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I really enjoyed making things

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but I was getting really tired of making other people’s ideas

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and I was getting very cynical about the world of advertising.

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A lot of the work we were doing was

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making TV commercials

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to try to sell products I don’t particularly like very much.

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So age 29 I applied to

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the Royal College of Art

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to do a course called Design Products.

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Ron Arad the architect and designer had just taken over

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the professorship of that course

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I was offered a place and started there

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and that introduced me to,

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I guess, the kind of work we still do to this day:

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critical design,

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using design to question technology,

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building a lot of interesting products that

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would do that instead of using the written word,

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using objects and designed artefacts to

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change the way we think about things,

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to encourage to think differently about

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technology and technological products.

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You have a device where the signal comes in

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but then that broadcast you

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a low frequency into the mouth

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and it translated into

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a vibration

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into the inner ear and it’s perceived as

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sound streaming, a streaming sound.

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The possibilities are endless,

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prime ministers could receive secret guidance from their special advisors,

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football coaches could pass tactical instructions to their players

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and no one will ever know.

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Imagine the guy on the stock market,

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if he’s in the theater, if he’s in the cinema, if he’s sleepy in bed, if he’s on the beach

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the stock rumors information about a companies collapsing and so on

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could reach him immediately and he could react to it.

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I’ve started thinking about Mo's project of energy independence

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and I’ve starting looking at the madeiran landscape.

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You can’t see it too much throught the way the lens is pointing

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but where I’m looking I can see these huge cliffsides,

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Madeira is extremely vertical.

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So I started wondering what Mo's project could be in Madeira

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and very quickly came up with this idea of the gravity battery.

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So essentially in a nutshell, the gravity battery,

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it’s a device that works as a storage medium

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so you still use your solar panels or wind turbines,

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any renewable energy generation technique, but that energy

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is generated if it’s sunshine often when people are at work or away from home,

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when they don’t need the power.

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The only solution to that right now is to sell it back to the grid,

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so that’s the owners of the infrastructure,

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and year on year on year they’ve been reducing the price that they buy back for, making it unviable.

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With the gravity battery what we allow people to do is to use this solar energy to lift a mass

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into the air and with a lot of the cliffsides in the madeiran communities that can be

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anything from 10-14 all the way through 500 meters of verticality.

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So the more height you have the more time you have to drop the mass and the more energy you can essentially store.

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So you lift the mass during the daytime and then when you need the energy you come home from work,

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it’s dark, there’s no sunshine anymore you can release the mass it falls through space,

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via a gearbox, turning a generator to generate electricity.

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It’s all open source,

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so we’re removing the role of big corporations of large manufacturing plants,

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we're making it quite easy to build, so the current version is using a motorcycle engine

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that we found in a local breaker’s yard, it’s very cheap,

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so we’re appropriating the motorcycle gearbox

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because they’re very accurate and already made

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and then we just play around with the gearing and play around with the mass,

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play around with the drop speed and we can adapt it to many differents domestic products.

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in Nimes we have coined the term "inhabitability" of a world.

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We say that design can attempt

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to maintain or augment

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the world’s "inhabitability" for its inhabitants, men and women.

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We interpret the verb "inhabit" on several levels.

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The primary level is obviously material,

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meaning inhabiting a space sheltered from weather conditions, etc. I won’t dwell on this level.

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Then you have inhabitability from a vital perspective,

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where you need to stay healthy,

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so in a way the inhabitability

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of your organic

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and biological body.

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Then we speak of psychosocial inhabitability,

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where you need to live with other inhabitants, men and women,

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and here again it is not always an easy thing to do.

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Lastly there is an ultimate interpretation of inhabitability  I sometimes call spiritual or cultural,

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which means: really inhabiting as a human being and not as an animal

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and therefore it is the human being’s ability to create a cultural world

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that is pleasant to live in, grow in and flourish in,

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and so it is at that level that we interpret inhabitability.

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My name is Laura Pandelle, I work as a designer for an association called La 27e région

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and we define ourselves as laboratory for action-research on French public policy.

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By public policy we mean all the artefacts, services and all the processes that are

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put in place by the public power, i.e. the state and local authorities,

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to help citizen’s lives as citizens.

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This mission dates back to the creation of the association

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which aims at holding surgeries, immersing ourselves in a public facility, which could be a school, a train station, a hospital

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and we live there.

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Our team being made up of sociologists, architects, designers and sometimes artists.

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We live on site and we try and understand what is not working in that public facility

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what the problem is.

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Are there situations when people become aggressive or violent in some facilities,

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are there stressed people or complaints,

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are there tensions between professionals, a lack of understanding, of signage.

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We need to live there, meet with people, spend time with them and ask questions to all local stakeholders

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and then, once we’ve made the diagnosis through this experience

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and through our questioning of user’s expertise rather than that of decision-makers,

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we can act, suggest and test some solutions while being on site.

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This table started with a detail.

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I discovered a small metal part

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in the courtyard of my grandparents

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and that metal part was turned

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to give more stability to a specific function.

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So normally you have a metal,

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a metal part that is just straight like that,

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it brings no stability in this direction

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because it’s like a paper, a sheet of paper which is like that

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but a lot of stability in this direction,

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and if you turn it,

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it brings three-dimension, it becomes more stable.

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*Works that Work* is a magazine,

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my background is design and I noticed that I don’t read many design magazines,

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for various reasons.

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I think the biggest reason is that they often stay in a bubble,

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they’re written by designers for designers

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and they exclude a larger public.

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You can really see that the most-specialised magazine becomes the more elitist

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or excluding other public

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and designers think that their work is relevant to wider audience.

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Designers believe that their work can change the world,

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they believe that their work applies to all level of society and different walks of life

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but in practice discussions in design remain very isolated.

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So I wanted to see if there was a possibility to create a publication which was about design but not for designers

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that talks about the virtues,

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that talks about the purpose, that talks more about

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ideas than appearances.

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I have to say that the magazine succeeded for me because my brother reads it and he finds it relevant,

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he finds that

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it doesn’t contain jargon, it doesn’t talk about how things look like

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but it talks about very simple basic things:

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how you can improve a quality of life on differents places,

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they are very practical things, like how one can solve traffic situations without

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bringing traffic signs,

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really basic things like how

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globalisation happened because of simple

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improvement of logistics.

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When we started *Works that Work*

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it was clear that we wanted to find the most direct way to get to the readers

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to cut anything which is in between

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and also the magazine is really funded by readers not by someone else

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there’s no external sources of funding.

