From Ethics to Social Responsibility in Designer's Profession. Polish Perspective

„Design is after all a social activity carried out for social ends” claim Clive Dilnot (Dilnot 1982:1). What this term nowadays means and how can be described the contemporary designer profession in terms of ethics and responsibility, are the main questions of this presentation. The world of everyday life is usually "designed" and better or worse refers to the specific expectations of individuals. In a substantive sense, significant in this process is the kind of value attitude that designers can manifest in their work. They contribute to the creation of a specific order in the material world, influence the new shape of social network and new meaning of specific elements in the designed reality. Designers, however, create quite diverse environment in the range of professions and specializations. As well as there could be included architects, designers - builders, installers or specialists in the field of industrial and graphic design. Perhaps, it is an abuse to claim that poorly designed object, device or visual information system will be as damaging as improperly granted medical advice, but it is hard not to see that designers work has an extremely large force of impact on the welfare of individuals and groups. In order to deal with, it will be showed some empirical data from own sociological research conducted among Polish professional designers. This presentation will attempt to systematize the issue of determinants for designer’s ethic attitude and their professional responsibility by refering to theoretical interpretation of “design” concept and network nature of analysis (with ref. to Bruno Latour). To bring more clearity to the matter, there will be also presented the definition of design, differentiation of roles undertaken by contemporary designers and their influence on shaping the material environment of human life.