“Design affects society” as such, designers must consider the impacts of their design on society. Often the goals of capitalism run contrary to moral design, businesses aim make and sell goods continuously to the largest number of people they can. This creates an environment of continuous consumption. Norman points out that “needless features, needless models” is in danger of making the design of everyday things into the design of “overloaded, unnecessary things.” Designers can employ Moral Design, by questioning the need for new features and iteration as well employing sustainable means of delivering new goods. He uses the video subscription services as a good example.
Example from Design of Everyday Things: A video subscription service eliminates the need for mailing DVDs or creating thousands of plastic discs.
Example from the web: This is more of anti-example, the iPhone maybe an example of immoral design, are all these iterations and models necessary? Are we delivering true usable value with each model and release? Some call this planned obsolesce.
Example from my life: In recent years I have seen an increase quality of design of reusable water bottles. These aesthetically pleasing designs make it desirable, fun to be sustainable.
Norman, Don. The design of everyday things. New York: Basic Books, 2013.
Great examples here. Especially the iPhone example, as it is readily apparent that Apple cares little about the world when shareholders need to be appeased. A few years back I ran into the Fairphone, a modular phone that allows easy repairs, sources its materials from conflict-free areas, and provides spare parts on their site. At the time, it was expensive and only available in a few select countries. They’re about to release version 2, which expands to more countries (but still not the US), and they’ve managed to get the price down a lot while remaining true to moral design.
“https://www.fairphone.com/en/our-goals/”
Moral design is definitely an interesting concept that I think you explained well with your examples. I especially like the example of reusable water bottles; this is something that has become so prevalent in society today that there is almost a bit of a stigma attached to using throw-away plastic bottles on an everyday basis. People are definitely very responsive to moral design; they want to be or at least be seen as compassionate consumers. There are so many examples of this that I can think of, be it one-for-one companies, likes Toms or Warby Parker that provide a donated item for every one they sell, or options like shopping from smile.amazon.com wherein amazon donates a portion of your purchase to a charity of your choice. Subarau also follows this same model as smile.amazon. Additionally, there are also online stores that do the same thing; one example of this is The Animal Rescue Site, which is a section of thegreatergood.org, where every purchase a person makes provides a donations to animal charities. https://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/store/ars/site