IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2021 - 40

Feature
but to a wide number of engineering design tools.
Engineers commonly translate ill-defined customer
needs into quantifiable metrics using a wide array of
tools, such as Pugh charts, quality function deployments
(QFDs), and so on [5].
Conclusion: Transdisciplinary
frameworks for PIT
Can ill-defined concepts, such as social justice or
societal well-being (which may have contradictory
definitions across various groups), really be translated
into engineering metrics? Not perfectly. But
there is some precedent for the value of reductionist
indices in other fields.
A similar problem occurred in the field of economics
(another highly positivist academic discipline),
when during the late twentieth century,
a group of economists, including Amartya Sen,
critiqued the assumption that economic growth
automatically improved the lived experience of the
average citizen [28], [29]. The resulting debate led
to a decades-long re-evaluation of what constitutes
wellbeing. The community of aid organizations,
development workers, and economists eventually
formulated the Human Development Index (HDI),
a combination of a dozen measurable factors such
as life expectancy, education, and housing, which
would become influential for policy-making [30],
[31]. The adoption of lifecycle design and carbon
footprint calculations shows a similar trend in engineering
with regard to environmental concerns.
FOr PIt tO succeed in achieving increased public
good within the realm of technology, both policy-makers
and engineers must learn to appreciate
how the other thinks and acts. The development of
common transdisciplinary frameworks is one tool
toward this end. There is a clear risk here-that the
objective specs become the goal rather than the
subjective reality; however, the greater risk is for
engineers to design technologies blind of the social
implications of their work.

 References
[1] E. Stribling, " The historical and ideological chasm
between engineering and development, " presented at
the IEEE Int. Symp. Technol. Soc., Nov. 2020.
[2] A. Brooks, The End of Development: A Global History
of Poverty and Prosperity. London, U.K.: Zed Books
Ltd, 2017.
40
[3] S. Goldman, " The social captivity of engineering, " in
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[8] C. Berry, B. Boudreaux, D. Eaves, E. Zegura and S.
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[11] H. Pringle, " Seeking Africa's first iron men, " Science,
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