IF YOU ARE BORED BY THIS TOPIC, CAN I PLEAD FOR
YOUR PATIENCE - THERE ARE INTERESTING AND IM-
PORTANT ISSUES HERE:
Two points that hopefully widen this discussion
to the issue of the ethics of design research.
1
When Ken claims that Cindy was not a research
project he is stating his unsubstantiated opinion
about his intention. Just because you hope that
something is something does not it make it that
thing - as most designers know, and as Ken dis-
covered. Ken apologised, more or less voluntarily,
for the fact that those who felt violated by often
off-list communications they had had with Cindy -
pace Gunnar's dismissive arrogance - may have
interpreted his actions in ways that differed
from his intention.
I surmise, from my own experience, that those
who did feel deceived by Cindy, to some extent
felt themselves to be the subject of a perverse
experiment to which they had not consented.
Part of the reason that researchers are forced
to go through ethics clearance processes is in
order to view what they are about to do through
the eyes of others, and in particular to think
through some of the worst possibilities (risk
assessment). Ken may have avoided some of the
reactions to what he did, if Cindy HAD been
viewed as a research project.
This is of wider significance because:
a) many professional designers do (market) re-
search without the strictures of academic ethics
clearance
b) many designerly research processes, like
cultural probes or role play for example, are
half-designings and so half-not-research, and
consequently do not fit within the university's
definitions of research and can again slip
through ethics clearance (or in my experience
get blocked because they are unassessable).
Ken's negative example might teach us something
about the need to think through more carefully
the ethics of designerly research, rather than,
to paraphrase Gunnar, Getting On With It.
2
As a male with a loud voice, I am uncomfortable
speaking to the following (again pace Gunnar,
there is the risk that I am reinforcing a certain
hurt by speaking from this position about this),
but I raise it because it seems to be being
glossed.
Ken-as-Cindy states as his primary explanation
for what he did that:
"Ken began to wonder what would happen if he
could speak as a voice without a history
offering an argument based on an intellectual
or rhetorical position rather than perceived
social position. This called for something
that he does not have, a voice that could
speak with no perceivable power, authority,
or academic standing."
Given that there was NO NEED for Ken to assume
the role of a woman to fulfil this objective,
I assert that there is something profoundly
unethical in Ken's decision to assume the role
of a woman. Ken's actions, irrespective of his
intention, perform (in the sense of a perform-
ative - again, see Judith Butler's work on
performatives, explicitly in relation to gender
politics) the assertion that women are more
likely to have "no perceivable power, authority,
or academic standing."
If Cindy was an experiment, at least this
assumption would have been up for testing,
but if it was not, as Ken claims, then it
is a naturalized value-position that must be
criticised.
Again this is significant for many reasons, but
at the most commercial and least political level,
it is important given that many claim that men
outnumber women in senior management and design
positions to exactly the same extent that women
outnumber men in overall volumes of purchase
decisions (see for example Shoshana Zuboff and
James Maxim's 'The Support Economy' [London:
Allen Lane, 2002]). In this context, research
methods that teach male designers about female
users, precisely in ways that explicitly nego-
tiate pre-existing naturalized prejudices,
become crucial.
Again Kendy provides a strong negative example.
Cameron
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