Design reasoning lens
This is where most of my focus is right now. It comes from a need to better understand what design actually does to the world around us.
Design Reasoning Lens (DRL) is a framework for ethical analysis in design beyond function and form. It treats design as a world-shaping practice with ontological effects. Through a set of ethical dimensions, DRL aims to make those effects visible, open them to reflection, and help orient design interventions toward core ethical values. Developed as both a conceptual and practical framework, it supports more rigorous evaluation across diverse design domains.
DRL ethical screening tool
To make DRL actionable in practice, I am developing an AI-assisted screening tool that translates the framework into a structured process for rapid ethical screening. It is intended as a quick entry point for practical analysis, helping surface key risks, assumptions, and blind spots without claiming to replace deeper evaluation.
Why DRL
There is no shortage of ethical principles today. What remains harder is sustaining ethical attention within practice itself. DRL was developed as a discipline of attention and an everyday hygiene of thought: a framework for making the wider consequences of design decisions more visible, more discussable, and more open to analysis.
Theoretical FoundationMaxims
The maxims form the ethical foundation of DRL. Developed as part of its philosophical grounding, they provide the basis for using the lens in practice.
Ethics as a norm of process
Ethical reasoning should be present from the very beginning of the design process, shaping how problems are framed, which limits are accepted, and what counts as a responsible outcome.
Ethics as enablement
Design should make ethical action possible by creating conditions in which people can act consciously, with clarity, and without unnecessary coercion or loss of agency.
Ethics as temporal verifiability
Design decisions should be treated as provisional and revisable, requiring ongoing observation, feedback, and correction as conditions and consequences unfold over time.
Further readingThe dimensions of DRL
The dimensions are the core structure of DRL. Each one focuses attention on a different aspect of design, making it easier to examine how decisions are formed, what effects they produce, and what ethical questions they raise.
Contextual
Where do we design, and upon what heritage do we build? How does the context generate the very problem that design seeks to address, and how does it define the conditions of the artefact’s existence?
Further readingResource-technical
How do material, technical, safety, resource, and regulatory constraints define the space of possible solutions?
Further readingEpistemological
What knowledge do we consider valid for design decisions, and what structure of knowledge does our design artefact bring into the world?
Further readingEcological
How do design decisions affect the biosphere and how material and energy resources are used throughout an artefact’s life cycle?
Further readingPolitical-economic
Who controls the resources and sets the rules that underpin the project? How does the design artefact redistribute power, resources, responsibility, risks, and opportunities?
Further readingTemporal
What happens to an artefact over time: how it emerges, functions, ages, transforms, or disappears?
Further readingOntological
How does a design artefact change the reality around it, and what kinds of life does it support or constrain?
Further readingToward a new code of desirability
DRL does not propose a universal answer or a new professional code. It seeks to support a professional culture in which ethical thinking becomes a habit of practice. I believe that designers, product managers, engineers, and all those who shape artefacts can act as agents of change in the functionality of what they produce and in the forms of life their interventions make possible.
Responsibility should be understood here as a source of strength. It helps anticipate risks, sustain trust, and shape decisions that remain aligned with human dignity and systemic resilience. DRL also points toward a possible cultural shift in which ethicality becomes part of desirability. This shift depends on evidence, practice, and the ability to distinguish real ethical commitment from stylization. Under such conditions, responsibility can become part of what makes artefacts, practices, and organisations credible, attractive, and worth building.