Design, Research, Education, and Collaboration
The Delft Design for Values Institute works on designing technology that honours justice, autonomy & sustainability.
Why should we Design for Values?
If we want to tackle the societal challenges that we face in the 21st century and ensure that new technologies benefit rather than endanger humankind and the planet, we need to design them for values. Integrating moral and social values in the design process – like justice, autonomy and sustainability – will help to create technologies that are both morally acceptable (that respect relevant moral values) and socially accepted (that address the values and needs of relevant stakeholders). Design for Values can also promote values by stimulating new creative solutions for societal and moral challenges.
What is Design for Values?
Design for Values (DfV) aims at integrating values – like well-being, justice, and autonomy – in all stages of technology development. It foregrounds sensitivity to values in the design phase, instead of seeing values as a mere constraint during the implementation/use phase. Aiming for both social acceptance and moral acceptability, this design approach takes stakeholder involvement seriously but also critically scrutinizes stakeholder values for their moral acceptability.
Why the DDfV Institute?
Design for Values requires a transdisciplinary approach involving different academic disciplines (design, engineering, social sciences, philosophy) as well as societal stakeholders and industry. The DDfV Institute facilitates such collaborations. Design for Values encompasses a diversity of design approaches, theoretical backgrounds, considered values, and application domains. Despite these differences, there are common challenges that the DDfV Institute addresses.
What Do We Do?
The Delft Design for Values (DDfV) Institute facilitates the exchange of the expertise and knowledge required to do Design for Values well and promotes the diffusion of the approach. We undertake various activities in the areas of research, education, collaboration, and outreach. Each year, we pay extra attention to one particular value by making it our annual theme.
Annual Theme
Design for Human Autonomy brought together a variety of expertise!
In the academic year of 2024-2025, the institute focused on ‘Design for Human Autonomy’. Throughout the year we explored this important topic with research workshops, a PhD workshop, compiling a white paper and fruitful discussions during our final conference.
News, Blogs & Media Appearances
Events on Design for Values
Handbook edited by DDfV researchers
Handbook of Ethics, Values and Technological Design;
Sources, Theory, Values and Application Domains
- Aimed at a broad public, among them: ethicists, policy makers and designers themselves
- Addresses myriad aspects at the intersection of technology design and ethics
- Enables designers to anticipate, prevent and resolve societal & ethical issues
- Evaluates different application domains, including architecture and information technology
- Collates an array of published material
- Offers a studied, practical introduction to the field