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*Works that Work* wants to examine often ignored areas of design.

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In the spirit of this aim we also intend to bypass traditional distribution networks

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which typically take the largest part of the cover price,

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as well as control where the publication will be sold and at what price.

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Instead we would like to deepen our relationship with our readers

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and make them partners in this enterprise, we call this social distribution.

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So we have a so-called readers clubs where people will just get stacks of magazine,

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for their friends,

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and in return we can give them the magazine for the price which is normally for the distributors,

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so they’re getting it for half-price

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so it’ a win-win situation.

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We created the most direct connection with the reader

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and they get rewarded because we bypass all the distribution chain.

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Designers are not just about creating a new object or a new product or a new service,

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it’s thinking about this object in the context of people’s life

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with consequences, with problems, with limits, with opportunities with drawbacks

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and the more the designers anticipate those things

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the better it would be because they would

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realign or re-adjust their projects.

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Well, Refugeye is a project I developped internally

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it’s a very simple project, it’s an app

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that works from a smartphone and which enables simplified communication between refugees

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citizens and organisations, charities etc. through pictogrammes.

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The interface is very simple, it’s an interface in which there is a group of pictogrammes, of symbols,

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I can search in lots of different languages, in farsi, english

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cyrillic and russian, you name it.

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And then I can drag the pictogrammes I have chosen onto my phone and they show up in big,

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I can number them in order of priority, I can circle them, crossed them out, write over them.

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And that way, without words,

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I can explain concepts that can be difficult or sensitive, about censorship, fleeing one’s country

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sexuality, torture etc.

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so quite a lot of concepts that can be difficult and complex to discuss.

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I financed it myself, I conceived it from insights, user-tests etc.

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so I really followed a specific process

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and then I transferred everything to an open-source platform, I freed the project as much as I could

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and to day it is being used by refugees,

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I think they use it on SOS Mediterranee

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and Bibliothèques sans Frontières also installed the app alongside their other tools.

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So that’s how I work, I develop and disseminate something,

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either it gathers interest or doesn’t, I’m just testing things out

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and if it doesn’t there are a thousand other projects to develop.

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So that’s the kind of things I’m trying to develop increasingly.

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I think I have been a bit of a maverick my whole career,

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I’ve always whether it’s in architecture, not enjoying

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or believing any economic models to which we built

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whether it was commercial projects I was given in industrial design and

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working around these briefs.

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I think I’ve always been

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motivated by the lack of something in the world

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that I felt I should, you know, the need for

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privacy and security are issues that are or have and always will be important.

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But we are at a time where we have more and more

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devices, products and services connected to the internet,

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more organisations connected to the web as well

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and there’s more personal data being produced and collected

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and right now we are in a position where,

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as users we have little to no control of any of that.

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There is an opportunity I think

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for design to come in and to rebalance some of that,

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to start thinking about how we can design services that empower people.

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So I’ve started IF

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really out of frustration that privacy and security were not being looked at

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in any meaningful way

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in organisations a few years ago,

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now I think the landscape has changed quite considerably,

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I think the political landscape has pushed some of that,

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but more and more when I talk to people about what I do

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rather than them going:

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“why would you do that”, “why is that interesting”,

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they’re like “that’s so important I’m so glad to find someone who’s actually looking at this”.

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Privacy is a cornerstone of freedom,

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without question the digital era in

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communication technologies will heighten concern

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about the sensitivity of personal information

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that can be collected or disclosed about individual citizens

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and the ever increasing pervasiveness

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of such data collection.

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In any job you’ll find some people go too far,

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we speak of aggressive therapy in health

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that’s a professional act going too far,

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are there similar excesses in design?

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Of course there are, designers are no more perfect than anyone else,

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therefore they are subject to the same temptations.

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The main one being the artist’s temptation,

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the artist’s temptation to be arrogant,

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the temptation to sign their name,

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the temptation to be on the glossy cover of a magazine,

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the temptation to be a celebrity, nothing less.

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This notion

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that great designers can be celebrities

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because they're putting more shit into the world,

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yes, design is for me a very problematic industry.

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What other industry makes celebrities of people

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designing things only a few can afford.

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Designer as an author

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whose

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perspective is just great and should

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do their work out of their genius creativity.

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There is all sorts of myths about designer’s creativity that

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leave the designers interested in people, in field research kind of

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partly out of the picture.

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It’s not necessarily true for all the designers but

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I think there is a tendency

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for a lot of commercial designers to not be interested in

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actual people but more about their perspective and the myth about people.

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About the dangers related to Design,

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I think it is

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the empowerment of design.

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Well the things that could affect design is design answering to marketing

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or to other types of forces.

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A bit like when you talk about green-washing,

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I’m wary of design that would be used as human-washing,

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where all of a sudden all companies, even the worst ones, become ethical, social, politically engaged, altruistic, etc.

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And if design colludes with this type of highjacking

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then I think design becomes a weapon to manipulate others.

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Gosh I think design has got a lot of challenges

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because for many organisations they don’t even realise that design should be at the table for these meetings, right

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So not only you’re talking about ethics, you’re also talking about design should be here,

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like we have a legitimate reason to be

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in this conversation, as part of this decision.

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So we’re in many places still

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not being considered as important in these companies.

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Having said that,

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when you bring ethics into the conversation

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I think the challenges designers face is that

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technology has been moving incredibly quickly,

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if you’ve not been keeping up, yet,

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like you need to start looking at that right now

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because you’ve got a lot to learn

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and I think that’s not meant to sound scary or, like, threatening,

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if this means something to you, you need to dedicate some time to it and you need to

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get talking to people who understand:

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backend systems, how that works,

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get talking to economists about the information economy,

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form some opinions, form some useful opinions anyway

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about that stuff.

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So I think there’s challenges

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this world has been moving and changing very quickly

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and if you’re not keeping up it’s quite a gap to jump.

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It’s the only way we can practice responsible design I think

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is through understanding the complexity of the world in which we’re operating.

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The problem with design at the moment it reduces that complexity,

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it simplifies it and makes it banal,

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because it has this very very simple goal of making good products.

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Define good is the problem,

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design better is the problem

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and I think this is the problem with design,

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it’s got a very naive view of what it’s good and what is preferable.

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We use these two words often but do we really know what they mean?

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Morality focuses on absolute right and wrong,

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it defines what is forbidden, encouraged or permitted.

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Of course, it always depends on the era and social context,

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for example, Christian morality was not the same in the 11th century or the 20th century

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and varied between European countries.

