Co-Director Emerita Batya Friedman and Faculty Associate David Hendry recently spoke about value sensitive design on the “Ready, Test, Go” podcast.

As cultural conversations around the impact of technology on the human experience, Friedman and Hendry encourage engineers to revisit the principles they brought forward in their initial edition of “Value Sensitive Design” in 2019. The updated publication was released this year and includes new interactive materials that support putting theory into practice.

“A lot of people will say, look, I’m trained as an engineer. I’m a technical person. I’m not a moral philosopher,” Friedman said on the podcast. “How do I know what’s right or wrong? This idea of moral imagination, it just paralyzes me. What do I do? And plus, I don’t have a lot of time.

“So the challenge to us then was, how could we develop a toolkit that we could put in the hands of designers, engineers that they could use with confidence very quickly that would perhaps not lead to perfect systems, but would lead to better systems? And we just tried to lower the stakes and say, let’s make progress. Focus on progress, not perfection.”

Hendry also offered a way to ground oneself in the idea of value sensitive design.

“It begins with an overarching commitment to the quality of work and human flourishing that’s tied to that work in the organizational context. And then a methodology and a set of principles for applying those methods that leads to good social and technical conditions. Working definitions are your friend, so having organizations and design teams develop working definitions can be a very helpful way of unparalyzing yourself.”

The episode covers the historical context value sensitive design, how it can be applied today, and real-life examples of using the principles in practice.

Listen to the full episode here: Designing for Human Values