DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-018

Federal University of Rio de Janeir, Brazil

raquelponte@gmail.com

Franciscan University Center, Brazil

Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil

Abstract

Social design, developed in the 1970s with a focus on social inclusion and environment preservation, has an ethical concern about its practices. Based on Peirce´s pragmatism and semiotics, this article discusses how the products of design necessarily entail practical consequences when they become existences in the world. It also investigates whether all design projects, and not only social design projects, have a social implication. Since semiotics is based on ethics, as described in Peirce´s divisions of sciences, and the products of design are signs, Peircean philosophy is an important theoretical background for designers´ awareness of their responsibility in the world.

1. The emergence of Social Design

The first contributions and concerns about social inclusion and preservation of the environment emerged inthe1970s and had Austrian Victor Papanek (1923–1998) as one of its precursors. He proposed that design, instead of simply targeting the economic interests of the market, should meet the needs of social groups under the principles of citizenship and ethics, creating opportunities for development. Another issue addressed by Papanek referred to the role of the designer and the industry in general, also co-responsible for the critical situation related to the environment. The author (Papanek 1977: 66) found, even at that time, that the nearly 75% of the world population living in poverty, hunger and need would undoubtedly occupy more time in the tight schedule of designer teams. But not only did the emerging and developing countries have specific needs but developed countries also had them.

More recently, according to Margolin and Margolin (2002), social products are already produced for the market, even without reaching the required levels capable of meeting demands completely. This reality differs from that experienced in the 1970s, when Papanek considered that socially responsible designers should be dissociated from the commercial market, which ended up limiting the options of these professionals. According to Tackara (2008:12–13), there is also a search for the revaluation of what people are capable of doing, even if we are still experiencing the industrial age. In Brazil, for example, there are interesting cases of groups which, through a reserve of social and cultural resources, generate new ideas to meet their needs. This new reality can be seen as a promising situation of social and environmental innovation, with design interventions and/or contributions from public and private institutions and companies.

Since environmental concerns have emerged in parallel with social ones, for over 40 years, their trajectory has been characterized by a learning process that aimed to avoid the risks related to these areas, or at least to reduce them (Manzini 2008:42). The idea is to develop actions that promote the reduction of energy and materials consumption, while people develop their daily activities and interact with each other. One example is the sharing of resources and the exchange of products in systems that exist especially in poor countries, such as India (Tackara 2008:31–34).

The awakening of a social and environmental consciousness in the 1970s can be understood as a consequence of the economic crisis that occurred in the same decade (Harvey 2007:135), which made clear the failure of the capitalist economic system. The growth method of producers was based on encouraging consumption as a way to drain the mass production of goods. Planned obsolescence was no longer shortening the life cycle of products just through the use of less durable materials but also by changing their aesthetic aspect: fashion styles determined that an object of design, even in good working order, was no longer appropriate for the user when it was aesthetically outdated. Designers, subject to the laws of the market, practiced design with objectives related to obtaining profit for the contractors without considering other variables. But the exhaustion of raw materials, consequence of the extraction result for a production in exponential growth, and the increase in social inequality signaled the need to rethink the parameters of design projects.

Ethical concern is something inherent in social design, because it was established as one of its founding bases. Having as theoretical reference the philosophy of the American Charles Sanders Peirce, which includes his pragmatism, his semiotics and his divisions of sciences, this article seeks to understand how there is an ethical implication in the design process, from the initial projective phase to the use of products in society.

2. Design in the light of Peirce´s ideas

The philosopher, in his pragmatist line, understood that there is a link between thought and action, between belief and conduct (Peirce 1877). For him, belief is a state of tranquility which we do not wish to leave, while doubt is a state of dissatisfaction from which we fight to escape, trying to come back to belief. When it breaks up a belief, doubt encourages us to seek a new one, because it is what will keep us prepared to act when the occasion requires. For Peirce, therefore, our actions are the manifestation of our ideas, because beliefs “[...] guide our desires and shape our actions” (Peirce 1877:4).

The philosopher understood that there are two worlds: an inner world and an outer one, which are not opposed, but adjacent. Thoughts, concepts and beliefs populate the inner side, while conduct and actions inhabit the outside. These two sides are not separate, because the understanding that thoughts and beliefs are externalized in actions and behaviors which, in turn, can be internalized again in concepts, leads to an understanding that there is a continuity between these two worlds. According to Peirce, there is a movement of constant externalization and internalization, even because we can only see the world in its externality. For him (CP-8144), it is only the outside world that we observe directly. Because of that, what goes on inside can be only known if it is reflected in external objects. Thus, the inside should be externalized to become known and exist. For example, one can only know a thought of a person if he/she expresses it in words or acts; otherwise, it will keep unreachable in its interiority.

Another important theoretical framework of Peirce's pragmatism is the idea of “practical consequences” that can be understood as “experiential consequences” (Ibri 2000:33). According to Peirce, the concept can be only known through its effect on the experience, since it is in the experience that it appears from the outside. Within this perspective, one can understand the actions and decisions of designers as the external aspect of their thoughts, as well as pragmatically understand the products of design as the embodiment of the abstract concepts expressed in the briefing[1]. At the moment of creation, the designer must choose between them any color options, textures, shapes, sizes, materials, among other qualities, in order to determine a new product that meets the needs and desires of the target consumer. In the projectual phase, the designer is still only dealing with potentialities to translate the concepts into existences, which can generate perceptual stimuli that reach the consumer. This first stage of conception can therefore be regarded as belonging to an inner world full of ideation. However, in order to grant autonomy to the idealized product so it can become an existence, this potentiality should be defined and externalized in its production stage, when the concept will gain real shape, color, texture. Consumers who come across a product of design can infer by its configuration what concepts generated it, since it is nothing but a representative sign of a brand or company.