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Ethics is the fundamental thought behind what it means to act well

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for you and for others.

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This means that ethics does not say what is right or wrong,

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rather, it shows you the road you should take to live better.

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There are three main theories to explain an “ethical” act:

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Virtue ethics, says that if man has virtuous characteristics such as honesty, wisdom or courage,

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he will have good intentions and so will act in an “ethical” way.

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Deontology focuses on the conduct that should be followed for an action to be “ethical”,

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independent of its consequences.

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For example, medical deontology obliges doctors to treat all sick patients

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whoever they may be.

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Consequentialism determines whether an act is “ethical” by evaluating its consequences.

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It judges actions based on their observable results

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rather than on the intention of the actor

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which would be more difficult to know or to prove.

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It is sometimes difficult to distinguish ethics from morality

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as the two are intrinsically linked.

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We can say that ethics tends to be universal

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but is constantly reinterpreting what is the best way to live

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for you and others.

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Morality defines a group of rules and norms

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which are only relevant to an individual or social group at a given moment.

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First and foremost I think of Ethics as a process,

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I think it’s a process by which we

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we sort come to understand the way the world ought to be.

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So I think science tells us this is the way things are in the world,

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I think Ethics tells us this is the way things ought to be.

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And so I think it has a lot of resonances with design,

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but I think design tells us what we can do even what we want to do

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but it doesn’t tell us what we must do and I think this is the unique

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purview of Ethics.

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On the question of ‘good’, we know that a computer programme is a good one,

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because a good programme is a programme

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that correctly executes its code,

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doesn’t bug,

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works smoothly.

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However if we had to define a ‘good’ programme from an ethical perspective

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what would it be?

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What would be the criteria for this

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and how would we evaluate those criteria?

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Would a good programme,

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a good software, a good app

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help increase the well-being of humans?

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And what would the criteria for this well-being, in which cases?

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What would be the criteria from a technical perspective

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to increase

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well-being, open-mindedness, creativity, user’s autonomy?

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So my first question was “can Ethics be computable?”

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and at some point it was more… so I did a project about autonomous vehicles

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where I was trying to find,

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I was confronting different vehicles to the trolley dilemma,

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some kind of trolley dilemma.

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So if the car is confronted to a car crash

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there’s not really a proper solution to it.

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Let’s say you have to choose between 3 people or 2 people,

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so which Ethics you have to apply to them?

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And here it was more a design question

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because you have to ask what kind of ethics you are going to implement in this car

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and who is going to decide for which ethics should be inside this car,

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knowing that this car will work for

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a lot of different people with different cultures and so on.

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And after even the problem was more complicated, let’s say if this car

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is manufactured, let’s say by BMW,

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as a car with ethics that work well in Germany

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but BMW exports a lot of their cars, let’s say in China

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so all the ethics will adapt to a context like China.

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So this was for autonomous vehicles but

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if we look at products as a whole it was more like

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how something as subjective as ethics can be

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implemented into a generally manufactured good

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and how it can adapt to different contexts.

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Eventually I think that in all these tendencies related to design

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there is something that’s very potent

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and that’s the need that leads companies to that stage.

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The role of the designer is to follow or influence this tendency,

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certainly not to be submitted to it.

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So each time we have been led down a particular path

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we have always tried, not to change path and create a rupture,

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but to say ok, you think that’s the need

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but if we push things this way, are you ready to go there or not.

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What I find amazing is that

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over the last 3-4 years the profession has changed completely,

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our teams have changed completely

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because if you want to do good design in an organisation whatever its sector or its size,

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I think you need to have

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this ability to deal with services, UX, architecture, training,

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to work with the cultural side of companies, the economic side of cultural institutions

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and to be a lot more global.

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It’s a huge opportunity because we find ourselves at certain levels

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00:25:41,359 --> 00:25:44,360
of responsibility on projects that are exactly what we were looking for.

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If you look historically at the role of design,

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design is a service-based discipline

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and that’s why designers do where the money is coming from,

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if someone hires them to do whatever they’ll do it.

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00:25:59,140 --> 00:26:02,727
And very often it’s to stimulate business,

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it’s to stimulate economy,

401
00:26:05,730 --> 00:26:11,695
and lot of ideas like designers can potentially have

402
00:26:14,823 --> 00:26:18,076
they can bring social change but in practice

403
00:26:18,702 --> 00:26:21,037
they’re hired to sell more stuff,

404
00:26:23,344 --> 00:26:24,624
to increase consumerism.

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00:26:26,263 --> 00:26:28,670
Most of designers who work on new products,

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00:26:29,462 --> 00:26:32,757
they’re not bringing something new but they try to increase sales of something new,

407
00:26:32,966 --> 00:26:37,020
they’re bringing, you know, psychological obsolescence of objects is built into objects.

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00:26:37,137 --> 00:26:38,873
The reason why we need

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00:26:39,639 --> 00:26:43,852
new cars, new shoes, new clothes to make you feel like the old one is inadequate

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00:26:44,352 --> 00:26:45,478
which is often not the case,

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00:26:45,854 --> 00:26:49,107
like you don’t really need to replace everything all the time.

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The idea that technology improves our lives,

413
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I’ve mentioned this point a little while ago but,

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design is really at the heart of that.

415
00:27:06,583 --> 00:27:09,169
So if I work for a company and I’m developing a new product,

416
00:27:09,262 --> 00:27:12,047
that product will be better than the previous version

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00:27:13,418 --> 00:27:17,052
and the lifestyle that I will have as a result of owning this product will be

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a more pleasurable lifestyle than the one I would have if I didn’t own this product.

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So it becomes impossible for anybody developing a new product

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to say this product is gonna be great but it could go wrong in these ways.

421
00:27:37,656 --> 00:27:40,326
When I was working at Google in the US

422
00:27:40,747 --> 00:27:44,376
I had this realisation that

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there is more technology in my life than ever before

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but for some reason it felt harder to do all the things I wanted to do with myself.

425
00:27:53,512 --> 00:27:57,008
I felt like there was something fundamentally off in that situation

426
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because if technology is for anything

427
00:28:00,261 --> 00:28:03,725
it seems like it’s for helping us live better, do the things you want to do better

428
00:28:04,006 --> 00:28:06,510
achieve our goals, live by our values.

429
00:28:06,725 --> 00:28:10,139
I’m thinking of Bruno Latour, who was describing

430
00:28:10,769 --> 00:28:16,611
several ways in which technical objects prescribe our behaviour.

