The Social Responsibility of Design Engineers
By: Anusha Narayan
Tags: Social, Responsibility, Vulnerability, Design

We spend our lives surrounded by thousands of products; pencils, computers, cars, whatever you can think of. A vast majority of these products are so easy and safe to use that we never even have to entertain the possibility of injury being caused as a result. But no product is ever completely safe; it will always have the potential to cause harm, although the nature and severity of the harm will depend on the product itself. Whenever such an unfortunate occurrence takes place, there is always the attempt to disperse blame, to find who is the responsible party. As society becomes more conscious of the impact that individuals have on one another, the question is frequently being raised: should the designer have predicted the harm that was caused by their product?

The Consumer Protection Act 1987 states that a product is defective if “the safety of the product is not such as as persons generally are entitled to expect”. There are instances in which the law can clearly be applied — if the brakes on a snowmobile fail, causing it to crash into a tree and kill the driver, then clearly, it is the fault of the engineer; they had not properly manufactured the brakes, causing them to fail. However, there are a number of times when the lack of a specific definition of the term “defective product” can cause real problem. The fact that design engineers do not have a predetermined definition to work towards means that the line of responsibility is much more frequently blurred.

There will always be one group for whom the responsibility of designers will be at its maximum: the vulnerable. When designing for the elderly, disabled or young, the usual rules of “normal usage” or ignorance of possible hazards cannot apply, simply because the consequences of not taking responsibility are too severe. This has been proven time and time again, when a simple mistake had disastrous consequences. Craig Williams was sentenced to 3 years imprisonment in 2018 after the cot he designed led to a 7-month-old baby choking to death. The baby accidentally got his head stuck between the bars of the crib, causing his tragic death. When such young users are involved, responsibility of safety cannot be left to them as it is simply not feasible to expect them to be able to understand how to use a product, or the consequences of unsafe usage. If a designer is undertaking the task of making a product to be used by vulnerable clients, then they must be aware of the abilities and limitations of the target market, and adjust their own design accordingly. The BS EN 71, the compulsory standard for the sale of toys in Britain, goes some way to cover this requirement. All parts of the toy are placed down a tube with a diameter equivalent to that of the windpipe of a 36-month-old child. If it can fit down, there is a risk of the child swallowing it, and the part must be discarded. Common and frequent behaviours of the target market must be observed and incorporated into the design of the product. For example, it must be assumed that young children will put things in their mouth, and therefore the designer must take extra care to ensure that there is no chance of the child choking on the product. Similarly, it must be assumed that elderly people are more likely to fall over, and if they do, the results are much worse than they would be if I were to fall. Therefore a designer of a stairlift must ensure that there is no chance of the lift malfunctioning while the user is on it, and if it is not possible to eliminate the likelihood completely, then there must be a backup, fail-safe way in which users are able to safely dismount and get off the staircase. If we wish to live in a civilised society, then we must all play our part in protecting the vulnerable. In the case of designers, that involves making sure that the chance of harm arising from the product is negligible.

Even when the target users of a product do not fall into the category of “vulnerable”, designers fulfil their social and moral obligation by ensuring that their products are safe to use for “normal usage”. However, this term is open to interpretation as well. There are some instances where the manner in which the injury was caused has been so far removed from the intention of the product, that there is no way to reasonably expect a designer to have been able to anticipate that. A toothbrush to a knife can be an example of such. There have been instances of prisoners sharpening the ends of toothbrushes and using them as weapons. At this point, it really does seem to be more the responsibility of the user as opposed to the designer. If the product had led to harm without manipulation, then an argument in the user’s favour could be made, but if harm or injury is caused as a result of a user editing the product to their purposes, surely the designer should be blameless.

There is one instance when a designer cannot really be held liable: when harm is caused as a result of a product designed to cause injury anyway. I am speaking of one particular case, gunfire injuries. The Newtown lawsuit, brought in 2014 following the devastating mass shooting that took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, brought this exact issue to light. Grieving families were attempting to criminalize the sale of the AR-15, a military-style assault rifle that was used to kill 20 children, and were attempting to implicate the manufacturers in the lawsuit. But what legitimate case could be made against them? The designer of the gun was only doing what he was permitted to do under the law: the weapon did exactly what it was designed to do. While I am a staunch opponent of the right to bear arms, even I admit that the engineer cannot be implicated when a gun is fired as is intended. If it had misfired, that would be a separate discussion in which the designer could be held liable. But in this case, the only valid case to be made is regarding its sale (which I am strongly against, but again, that is not the subject of discussion), which is more a political issue than one about social responsibility. So what is the answer, when a product designed to cause harm does exactly that? The only way of limiting that harm is to regulate it’s sale, something that the designer rarely has input in. The designer can ensure that the product does not cause anything unexpected to occur (e.g a misfire), but really, what else can they do?

Have I come up with a precise definition for “defective product”? No. Have I managed to find a specific meaning for the term “normal usage”? No. But what I have found is that there can be no line of responsibility, simply due to the fact that there are too many factors to be considered: the clients, the aim of the product, the ways in which the product could be misused, etc. Extra care must be taken when the clients cannot be relied upon to safely use the product, or when the product can cause harm, but how far the designer is responsible for an accident with a product, that can really only be decided on a case-by-case basis. There are simply too many variables to release a blanket statement. Designer engineers undoubtedly have a social and moral obligation to ensure that their products cause as little harm as possible, but the amount of blame that they must bear, that can only ever be decided given the specific circumstances.