Teaching aspiring industrial designers to understand value(s)

Abstract

This chapter describes ‘Understanding Values’, a course that teaches
aspiring designers who aim to design for values to disentangle how different
notions of value and values influence the design process, the design outcome,
and how the outcome is evaluated. The course strives to make abstract values
more tangible by asking students to analyse the values supported or hindered
by an existing product-service system and how it brings or destroys value for
a broad range of direct and indirect stakeholders. Various theories, methods
and tools are brought forward to help them perform their analysis and come
up with a more acceptable alternative value proposition. Students are also
encouraged to conduct high-quality dialogues to reflect on their own values as
designers, the ethics of design and the value tensions they experience during
the course. These reflections in turn serve as input for the development of
their own code of ethics.