What is Design for Values?

is a design approach aimed at integrating values – like justice, sustainability, autonomy, privacy and security – in all stages of the design process. It foregrounds sensitivity to values instead of seeing them as a mere constraint at the end of a design process. It also promotes values through a design approach, aimed at finding new creative solutions for societal and moral challenges.
aims at both social acceptance and moral acceptability of designed products, systems and services. Therefore, it critically scrutinizes stakeholder values for their moral acceptability.
requires a transdisciplinary approach that involves different academic disciplines, societal stakeholders and industry. It combines expertise in design, engineering, social sciences and philosophy. It requires insight into the nature of values, reliable operationalizations of values, the translation of values into design options, and methods to assess the consequences of different design options to compare them with the target values.

Essential ideas behind Design for Values

Basic assumptions

Design for Values is based on the following assumptions:

Products / services / technologies / systems / spaces are not value-neutral tools. They embody and express different values and can enhance or hinder the realisation of these values in the world.
Conscious and explicit reflection on these values is therefore needed. And to make a difference, such reflection needs to take place during the design process rather than being postponed to the implementation or policy making phase.

Considering values at different levels

Design for values foregrounds value sensitivity at all stages of the design process. It considers values on at least three levels of a design process:

The aims of the design process: it makes explicit which values – such as sustainability, privacy, justice or explainability – any design solution should respect. It includes systematic efforts to attain these values.
The characteristics of the design process itself: it ensures that the design process itself is inclusive, transparent and accountable.
The consequences of the design solution: it anticipates possible value consequences of design solutions, including unintended ones, and addresses these pro-actively in the design process.

Moral acceptability & social acceptance

It is our vision that Design for Values should aim at designing systems, products and services that are not only socially accepted but are also morally acceptable. Therefore, it is crucial to be aware that there might be a gap between what stakeholders value, and what they have reason to value or should consider valuable. For example, stakeholders may potentially hold racist values, but those values cannot be morally justified and, therefore, should not play a role in the design process. So, while designers should always consider the value perspectives of stakeholders, these stakeholder perspectives also need to be scrutinized from a normative perspective to determine which values can be justified and can be used as input for the design process.

Relationship to other design movements

There exist commonalities between Design for Values and design movements that consider certain values, such as:

participatory design (as a way to democratize design),
inclusive or universal design (addressing certain forms of injustice),
positive design (focusing on happiness and human flourishing)

Design for Values also has some commonalities with more comprehensive approaches like Value Sensitive Design (which has become influential for several values and application domains) and social design (aimed at transforming society towards the realization of certain values).

We consider these movements a valuable source of knowledge, experience and inspiration, while always keeping an eye on the essential ideas behind Design for Values as formulated above.

Diversity within Design for Values

Design for Values takes place in different application domains (such as architecture, computing and energy technologies) and considers a range of values (such as accountability, sustainability and happiness). In general design practices, methods and approaches for different values and application domains are somewhat disconnected.

Different values

For some values – like safety and more recently sustainability – Design for Values is now well established. Ample experience has been accumulated and approaches are available that have proven themselves. For other values – like responsibility and democracy – work on taking them into account in design has only just begun. New technological developments, such as artificial intelligence and big data, have given a new urgency to explicitly and properly addressing these values in design processes.

Different application domains

Also for the various application domains it varies to what degree Design for Values is common practice. In information and communication technology Design for Values is now relatively well established, not in the least thanks to the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach that Batya Friedman and others developed in this area of application. In other domains – like water management, military technology, or nuclear energy technology – values may already have played a role for quite some time, but they often do so implicitly. A well established, generally accepted Design for Values approach is still lacking in these domains.

Shared Design for Values challenges

To some extent, this diversity is a healthy sign reflecting the diverse challenges that different values and different application domains pose to Design for Values. A tool like life-cycle analysis that has proven its usefulness in design for sustainability may not be applicable to a value like responsibility. The military domain raises challenges for Design for Values that do not arise in other domains, like the fact that certain users or stakeholders may counteract the attempt to realize certain values.

Yet despite the diversity in Design for Values approaches, we believe that there are common concerns and challenges. The field can therefore profit from more exchange between different values, different application domains and different approaches. The Delft Design for Values Institute contributes to that exchange.

Glossary

Design: a creative, multi-stakeholder co-creation process in which new ways to address a (societal) problem are devised (“designed”), tested, detailed and monitored, and if necessary revised, during their lifetime. Examples are engineering design, IT system design, the design of consumer products, architectural design, design of sociotechnical systems, design of interventions and strategies, and policy design.
Design for values: a design approach developed at TU Delft, aimed at integrating values in all stages of the design process. It fosters the social acceptance and moral acceptability of design processes and outcomes. It distinguishes itself from other forms of design by a systematic attention for values throughout the design process, in a way that is explicit, inclusive, and transparent.
Moral acceptability: a product, system or service is morally acceptable if it respects all the relevant moral values such as sustainability, beneficence, justice, and privacy.
Moral values: Any value whose promotion is supported by moral reasons. This includes values connected to fundamental rights of humans, animals and ecosystems, as well as values that are important for living a good life (human and animal flourishing), as well as values connected to public goods and the just society. Examples of moral values are safety, sustainability, privacy, justice, diversity & inclusion, equity & equality, health, and well-being.
Stakeholder: any individual, group or organization whose rights, needs or interests are potentially affected by design. Examples are users, societal organizations, industry, and policy makers.
Stakeholder values: Values held by relevant stakeholders, which usually determine whether a stakeholder will accept a certain product, system or service. Stakeholders’ values are not necessarily also moral values and should therefore be critically scrutinized in design for values. Examples of stakeholder values are affordability, ease of use, compatibility and effectiveness.
Social acceptance: a product, system or service is socially accepted if it is accepted by relevant stakeholders, which usually means that it needs to address the values and needs of those stakeholders.
Transdisciplinary research: research that also actively involves groups from outside the traditional knowledge system and the university in the research process. Think, for example, of users, societal stakeholders or policy makers.