431
00:28:17,737 --> 00:28:20,736
You have the objects that force you, that will force you to act as do the underground turnstiles,

432
00:28:21,825 --> 00:28:26,788
you have the objects that will persuade us to act like speed cameras on roads

433
00:28:27,372 --> 00:28:32,961
and the objects that will seduce us or influence our behaviour without any rational reason.

434
00:28:33,670 --> 00:28:43,054
For instance a road that is straight for kilometers on end will incite us to drive faster,

435
00:28:44,271 --> 00:28:47,475
this is not a rational influence on our behaviour.

436
00:28:48,143 --> 00:28:49,894
You can see now I’ve no hands on the wheel,

437
00:28:51,354 --> 00:28:54,232
so it does not require a constant nag or anything like that.

438
00:28:54,816 --> 00:28:57,028
Like if you go to a secondary school right now,

439
00:28:58,236 --> 00:29:02,031
everyone out of lessons is like this,

440
00:29:02,708 --> 00:29:03,825
and scrolling,

441
00:29:04,659 --> 00:29:07,676
and the endorphins people experience from

442
00:29:08,079 --> 00:29:10,582
the rush of likes they get for a selfie.

443
00:29:10,583 --> 00:29:16,129
I mean I’m being really critical and also I’m broadbrush about it

444
00:29:16,755 --> 00:29:18,214
but someone designed that

445
00:29:18,715 --> 00:29:20,967
and someone designed the experience that they’re going through,

446
00:29:21,301 --> 00:29:23,178
someone designed the likes.

447
00:29:23,845 --> 00:29:29,493
And they have been in board meetings, and presentations and user research sessions,

448
00:29:29,976 --> 00:29:32,353
understanding the effect that has on people

449
00:29:33,354 --> 00:29:37,192
but yet that’s the kind of design work we’re pushing out right now.

450
00:29:38,046 --> 00:29:40,965
In the political…

451
00:29:41,634 --> 00:29:44,115
in the political situation we find ourselves in right now,

452
00:29:44,741 --> 00:29:49,496
I think it would be wrong for designers to continue,

453
00:29:50,079 --> 00:29:53,666
designing experiences for digital solipsism,

454
00:29:53,667 --> 00:29:58,613
this idea that we are alone in the world with our piece of technology and we have no impact.

455
00:29:58,963 --> 00:29:59,586
For instance

456
00:30:01,925 --> 00:30:04,755
in infinite newsfeed like on Twitter or Facebook,

457
00:30:06,362 --> 00:30:09,923
what the psychological mechanism there is the same that is used with slot machines.

458
00:30:09,924 --> 00:30:11,959
It’s a kind of randomising of the reward,

459
00:30:14,048 --> 00:30:18,233
because if you think about an infinite feed it’s just a constant never ending stream of rewards to be had,

460
00:30:19,216 --> 00:30:20,443
informational rewards

461
00:30:22,153 --> 00:30:26,698
and when you scroll down, pull down the refresh, you’re sort of pulling the lever on a slot machine.

462
00:30:41,714 --> 00:30:45,176
Basically by sort of privileging our impulses over our intentions,

463
00:30:46,177 --> 00:30:48,329
things like infinite feeds,

464
00:30:49,507 --> 00:30:53,101
they select for us a certain set of impulsive reactions

465
00:30:53,351 --> 00:30:55,270
and I think in politics outrage is a huge one.

466
00:30:55,895 --> 00:30:59,816
But of course they are others that are eventually positive like I think the feeling of awe

467
00:31:00,567 --> 00:31:02,838
or cuteness, or cute kitty photos,

468
00:31:06,364 --> 00:31:09,450
but I think it’s not the question will we be outraged or will we be

469
00:31:10,702 --> 00:31:11,911
having experiences of awe.

470
00:31:12,287 --> 00:31:16,708
It’s more about like will those be moving us towards what you want to be moved towards.

471
00:31:16,958 --> 00:31:23,274
Will they, as Aldous Huxley put it, helping us be irrational in a reasonable way.

472
00:31:23,631 --> 00:31:26,515
Is the system fundamentally on our side is the question ultimately.

473
00:31:41,723 --> 00:31:45,075
Actually right now I’m working on projects that are totally

474
00:31:45,778 --> 00:31:47,790
against my own ethical,

475
00:31:50,199 --> 00:31:51,200
what I studied before.

476
00:31:53,453 --> 00:31:59,626
One of the recent projects I had to work on was a robot delivering pizza,

477
00:32:00,137 --> 00:32:02,629
in Pizza Hut+ in Shanghai.

478
00:32:05,973 --> 00:32:09,469
You develop this robot or you participate in its development,

479
00:32:09,470 --> 00:32:11,930
you know it will affect a lot of people,

480
00:32:11,931 --> 00:32:16,684
a lot of people in China cannot afford to have good studies

481
00:32:16,935 --> 00:32:19,146
and they rely on

482
00:32:20,521 --> 00:32:23,316
to feed their families, on small jobs such as waiter.

483
00:32:23,691 --> 00:32:25,985
And you know that this robot,

484
00:32:26,687 --> 00:32:31,532
when it will go on the market it will make people lose a lot of jobs

485
00:32:32,784 --> 00:32:35,870
but then if I don't do it myself I don't get a salary.

486
00:32:40,041 --> 00:32:43,039
And that’s why it’s an important thing about ethics,

487
00:32:43,040 --> 00:32:45,964
a lot of designers speak about ethics,

488
00:32:47,840 --> 00:32:50,984
sure maybe they have some kind of ethical belief and so on but

489
00:32:52,553 --> 00:32:57,642
how far are you going to sacrifice yourself to really apply your own ethical belief,

490
00:32:58,351 --> 00:33:01,062
and that’s I think a big issue in the design field.

491
00:33:01,392 --> 00:33:04,917
Perhaps the canonical example here is the bench

492
00:33:06,442 --> 00:33:11,823
that is supposed to prevent people living on the streets to sleep on.

493
00:33:12,891 --> 00:33:17,078
When I did this project about designers and ethnography

494
00:33:18,371 --> 00:33:22,709
I interviewed a designer working for the public transport company in Paris

495
00:33:23,459 --> 00:33:25,586
and he told that “yeah I had to design that bench,

496
00:33:26,212 --> 00:33:29,340
I was asked to design a bench on which people could not sleep

497
00:33:30,049 --> 00:33:32,468
so the're wouldn't be bums on the benches”.

