This work opens up many questions around ethics and design, individual and collective responsibility. Firstly, it was taken on with the aim to deep dive into the question of why ethics seems to be a highly debated topic, yet when it comes to practice it is oppressed to the “gut-feeling” level. Though this instinctive nature of ethics is valuable, by lifting it to the level of consciousness and treating ethics as something intentional, we argue design processes can become more conscious. With it, more sustainable solutions can be built. Additionally, this thesis discusses how bias awareness, reflexivity, and introspection can support forming a path to more ethically-driven and sustainable futures. It looks into what makes up for an ethically led process, with a deeper and more case-sensitive understanding, which goes beyond labelling solutions and approaches in design as “right” or “wrong”.

Throughout the development of this project, several professionals were engaged to gain comprehensive insight into the topic that is ethics and design. As a result, an intention-setting activity in a form of a design workshop has been developed to support (not only) service design practitioners in the journey to becoming more responsible, ethically driven professionals.