Ethics Education for Integrated Product Design

University Of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia PA

Investigators

Abstract

This Ethics Education in Science and Engineering project proposes to educate the next generation of product designers and product engineers on the ethical production of products. This proposal focuses on three particular aspects: 1) manufacturing life cycle issues (recycling, packaging, environmental impact) 2) impact on developing countries and emerging markets including humanitarian and environmental concerns 3) advancing technology in products such as privacy concerns or robots in the workplace. Students who have knowledge in all of these disciplines will be uniquely poised to understand the complex ethical issues for products that are often deeply coupled with business and engineering design concerns. This proposal will address this need by using a novel experiential learning approach to educate students in the three focus areas above. Students will experience developing products that impact life in developing countries and emerging market (Ghana, Bangladesh or South Africa) by going there and working with NGO?s and design firms. Students will experience both the creation side and the abuse side of advancing technology. The impact of this program will extend beyond Penn?s graduate program in three ways. First, other universities have committed to follow successful practices as we discover them. Second, we have six committed local and international industry partners as well as another six NGO?s in process that will both supply context for our students as well as take the results of their work. Third, we will publish multimedia content of the projects and coursework on the internet. As society begins to grapple with how to evaluate the impact of advancing technology in products and how to respond to them at the level of policy, we will need citizens who are expert in the engineering and well- versed in its ethical and social implications. The proposed program will establish a growing cohort of young product designers who will be familiar with the ethical frameworks and perspectives that can be brought to bear on the analysis of problems, and be able to apply a methodology to solve problems. Broader impact. At the broadest level, the program will influence the development of manufacturing techniques and ethics education, bringing awareness of the human impacts of existing manufacturing processes to the design table of the next generation of production processes. It will do so by seeding the next generation of product designers with individuals who have thought deeply about the societal implications of their work and have learned the basics of ethical manufacturing and high technology product design in the increasingly global context.