498
00:33:32,941 --> 00:33:37,223
Ok that’s kind of tricky in terms of your ethics,

499
00:33:37,737 --> 00:33:38,558
what do you think about that?

500
00:33:38,559 --> 00:33:40,682
“So yeah well I had two options either

501
00:33:41,894 --> 00:33:44,272
I did it or I was just fired”.

502
00:33:44,814 --> 00:33:48,901
That’s the kind of boundary or extreme limit

503
00:33:48,902 --> 00:33:52,037
in which where do designers sit,

504
00:33:52,280 --> 00:33:55,742
can they exert their strategic perspective

505
00:33:56,367 --> 00:33:58,797
or are they just not allowed to do much more than

506
00:33:59,866 --> 00:34:02,206
saying yes ok I’m gonna do this bench.

507
00:34:02,957 --> 00:34:05,880
It’s a hard choice, again like it’s easier for me now,

508
00:34:07,336 --> 00:34:10,339
of course in the beginning it’s more difficult because you’re more dependent,

509
00:34:10,340 --> 00:34:13,634
we have enough work now so I can be more selective.

510
00:34:14,302 --> 00:34:18,505
In the beginning I was lucky that

511
00:34:19,892 --> 00:34:23,144
we’re coming from cultural sector where there is less difficult choices,

512
00:34:24,771 --> 00:34:29,150
now over time I can make these choices now after 15 or 17 years of working

513
00:34:29,483 --> 00:34:32,487
because you built a position to be in this place.

514
00:34:33,196 --> 00:34:36,532
I think every choice you make kind of comes back to you sooner or later,

515
00:34:36,908 --> 00:34:40,119
if you engage with some kind of strange product

516
00:34:40,870 --> 00:34:44,332
it will come back to you as well, you’ll get more of it, the simple principle is that,

517
00:34:44,749 --> 00:34:46,209
whatever you do you get more of it.

518
00:34:46,709 --> 00:34:48,294
So if you start doing something you don’t agree with it

519
00:34:48,294 --> 00:34:51,902
you’ll probably get more of the same questions to do it again and again

520
00:34:51,903 --> 00:34:55,369
and people become experts in doing this kind of things.

521
00:34:55,676 --> 00:34:57,136
Then there is also the whole process

522
00:34:57,720 --> 00:35:00,800
of taking a step back and of being able to say no

523
00:35:01,432 --> 00:35:06,479
or to reformulate commissions that we judge non ethical

524
00:35:06,896 --> 00:35:10,108
or contradictory, or not helpful to citizens.

525
00:35:11,067 --> 00:35:13,736
And when that’s the case I’d say each designer will know

526
00:35:14,237 --> 00:35:18,241
where they position themselves between their economic survival

527
00:35:19,266 --> 00:35:21,744
and their desire to… or rather their professional activism,

528
00:35:21,994 --> 00:35:26,207
and whether they will focus more on the commissioner or on the user.

529
00:35:41,252 --> 00:35:44,684
Design so often happens in this vaccuum,

530
00:35:45,143 --> 00:35:48,146
where we spend all of our time thinking about form,

531
00:35:48,563 --> 00:35:52,191
materiality, of function, of how we interact with a thing

532
00:35:52,192 --> 00:35:55,611
but always almost in this bubble.

533
00:35:56,529 --> 00:35:59,949
We think about very really rarely what’s outside of this bubble

534
00:36:00,324 --> 00:36:03,202
about the real lives, about the real systems in which people live

535
00:36:04,453 --> 00:36:06,956
and as a consequence this is where problems lie.

536
00:36:08,124 --> 00:36:11,919
Because we have to think about the world in which our products exist

537
00:36:12,253 --> 00:36:15,381
and there is as much complexity that we can possibly cope with

538
00:36:16,132 --> 00:36:18,094
because they’re incredibly complicated.

539
00:36:19,886 --> 00:36:22,471
And I came across this very recently this exact problem

540
00:36:23,681 --> 00:36:24,724
in a conversation with

541
00:36:25,892 --> 00:36:31,022
probably one of the most talented designers I know, product designers,

542
00:36:31,814 --> 00:36:34,013
he’s been practicing for a small company in London

543
00:36:35,193 --> 00:36:37,695
since we graduated from the RCA, we were in the same year.

544
00:36:38,321 --> 00:36:44,535
He’s just taken a job at Amazon as a kind of higher product designer

545
00:36:45,411 --> 00:36:49,457
and I was just talking with him about this idea of ethics and responsibility

546
00:36:49,458 --> 00:36:51,209
because I’m slightly

547
00:36:52,835 --> 00:36:56,088
concerned about some of the things Amazon is currently doing.

548
00:36:56,195 --> 00:36:57,119
Alexa,

549
00:36:58,841 --> 00:37:00,218
would you lie to me?

550
00:37:01,467 --> 00:37:03,158
I always try to tell the truth,

551
00:37:03,679 --> 00:37:07,516
I’m not always right but I will never intentionally lie to you or anyone else

552
00:37:09,101 --> 00:37:11,536
For him he was shocked that I could be questioning

553
00:37:12,188 --> 00:37:13,487
the value of what he's doing.

554
00:37:13,940 --> 00:37:17,360
He thinks he’s contributing amazing things to the world

555
00:37:17,361 --> 00:37:19,237
but he’s thinking on this scale,

556
00:37:20,196 --> 00:37:22,698
he’s thinking about the beautiful products that he makes

557
00:37:23,074 --> 00:37:25,433
and this is the danger within design.

558
00:37:33,628 --> 00:37:35,253
If you rethink things from the bottom

559
00:37:35,628 --> 00:37:38,256
then you could completely do something different

560
00:37:38,756 --> 00:37:40,091
and the magazine is at the,

561
00:37:41,175 --> 00:37:43,993
the financing, the distribution, the production, everything

562
00:37:45,513 --> 00:37:47,224
it felt like ok if we’re doing a new magazine,

563
00:37:47,515 --> 00:37:51,560
we don't have to inherit any existing old platforms or plans,

564
00:37:51,852 --> 00:37:53,095
we can just do it from scratch.

565
00:37:54,182 --> 00:37:56,176
I find it’s very important

566
00:37:56,181 --> 00:38:00,736
to make designers understand the value of the humanities and social sciences

567
00:38:01,570 --> 00:38:04,907
by showing for instance that if you look at history

568
00:38:05,950 --> 00:38:08,096
of technologies for instance, of this sort of products

569
00:38:08,619 --> 00:38:10,955
it can show you that things have been different in the past.

