NWO Funding Awarded for Moral Experiences and Design for Values

We are pleased to share that Prof. Dr. ir. Ibo van de Poel, Dr. James Hutton and Prof. Dr. ir. Pieter M.A. Desmet have been awarded funding through the NWO Open Competition SSH L – Granted Projects Round 2025 for their project Moral Experiences and Design for Values.

The project develops new ways to integrate people’s moral experiences into the design of emerging technologies. While designers often aim to embed values such as fairness and autonomy into new technologies, they frequently lack methods to assess whether these values are genuinely realised in practice.

Drawing on insights from philosophy, the project introduces the concept of techno-moral experience – the ways technologies are emotionally and morally experienced by the people they affect. This concept will be used to adapt and improve existing Design for Values methods, test them in concrete design projects, and develop a practical toolkit that supports designers in making more reflective and responsible moral choices.

Congratulations to Prof. Dr. ir. Ibo van de Poel, Dr. James Hutton and Prof. Dr. ir. Pieter M.A. Desmet on this achievement.

More information about the NWO Open Competition SSH L – Granted Projects Round 2025 is available on the NWO website.