Designing, Working, and Ethics

In the 1970s, a college psychology professor conducted an experiment with his students. They were to ask questions of a person; if the person were to get the answer wrong, an electrical shock would be applied to them. The more questions the person answered wrong, the stronger the shocks became. No answer meant a wrong answer.

The students were told that they would fail their psychology class if they did not do as they were told. They applied greater and greater shocks to the person they were asking questions, and of course, the person would eventually stop answering as the shocks became greater and greater - some of which were double the amount of electrical power needed to kill a man.

The good news is, the person being shocked was an actor, and no person was hurt during the experiment (save for the mentality of the students, I would assume). The bad news, the students show how despite ethics, a person will do as they are told without question.

Do we, as humans and creatures raised in a society filled with elders and authority, do as we are told despite our deepest morals? Give a control situation in which one partner of a relationship has somehow gained absolute domain over the other person - how does the other person break free of this domination to pursue the things which they feel are right and proper?

I believe that humans are generally ethical creatures, or at least the majority of them tend to strive to be ethical. No, I'm not stating that there aren't bad people in the world (I, of anyone, know that there are), but I believe that everyone has some sort of set of morals and beliefs.

When I first began designing, I had a head full of hope and thought that I was going to change the world in some way by creating sites for people and organizations that I could post in my portfolio, and that this way I would be able to watch myself grow and progress.

The first design I was awarded was to build an adult site on a CMS for $2000.

I say awarded because I did not do the site. The $2000 looked great and everything - but for what? I was a budding artist, and admittedly, images of women doing that sort of thing with goats and various other farm animals did not seem like something I would want to spend hours upon hours with. I am not saying that adult sites are against my morals, but honestly thoughts of horror immediately sprang up - what if that was all the work I received? How was I supposed to build up my portfolio on a site that I would never want a large CEO to see that I did?

Do we as designers have to accept adult sites? Especially young, budding designers who are fresh from the mill and just learning to crank out code. And say the designer finished the site, and it is one of the best sites the designer has created - would they then display it in their portfolio?

An old coworker of mine once said to me that while it is great having morals, there are times and jobs in which a person has to set them aside in order to survive. While this person's night job was not the most honorable thing a woman could do, it allowed her to survive in a terribly difficult world. It brings me to the question of designers who work in an agency - what if your employer sets aside his or her own morals for what you perceive as immoral sites (whether sites pertaining to various activities with farm animals, or even sites pertaining to subjects which borderline criminal activity)? With the world economy where it is now, a person cannot simply quit their job on a given whim, no matter what sort of decisions their employment makes. A person does what they can to survive - those were the words that a person I admire and respect once told me. A good friend of mine is currently in the situation of a crossroads behind quitting and staying on at his job because of the decisions of his management; while I assume he is going to try better prospects, it is understandable why he is having a difficult decision.

So, what do we do? Ethics or design?