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As we were putting together the slides for our final crit presentation, we made an interesting observation. When it came to setting out our thinking and any designs, we started with outlining our values each time. 'Empowerment', 'sustainability' and 'tech, not for the sake of it' drove our ideas, approach and decisions.
I've been keen on value sensitive design, since the lecture we had on it as part of the Cognition & Technologies module the previous year and chose it is one of the theoretical approaches for my coursework.
What interested me is how after we had set out the values that were important to us as a group, that they remained constant throughout the process. There was never a point where any of us felt uncomfortable with these, or thought they needed to be modified. I certainly checked in with myself mentally to ask myself if these still held true and I felt strongly that they did.
Reflecting on the Value of Values
Reflecting on the Value of Values
The observation made me think about and reflect on the following:
Do values stay consistent for other designers?
Do values stay consistent for other designers?
I wondered if when going through a creative design process that really challenges us, would our values stay consistent? I would hope that people are able to change and want to change as they learn and grow. Was my consistency in my values a failure? In fairness, it's hard to argue with any of the above values.
Perhaps the question is more about whether these continued to be the three most important values that I had at the end of the project as I did at the start. By the end, as we were finishing up our submission, I would consider 'non-human-centered', 'ambiguity' and 'empathy' to be the most important values to me and value attributes for the end design.
My sense is that we are always discovering and accumulating new values that are important to us. We can also have values become more meaningful to us over time. In my case the 'non-human-centered' value has a deeper meaning, as I reflected on this value over and over again throughout the project.
Are all ideas grounded in values?
Are all ideas grounded in values?
As well as our team going on our own journey, the touch points that we had with the other teams made me think about their journeys.
Did they go though the same thinking process as us? Did they have their own set of values? From what I remember values didn't appear to be explicitly stated in their presentations, but I do remember hearing phrases such as "we cared about this", "this was important to us" or just "we wanted to explore this". Was this direction setting based on values?
In a corporate setting, values (hilariously) are often set at a company level. Do values in designs reflect the the values of these invented entities or do they come through from the designers themselves? I'm not sure, but I have wondered if some designers have not consciously thought about the values behind what they are designing at all.
What is the value of values?
What is the value of values?
What do I think would have happened if we had not set out these three values early on in the project as we did? Would we have designed something quite different?
I think we were grounded in these values and always sensitive to them, but I don't think they held us back. For instance, thinking about our 'tech not the sake of it' value, our MMOG is a technology solution and it's complicated technology too, but I think there has been a clear rationale behind our decision making.
I think that by sticking to our values, we gave ourselves the freedom to be creative, not to worry about what the right answer is (of course there isn't one, but some team members had wobbles) and to allow ourselves to explore.
Isn't this hugely valuable out in the real world, where we're under pressure to increase revenue, decrease costs or reduce 'risk'?
As designers, we have to take a stand on what we believe in and what we want for the world. We might not have the answers yet, but we can add a lot of value by asking the right questions.
Out in the real world, we have to deal with comments like this...
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