Engineering design ethics concerns issues that arise during the design of technological products, processes, systems, and services. This includes issues such as safety, sustainability, user autonomy, and privacy. Ethical concern with respect to technology has often focused on the user phase. Technologies, however, take their shape during the design phase. The engineering design process thus underlies many ethical issues in technology, even when the ethical challenge occurs in operation and use.

Engineering Design

Engineering design is the process by which certain goals or functions are translated into a blueprint for an artifact, process, system, or service that can fulfill these functions. The function of cutting bread, for example, can be translated into a knife. A car fulfills the function of transportation. Engineering design is different from other forms of design—such as fashion design or the design of policy—in that it results in...