. How will it effect the community? the world? Are we responsible for that?

I think that we defiantly are, each individual gives something to the society and as designers we play a big role in that. I am a big believer of design changing the community and therefore the world, and if we go about it the wrong way and the results are bad, we are defiantly responsible for that. Unfortunately, being ethical or environmentally responsible isn't always easy, for example , if you want to buy recycled paper in saudi , you cant find any and you have buy from abroad which makes it very expensive.

However, I still think we can change some of our approaches when designing to make our society a better place. Fortunately saudis are starting to realize their mistakes. For example a campaign by the name " friends of jeddah" started last year, where a group of divers cleaned the red sea. ( I included a picture of the red sea to show how its worth saving).

At the end of the presentation, they asked " how would you encourage people in saudi to be more responsible towards their community?". In my opinion, we should start from the very beginning. We cant ask a 30 year old thats been littering all his life to suddenly stop, but we can teach our next generations what's right and wrong and imprint that way of life in them so that they grow up being ethical and environmentally responsible without thinking twice, and by doing that we will at least change our world.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1&section=0&article=119768&d=2&m=3&y=2009