Designing for Changing Values
How to Deal with Value Change in Sociotechnical System Design
Not value neutral
A key insight from philosophy of technology is that technological artifacts and sociotechnical systems are not value neutral, but support or inhibit certain values. Several philosophical accounts for understanding the embedding of values in technological artifacts have been proposed and approaches like Value Sensitive Design, Design for Values and Responsible Innovation have been established for integrating values into technical design.
A theoretical blind spot
A blind spot is, however, the possibility of value change after a sociotechnical system has been designed. For example, when many of our current energy and transportation systems were designed sustainability was not yet a central value, and we are now struggling to incorporate this value into these systems. Progress in the field is currently inhibited by the lack of a philosophical theory of value change in sociotechnical systems.
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Better design strategies
This project fills the gap by developing such a theory. It moves beyond the state of the art by proposing a dynamic rather than a static account of values, by developing insights in the dynamics of value change, by extending analysis about the embedding of values in technical artefacts to sociotechnical systems and by developing design strategies that aim at designing sociotechnical systems that can better deal with value change.
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Recent Project News
‘Exploring Values Across Methods and Disciplines’ – Project Workshop
Design for Changing Values team is organizing a workshop focused on the empirical pursuits of studying values on October 31 - November 1, 2019 at TU Delft, the Netherlands. This workshop aims to introduce new researchers to empirical research about how values are...
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‘Artificial intelligence, ethics and cybersecurity’ – keynote lecture
Prof. dr. Ibo van de Poel was invited by Alert Online Seminar at KPN to give a keynote lecture “Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Cybersecurity” on 9 October, 2018 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Keynote lecture info “Artificial intelligence, ethics and...
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‘Design for Changing Values’ – a pitch presentation at DDfV playground meeting
Prof. dr. Ibo van de Poel is giving a pitch presentation about ”Design for Changing Values" at the upcoming playground meeting dedicated to the theme "Design for Value Dynamics" on Thursday, March 21. This informal lunch meeting is organized by Delft Design for Values...
read moreSet-up of the project
Research Lines
Within our project we pursue six research lines:
