In response to Brody Walsh’s post “Blog Post #3: Universal
Ethics”
As Brody mentioned, I agree that the IDEO Little Book of
Design Research was a great resource to understanding the level of respect and understanding
that interventions like this require. As he mentioned, attempting to foresee an
issue as specific as the structure of a specific connection in his installation
is the level of focus such interventions require. Even though we are only deploying
the interventions for a few days on a tight budget, we have to ensure that the
physical objects or non-physical affects do not cause any harm to any person.
For our way-finding intervention, we are hanging objects from great heights and
should be very pre-cautious of the objects falling and injuring any person. The
signs used will also capture the attention of the users of the non-housing
court services in the building, therefore the sign must not waste their time by
misguiding them when they could be going through a stressful time.
We suggested a “translating” the Notice to Quit Document as
soon as we found out what the phrase means (Many of us, including myself, found
the mere title of the document confusing as it is made up of legal “jargon”).
It would have been great if we could somehow use that document itself to guide
the users of the court before they even step a foot into the building. Given
the complex process of re-writing that document, we focused on the way-finding
aspect of our intervention. I also agree with Brody’s comment on the
application of the IDEO book to a multi-disciplinary audience. The IDEO book is
relatively short in comparison to other books on the matter of design ethics, but
I believe an even shorter more general version can be produced that can be concise
enough to be understood by the general public. The ethics discussed in the book
can apply to every single person that intends to change the world around them,
on any scale. Brody aptly used the title of "Universal Ethics" as I assume if everyone followed this set of ethics, the world would be a better place.