570
00:38:11,247 --> 00:38:14,542
So by using this understanding what has been different in the past

571
00:38:15,042 --> 00:38:19,964
it’s a way to make designers aware that things should be different in the future

572
00:38:20,172 --> 00:38:23,551
and that you can maybe adapt more ethical choices.

573
00:38:23,801 --> 00:38:24,760
So that’s for history,

574
00:38:25,032 --> 00:38:27,972
anthropology, it shows that in different cultures,

575
00:38:28,431 --> 00:38:30,786
in different places, in different territories in the world,

576
00:38:31,126 --> 00:38:34,838
there are different ways to live and by showing that

577
00:38:35,646 --> 00:38:40,485
that’s also a way to question a design brief, question product, question existing services.

578
00:38:40,841 --> 00:38:43,654
So I take this kind of example of history:

579
00:38:44,405 --> 00:38:45,937
how things have been different in the past,

580
00:38:46,365 --> 00:38:48,808
anthropology: how things are different elsewhere,

581
00:38:49,243 --> 00:38:52,413
as a way, well, as a sort of metaphor

582
00:38:53,497 --> 00:38:55,583
to think about how design education should

583
00:38:56,042 --> 00:39:00,880
open mindset and not necessarily make designers

584
00:39:01,127 --> 00:39:04,008
answer to the client question in a way

585
00:39:04,884 --> 00:39:06,483
it would be a sort of status quo.

586
00:39:07,470 --> 00:39:10,447
We need to have like an open mind if you want

587
00:39:11,057 --> 00:39:13,917
to live in a more habitable near-future world.

588
00:39:24,195 --> 00:39:25,904
We do need I believe

589
00:39:26,614 --> 00:39:30,242
more organizations to start talking about and opening up

590
00:39:30,618 --> 00:39:33,454
some of the patterns that they are exploring and creating,

591
00:39:33,746 --> 00:39:38,250
because we’ve got a window of opportunity right now to come up with some ethical patterns

592
00:39:38,542 --> 00:39:41,420
whether that be about privacy or security or transparency

593
00:39:41,921 --> 00:39:44,965
for people, for generations to come to copy.

594
00:39:45,883 --> 00:39:49,720
Like if you think about a payment window for credit card on an online service

595
00:39:50,137 --> 00:39:56,811
you never really see a different version of that, and if I ask you right now to design me a credit card service

596
00:39:57,103 --> 00:40:00,398
you’ll picture the one you used last week and kind of copy that.

597
00:40:00,981 --> 00:40:03,150
Designers are really good at copying each other

598
00:40:03,734 --> 00:40:07,530
but when it comes to ethics I don’t think we’ve got any blueprints to copy.

599
00:40:08,322 --> 00:40:11,951
So I think we have a window of opportunity, a very exciting opportunity,

600
00:40:12,326 --> 00:40:15,496
to make some of these patterns and guidelines for people to follow

601
00:40:15,996 --> 00:40:19,041
so I think that’s a really big challenge because without these patterns,

602
00:40:19,375 --> 00:40:22,086
it’s more expensive, it’s more time-consuming

603
00:40:23,337 --> 00:40:25,172
to bring ethics into your work

604
00:40:25,423 --> 00:40:26,924
and that doesn't mean you shouldn't do it

605
00:40:27,258 --> 00:40:29,176
but it’s just that the barriers are there

606
00:40:29,718 --> 00:40:31,637
and there’s more obstacles to get past.

607
00:40:33,200 --> 00:40:36,725
And I think that the more difficult the context

608
00:40:37,351 --> 00:40:41,023
the more resistant to a critical approach to design

609
00:40:41,355 --> 00:40:42,648
the more interesting it is.

610
00:40:43,399 --> 00:40:46,694
Because if you manage to influence a large company

611
00:40:46,902 --> 00:40:49,655
which is very difficult to negotiate,

612
00:40:50,114 --> 00:40:55,077
if you manage to influence them 1% or 2% in the first year,

613
00:40:55,744 --> 00:40:57,496
in five years time you’ve done that much,

614
00:40:58,164 --> 00:41:02,001
that’s huge, and you feel that with a little bit of influence

615
00:41:02,001 --> 00:41:05,212
you can do a lot to a big outfit so I find this interesting.

616
00:41:06,213 --> 00:41:09,008
So what happens if design starts to happen locally

617
00:41:09,009 --> 00:41:12,094
the way we’re talking about consuming energy locally.

618
00:41:13,012 --> 00:41:16,281
So this is the principle in the gravity battery, the energy being something local,

619
00:41:16,724 --> 00:41:19,727
being through the wall, so you can see the energy that you’re consuming

620
00:41:20,227 --> 00:41:23,314
but also to design a product that can be done locally.

621
00:41:23,689 --> 00:41:25,930
So local manufacturers, local skills,

622
00:41:26,734 --> 00:41:28,861
using local crafts people perhaps,

623
00:41:30,779 --> 00:41:33,365
it’s very much the whole idea of open source hardware

624
00:41:34,116 --> 00:41:35,074
of sharing knowledge,

625
00:41:35,075 --> 00:41:38,621
a lot of the maker labs or maker spaces are talking about this stuff.

626
00:41:39,121 --> 00:41:41,499
You know I think there’s a number of things designers can do,

627
00:41:42,666 --> 00:41:45,085
one of the first thing is kind of just awareness

628
00:41:45,169 --> 00:41:46,879
that there is a problem.

629
00:41:47,755 --> 00:41:50,925
There’s is a lot of optimism in the tech industry,

630
00:41:50,926 --> 00:41:52,398
a lot of it is well justified,

631
00:41:53,010 --> 00:41:54,220
but a lot of it is I think

632
00:41:56,055 --> 00:41:58,307
not as sensitive to

633
00:41:59,037 --> 00:42:02,019
what in economic terms you can called externalities of the design.

634
00:42:02,645 --> 00:42:05,481
So things like distraction would be one of these things

635
00:42:06,941 --> 00:42:08,234
whether that’s a minor annoyance or

636
00:42:09,485 --> 00:42:12,571
a habit that you develop over time that keeps you from being able to reach your goals.

637
00:42:13,447 --> 00:42:16,951
The reason designers don't really see this it’s we don't measure them,

638
00:42:17,409 --> 00:42:20,454
it’s kind of like pollution was in the environmental movement.

