Design For Values: Aims, Methods, and Applications

Systematically integrate moral values into technology design and engineering

Translating abstract moral values into concrete design requirements remains a persistent challenge across engineering disciplines. Design For Values: Aims, Methods and Applications provides the first book-length introduction to this proactive approach, presenting a systematic methodology for embedding public and moral values into new technology. Grounded in thirty years of research at leading technical universities, it moves ethics from theory into actionable engineering practice.

The book introduces value hierarchies that convert broad principles like sustainability and justice into context-specific design requirements. It provides frameworks for navigating moral overload, value conflict, and stakeholder disagreement through structured design approaches. Four extensive case studies illustrate how these methods work in practice, demonstrating translation from ethical analysis to technical specification across varied domains.

Readers will also find:

• A design perspective on practical ethics that reframes moral reasoning as an integral component of the engineering and innovation process
• Methods for identifying, prioritizing, and reconciling competing values when multiple stakeholders hold fundamentally different moral positions on technology
• Concrete examples and illustrations throughout each chapter showing how abstract ethical principles become measurable, verifiable design requirements
• Coverage spanning digital and physical technologies, offering broader applicability than approaches limited exclusively to ICT systems or software design
• A concise treatment specifically structured for use in master-level courses, PhD seminars, and professional development programs for practicing engineers

Designed for graduate students in engineering, design, and ethics of technology, as well as practicing engineers, designers, managers, and policy makers working in science and technology, this book provides the systematic methodology needed to embed values from sustainability to justice into the technologies shaping society.

JEROEN VAN DEN HOVEN is University Professor at Delft University of Technology. He is Founding Editor in Chief of Ethics and Information Technology, Scientific Director of the Delft Digital Ethics Centre, permanent member of the European Group on Ethics, co-chair of the WHO Expert Group on Ethics and Governance of AI in Health, and permanent member of the European Group on Ethics in Science and New Technologies.

IBO VAN DE POEL is Professor in Ethics and Technology at TU Delft. A member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), he is a principal investigator of the gravitation project Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies and has published widely on responsible innovation and design for values.

PIETER VERMAAS is Professor of philosophy of quantum technologies at TU Delft, where he leads ethics research for the Dutch national programme QDNL. His current research concerns the moral, societal, and political impact of quantum computing, quantum internet, and quantum sensing.