This continuity between the inner and outer world in Peircean philosophy, different from a notion of duality, is also apparent in the semiotics of the American thinker, who understands the sign as a triad (CP, 1.480). The sign consists of something that is in the place of another, its object, and that has an effect on the interpreting mind, an interpretant. We can understand the products of design as signs that represent the concepts defined in the briefing, whether they are concepts of the product or concepts of a brand (Ponte 2012).The final products generated in the production that will be consumed can be seen as nothing less than the embodiment of internal ideas in the external world that will generate effects in the minds of their users. These effects, in turn, will be internalized by consumers as signs (interpretants are more developed signs), because, after their projects and production, these products will have their own existence in the world, being part of a semiotic process in society, generating effects in an infinite semiosis.

Thus, this semiotic and pragmatic process of materialization of ideas always entails practical consequences: 1) in the establishment of new social forms by adding new products to the market that will alter habits of conduct (e.g. the remarkable transformation that has occurred in human communication since the creation of cellphones), 2) in the choice of materials used in projects (the extraction of raw materials can impact the environment, if not minimized by sustained actions, such as the use of forestry trees for the manufacture of paper; or the use of materials which do not decompose quickly can also affect the environment at the end of their life cycle), 3) in the design of the manufacturing process of the products (the way the project is designed as a process can provide better utilization of inputs in order to avoid waste), 4) and in the establishment of the life cycle of the design object (the short duration of use can increase disposal and create a difficult problem to solve: what should be done with so much garbage? As we can see, each designer's choice about many different variables in each stage of design activity necessarily impacts the world by generating practical consequences.

In the division of sciences proposed by Peirce, semiotics is founded on ethics, which, in turn, is based on aesthetics (CP, 1.281). The latter, for the philosopher, consists in seeking the admirable, while ethics consists of the best conducts required to achieve this goal. Semiotics, therefore, in its relations of mediating meanings, must be based on ethical conduct aimed at achieve the admirable because people are capable of programming their future conduct, ie. human beings can generalize their experiences, mediating them. Therefore, semiotics studies the laws of formation and evolution of thought in order to achieve the aesthetic ideal through a controlled ethical conduct.

Analysing the division of sciences, according to Peirce’s conception, one can see that design, understood as a semiotic phenomenon, should be guided by ethics and ethics, in turn, by aesthetics. The idea that any semiotic process generates practical consequences is clearly understandable in the Peircean pragmatic thought, since it understands conducts and actions as the external side of ideas and concepts. The creation of design products – representative existences/signs of concepts – is part of a semiotic evolution that generates effects on interpreting minds (interpretants). These effects carry in themselves consequences in many aspects of the world such as those listed before. In the projectual stage, each choice made by the designer in relation to the product that he/she is developing necessarily impact on social relations, since design products, as signs, can be seen as mediators which consumers use to solve problems in their lives.

3. Conclusion

Retrospectively, the emergence of social design can be seen only as the realization of the ethical necessity after the recognition of the negative impact that design provokes when done unconsciously. What this article aims to discuss is whether, in fact, any design project, and not just those enrolled in the field of social design, carries a social implication because of its semiotic nature. Whether it is practiced consciously or unconsciously, the resulting objects carry practical implications when products become existences in the world. Therefore, it is important that designers start to become aware of such practical consequences in their projects which, materialized, will gain autonomy and continue generating interpretants in a growing process.

As human beings endowed with rational thought, we have the ability to control our behavior and therefore it is pointless to remain in ignorance of the consequences of our actions, which are nothing more than expressions of our thinking. Any designer, conscious creator of signs/existences, although not active in the area of social design, should also be aware of the practical consequences of their projects which will gain their own existence and autonomy in the world when materialized, generating interpretants (more developed signs) in a process of growth and complexity. Although most designers are subjected to the laws of the market in a capitalist world, it is possible to design an object and be conscious of its impact.

We believe that Peirce's philosophy can be an important theoretical tool to contribute to this awareness and we hope that the evolution of these signs (products of design) can generate beneficial practical consequences for society as a whole.

References

IBRI, I. A. 2000. As consequências de consequências práticas no pragmatismo de Peirce [The consequences of practical consequences in Peirce´s pragmatism]. In: Cognitio: Journal of Philosophy. Center for Pragmatism Studies, Philosophy Graduate Program at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil – PUCSP. v.1, n.1. São Paulo: EDUC, 30–45.

HARVEY, D. 2007. A condição pós-moderna [The Condition of Postmodernity]. São Paulo: Loyola.

MANZINI, E. 2008. Design para a Inovação Social e Sustentabilidade [Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability]. Rio de Janeiro: E-papers.

MARGOLIN, S. & MARGOLIN, V. 2002. A “Social Model” of Design: issues of practice and research. Available at: (Last accessed: 19 May 2013).

PAPANEK, V. 1977. Diseñar para El Mundo Real: ecologia humana y cambio social [Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change]. Madrid: Hermann Blume.

PEIRCE, C. S. 1877. The Fixation of Belief. In: Popular Science Monthly 12. November, 1–15.

PEIRCE, C. S. 1994. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Electronic edition. Virginia: Past Masters. In http://library.nlx.com/.

PONTE, R. 2012. The Semiotic Process of Design as a Creator of Existences. In: Proceedings of the 10th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS.) La Coruña: Coruña University.

TACKARA, J. 2008. Plano B [Plan B]. São Paulo: Saraiva.