Making Values Explicit During the Design Process

When people design products and services, they often do so to help realize specific values. Design is a value-driven activity, although the values often remain implicit and unarticulated. Here we reflect on a design-driven research project in which a series of innovative telecommunication, multimedia, and gaming applications were developed and evaluated in close cooperation with potential users. In our reconstruction, we focus on designers' intended values, on users' aspired values, and on the differences between these values. The authors advocate making these values more explicit and making the discussion of these values more transparent. Building on findings and methods from the field of value sensitive design, we recommend improving the match between designers' and users' values.