Design and Society, Ethics and Sustainability
This domain asks candidates to judge designs beyond function. Understand sustainable design principles: reduce, reuse, recycle; design for disassembly; life-cycle thinking; embodied energy; and the difference between cradle-to-grave and cradle-to-cradle approaches. Know the triple bottom line - environmental, social, and economic impacts - and be able to apply it to a product.
Ethics covers inclusive and universal design (accessibility, ergonomics, cultural appropriateness), safety and risk, honest marketing, privacy and data in connected products, and equity in who benefits and who bears the burden. A frequent trap is 'greenwashing': a claim that a product is sustainable because one part is recyclable, while ignoring energy use or disposal. Another trap is treating sustainability as only environmental - social and economic dimensions are examined too.
Know the role of standards, codes, and regulation, and the designer's responsibility to comply and to flag risk. Understand planned obsolescence and its ethical critique, and how design decisions affect users' repair rights and longevity.
Worked example / rule of thumb: A company claims a bottle is 'eco-friendly' because it uses recycled plastic. Evaluate with life-cycle thinking: raw material, manufacture, transport, use, disposal. Recycled content helps at the material stage, but transport distance, non-recyclable cap, and energy in production may offset it. Rule of thumb: a sustainability claim is only as strong as its weakest life-cycle stage - always ask 'compared with what, and across which stages?' Use the triple bottom line as a checklist so no dimension is missed.