Design for Values

Technology is never value‑neutral. The choices engineers and designers make shape how technology affects individuals, society, and the world around us. Design for Values introduces a systematic approach to integrating moral, social, and ethical values directly into the engineering and design process.

In this course, you will learn how values such as safety, sustainability, fairness, and responsibility can be identified, analyzed, and translated into concrete design requirements. You will explore the Design for Values and Value Sensitive Design approaches, work with stakeholder perspectives, and learn how to deal with value conflicts in a structured and transparent way.

By combining conceptual frameworks with practical methods and real‑world examples, this course equips you to design technologies that not only function well, but also align with societal needs and ethical expectations. Whether you are an engineer, designer, or decision‑maker, Design for Values helps you take responsibility for the impact of technology in society.

Course Staff

Lambèr Royakkers is professor Ethics of the Digital Society at Eindhoven University of Technology. His research has an interdisciplinary character and deals with the interface between ethics, law and technology, with a particular focus on digitization, robo-ethics and artificial intelligence. The main contribution in his research is dealing with the ethical and legal dilemmas/problems in our digital society which have been leveraged by modern technology. 

He is the coordinator of the course sequence Robots Everywhere, where the main question is: ‘How we can enjoy the benefits of robotics and artificial intelligence while simultaneously avoiding pitfalls, since the development of robotics and artificial intelligence may cause great harm?

"We cannot work on the development of robots and artificial intelligence - especially when it comes to making autonomous decisions - without considering the consequences for our society and lives.”