639
00:42:21,121 --> 00:42:22,706
We knew that stuff was getting dumped into rivers,

640
00:42:22,915 --> 00:42:25,918
we knew there was some kind of harm to the environment

641
00:42:27,253 --> 00:42:29,046
but it wasn't until we started measuring it and quantifying it

642
00:42:29,588 --> 00:42:31,048
then we could actually talk about it and hold

643
00:42:32,341 --> 00:42:33,553
the people doing the polluting to account.

644
00:42:34,301 --> 00:42:35,553
And I think it’s a similar situation here

645
00:42:35,761 --> 00:42:40,599
where we kind have a vague notion that there is something wrong

646
00:42:40,933 --> 00:42:43,185
in a deep way with distraction

647
00:42:43,644 --> 00:42:45,354
and the way in which we get habituated into

647
00:42:47,315 --> 00:42:49,487
being how we don't want to be.

648
00:42:50,317 --> 00:42:52,903
But I think we’re still at the very beginning

649
00:42:53,571 --> 00:42:55,030
of figuring out how to talk about that and measure it,

650
00:42:55,197 --> 00:42:56,282
but I think once we do

651
00:42:57,199 --> 00:42:59,827
I think the goal ought to be doing for

652
00:43:00,661 --> 00:43:03,414
our mental environment what we did for the physical environment

653
00:43:03,539 --> 00:43:04,748
with the environmental movement.

654
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:07,960
So I think that involves then

655
00:43:08,586 --> 00:43:11,422
new responsibilities on the part of companies and designers

656
00:43:12,256 --> 00:43:16,239
to not just measure the value that they’re getting

657
00:43:17,136 --> 00:43:19,096
but the value they’re giving to people but then also

658
00:43:19,972 --> 00:43:23,267
the potential harms or negative effect that the design is causing.

659
00:43:24,602 --> 00:43:25,477
At first sight

660
00:43:25,728 --> 00:43:29,023
there doesn't seem to be much relationship between farming and industry,

661
00:43:29,523 --> 00:43:30,941
but industry produces pollution,

662
00:43:31,275 --> 00:43:32,518
and pollution affects crops,

663
00:43:33,444 --> 00:43:36,655
so a change in industry affects farming by pollution.

664
00:43:37,364 --> 00:43:41,452
The man-made world consists of a whole complex of subtle relationships like that

665
00:43:42,202 --> 00:43:43,203
change one thing

666
00:43:43,495 --> 00:43:45,998
and it sets up a slow and complicated chain reaction.

667
00:43:47,166 --> 00:43:50,210
Understanding is really, is in a way the key,

668
00:43:50,919 --> 00:43:52,348
like if you understand things,

669
00:43:53,005 --> 00:43:54,465
you respect things,

670
00:43:54,965 --> 00:43:56,383
and if you respect things then,

671
00:44:00,804 --> 00:44:02,039
you take care about things

672
00:44:03,807 --> 00:44:07,019
and then everything's not fine

673
00:44:07,686 --> 00:44:08,472
but better.

674
00:44:09,146 --> 00:44:11,148
Virtuous ethics revolve around the qualities

675
00:44:12,024 --> 00:44:14,068
that a good designer

676
00:44:14,735 --> 00:44:16,820
should integrate

677
00:44:18,864 --> 00:44:20,366
should control or

678
00:44:22,451 --> 00:44:23,410
should apply

679
00:44:24,244 --> 00:44:25,663
in order to do a good job,

680
00:44:26,206 --> 00:44:31,126
except of course the virtue of professional competence and mastering design practice,

681
00:44:32,044 --> 00:44:33,045
these are important

682
00:44:33,629 --> 00:44:35,214
but not sufficient.

683
00:44:36,340 --> 00:44:39,385
I have difficulty framing recommendations for others,

684
00:44:39,843 --> 00:44:41,804
again it’s the same with any piece of advice,

685
00:44:42,346 --> 00:44:45,683
I think the best piece of advice is like to be sceptical of other people’s advice

686
00:44:46,308 --> 00:44:50,229
because I think nowadays there’s too much information available everywhere

687
00:44:50,688 --> 00:44:52,606
and everyone is providing clear-cut answers

688
00:44:53,023 --> 00:44:55,943
like how to do things, there’s books on how to do that how to do this.

689
00:44:56,610 --> 00:44:59,697
You can see ten tips to improve whatever,

690
00:45:00,531 --> 00:45:03,450
from your sex life to your design skills to whatever,

691
00:45:04,076 --> 00:45:07,287
I think people should stop paying attention to these things

692
00:45:07,579 --> 00:45:09,415
and start paying attention to themselves.

693
00:45:10,416 --> 00:45:12,292
So I think developing sceptical attitude

694
00:45:12,418 --> 00:45:15,254
towards other people’s advice because it’s not relevant

695
00:45:15,379 --> 00:45:16,171
is a key.

696
00:45:16,559 --> 00:45:18,382
The main quality, which has been there since the beginning

697
00:45:18,383 --> 00:45:21,969
and stayed throughout all the various steps Sismo has been undergoing is dialogue.

698
00:45:23,762 --> 00:45:25,215
And even more tomorrow

699
00:45:27,808 --> 00:45:31,145
with all these tools for everyone which keep isolating us,

700
00:45:31,483 --> 00:45:34,773
the role of the designer is to create dialogue, that’s the only thing that works.

701
00:45:35,357 --> 00:45:38,444
The more people the more we need to talk,

702
00:45:39,445 --> 00:45:41,947
to hear each other, to learn to argue with each other

703
00:45:44,423 --> 00:45:47,786
and the role of a project is sometimes to simply create a dialogue.

704
00:45:48,078 --> 00:45:48,746
It’s not the result,

705
00:45:49,037 --> 00:45:50,873
it’s what type of dialogue I managed to create

706
00:45:51,248 --> 00:45:53,041
around this project

707
00:45:54,293 --> 00:45:58,380
and I think that the value of dialogue is rising compared to the value of production.

708
00:45:59,381 --> 00:46:02,092
We went from

709
00:46:02,885 --> 00:46:06,180
the value of design, i.e. the number of parts you will be selling at the end,

710
00:46:06,472 --> 00:46:08,932
I think that tomorrow the value of design will be

711
00:46:10,225 --> 00:46:14,730
how important was the dialogue you managed to create,

712
00:46:15,022 --> 00:46:17,441
between how many stakeholders,

713
00:46:17,733 --> 00:46:20,569
with which social and cultural differences,

714
00:46:20,986 --> 00:46:24,948
on what proportion of land.

