4 - Values in Design and Responsible Innovation

Summary

This chapter shows how different values including security, privacy, and safety have been at stake in the design of whole-body scanners at airports. Value-sensitive design (VSD) and Design for Values are discussed as two approaches to proactively identifying and including values in engineering design. When designing for values, one may run into conflicting values that cannot be accommodated at the same time. Different strategies for dealing with value conflicts are discussed, including designing out the conflict and balancing the conflicting values in a sensible and acceptable way. This chapter does not pretend to offer the holy grail of design for ethics. Indeed, complex and ethically intricate situations will emerge in an actual design process. Instead, it offers a way to be more sensitive to these conflicts when they occur in design and to be equipped to deal with them as far as possible. The chapter further discusses responsible research and innovation in proactive thinking about technological innovation. In so doing, it extends the notion of design beyond merely technical artifacts and focuses on the process of innovation.