Ethics and aesthetics in intelligent product and system design

Name Philip RossAdvisors Kees Overbeeke, Loe Feijs, Stephan Wensveen

The products we interact with transform the way we behave and the way we experience the world. Design in the context of Ambient Intelligence needs to consider how to give these social transformations a desirable direction. Designing for desired social transformations inherently brings ethical considerations to the fore.
This thesis proposes an approach to explicitly incorporate this ethical dimension in design, through design for Aesthetic Interaction. In four research-through-design cycles, intelligent lamps are designed an evaluated, and in parallel, theory and techniques are developed. The research shows that designing for ethics through aesthetics is indeed possible.