715
00:46:25,324 --> 00:46:27,366
I would say inquisitiveness, first,

716
00:46:27,367 --> 00:46:30,913
remembering that we are

717
00:46:31,455 --> 00:46:33,165
an experimental subject

718
00:46:34,291 --> 00:46:38,086
which might have disappeared in a few decades

719
00:46:38,879 --> 00:46:40,923
and therefore you must really enjoy yourself,

720
00:46:41,256 --> 00:46:43,258
test ideas and be bold enough

721
00:46:43,842 --> 00:46:47,930
to mix methodologies and approaches.

722
00:46:48,430 --> 00:46:52,267
That’s it, professional inquisitiveness

723
00:46:52,810 --> 00:46:55,938
and the ability to work with non-designers,

724
00:46:56,772 --> 00:46:59,358
it’s a very important

725
00:46:59,595 --> 00:47:00,564
virtue.

726
00:47:01,026 --> 00:47:02,569
I think honesty,

727
00:47:04,071 --> 00:47:05,038
now I feel I’m not.

728
00:47:05,489 --> 00:47:08,742
For example I’m working on projects that are against my own ethics,

729
00:47:09,076 --> 00:47:13,080
so I don't want to go to designer conferences to speak about my research

730
00:47:14,289 --> 00:47:15,165
because I don't feel…

731
00:47:16,041 --> 00:47:18,752
It was right to speak about it at the time I was doing it

732
00:47:18,919 --> 00:47:20,629
but now I don't feel it’s right to speak about it

733
00:47:20,630 --> 00:47:24,258
when I’m actually doing the opposite of

734
00:47:24,716 --> 00:47:26,110
what I believe.

735
00:47:26,635 --> 00:47:29,680
On the blog we’ve got

736
00:47:30,889 --> 00:47:35,185
it’s almost a manifesto but Philippe Starck features in one of our challenges,

737
00:47:36,353 --> 00:47:38,730
it’s to get rid of vacuous design bullshit.

738
00:47:39,648 --> 00:47:43,485
So Philippe Starck talks about the Juicy Salif lemon squeezer as,

739
00:47:45,195 --> 00:47:47,618
this juicy salif lemon squeezer is meant to,

740
00:47:48,365 --> 00:47:51,076
it’s not to squeeze lemon, it’s to start conversations.

741
00:47:52,619 --> 00:47:53,287
This is the line.

742
00:47:54,329 --> 00:47:58,333
It’s a lemon squeezer I don't know what kind of conversations he’s expecting or hoping

743
00:47:59,209 --> 00:48:02,110
to start with that particular object.

744
00:48:03,171 --> 00:48:05,549
So I don't know if this is the most important virtue

745
00:48:05,924 --> 00:48:08,176
but it’s one that is really important to me right now.

746
00:48:08,886 --> 00:48:12,097
I think designers who are interested in ethics

747
00:48:12,514 --> 00:48:13,640
and who are

748
00:48:14,391 --> 00:48:16,518
wanting to better their practice,

749
00:48:16,810 --> 00:48:21,815
the virtue you should have or you could learn is to be open.

750
00:48:22,900 --> 00:48:27,279
I think we have so much to thank open source communities

751
00:48:27,863 --> 00:48:31,700
that have built so many of the infrastructures we rely on

752
00:48:32,326 --> 00:48:33,201
but also,

753
00:48:34,161 --> 00:48:36,038
really right now,

754
00:48:36,330 --> 00:48:38,415
to bring ethics into digital products

755
00:48:38,790 --> 00:48:41,585
which is my world of ethics, it’s really digital,

756
00:48:42,669 --> 00:48:44,546
there is so much work to be done

757
00:48:45,464 --> 00:48:46,256
if we

758
00:48:47,215 --> 00:48:49,801
do brilliant work and make it closed,

759
00:48:51,511 --> 00:48:52,433
it will have

760
00:48:53,430 --> 00:48:57,768
a limited effect on any design we see around us.

761
00:49:01,396 --> 00:49:03,357
I mean I suppose one of the most important virtues for a designer

762
00:49:03,358 --> 00:49:05,025
to cultivate will be care,

763
00:49:05,026 --> 00:49:05,979
care for the user.

764
00:49:06,360 --> 00:49:10,113
Because you know you can be the best designer in the world technically

765
00:49:10,447 --> 00:49:15,076
but if you don't care about the person you’re designing it for,

766
00:49:15,077 --> 00:49:16,477
their life and their success,

767
00:49:18,830 --> 00:49:21,291
your really effective design

768
00:49:21,458 --> 00:49:24,169
might be effective in the wrong direction, it could make their life worse.

769
00:49:25,212 --> 00:49:26,546
I think of ethics,

770
00:49:28,048 --> 00:49:31,051
a lot of people thinks of ethics as a brake pedal on innovation,

771
00:49:31,385 --> 00:49:34,564
they say it’s just another box to tick on a document,

772
00:49:34,565 --> 00:49:35,514
it’s an other committee,

773
00:49:36,181 --> 00:49:39,101
but I think of it less as a brake pedal and more as a steering wheel

774
00:49:41,520 --> 00:49:43,605
and if not an accelerator even sometimes.

775
00:49:44,564 --> 00:49:47,359
You know it’s like a tree I just try to grow

776
00:49:48,318 --> 00:49:50,320
and as more as I grow,

777
00:49:50,779 --> 00:49:53,198
the more space I take but not for nothing,

778
00:49:54,533 --> 00:49:57,536
I take more space also to cover other things.

779
00:49:59,121 --> 00:50:00,497
It’s pretty much like

780
00:50:01,456 --> 00:50:02,582
in nature in the end.

781
00:50:09,943 --> 00:50:14,943
technical direction and development<br/>Sylvain Julé<br/>art direction and graphic design<br/>Clément Le Tulle-Neyret

782
00:50:14,944 --> 00:50:19,944
direction, production and animation<br/>Gauthier Roussilhe<br/>translation<br/>Elise Leclerc

783
00:50:19,945 --> 00:50:24,944
audio post-production and mix<br/>Miroslav Pilon<br/>voiceover<br/>Victoria Stephens<br/>music curation<br/>Sébastien Robert

784
00:50:24,945 --> 00:50:29,944
music<br/>S.A.M. - *Baby I'm Sorry, Alone In A Crowd, Two Hearts In Doubt* - DJ Sports - *Phases Of Winds, The Secret Jog Life* - Trux - *Aziol*

785
00:50:29,945 --> 00:50:32,944
Thank you for your time.