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
‘The Ethics of Disruptive Technologies’ – Conference organized by 4TU Center for Ethics and Technology
Several members of the “Design for changing values” research team will present their work at the 'Ethics of Disruptive Technologies' Conference, organized by 4TU Center for Ethics and Technology on November 7-8 at Eindhoven University of Technology. Detailed...
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The “Design for changing values” team together with TU Delft colleagues are organizing a panel at the OZSW Conference
The "Design for changing values" team, together with TU Delft colleagues, are organizing the panel 'Values and technology: A reciprocal relationship' at the annual OZSW conference that will take place on November 16 at University of Amsterdam. Detailed Information...
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‘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...
read moreSet-up of the project
Research Lines
Within our project we pursue six research lines:
