Designing for Worth: One Way to Get Started

The worth-centered development ( WCD) framework supports a range of starting points and development routes. The simplest to explain has a waterfall structure that starts by gathering what could be connected as human and technical sensitivities. This is presented here, using a card-arranging approach. However, the WCD framework is flexible. You really can start and end anywhere, supporting, for example, participative or probes-based approaches.

A WCD waterfall structure starts by brainstorming on craft/technical and human sensitivities. Be receptive to all ideas about craft and technical possibilities, and about what motivates people, because it is of value. What do we know from past and current designs that is potentially relevant? What do we know about what motivates people individually and collectively in our design context? What trends and stable regularities exist? Add all to lists of sensitivities. That’s waterfall step one for this iteration.

Next, creatively re-express or translate listed sensitivities into design or human elements. Make these elements concrete by writing them down on cards. Note originating sensitivities on the back. Now arrange them horizontally to reflect their role in means-end chains. Lay out materials in a row in the middle, features in a row above, and qualities above again in a row. You’ve just laid out the middle part of a worth sketch. Then, if you have generated defects and adverse experiences/outcomes, you can spread these out in three rows below materials, defects first, adverse experiences next and adverse outcomes at the bottom. Place worthwhile experiences and outcomes respectively in two rows above the qualities. You now have a completed worth sketch.

To move to a worth map, keep elements in their rows, but rearrange them to expose vertical means-end chains. Noted sensitivities “behind” elements may indicate some associations. Elements related to the same sensitivity are generally associated, as are elements that re-express craft or technical sensitivities as drivers of meaningful user experiences. The rest is down to the hopes of the design team. Associations are added to create complete means-end chains from design elements to human elements. We can think of these means-end chains as providing the structure for a design brief in the form of a coherent system of challenges that a project team has set itself.

is achieved via simply programming the operation of a furnace (“heating boiler” in the U.K).

If we want to maximize the worth of a central heating controller, we need to maximize its value and minimize its costs (i.e., worth = benefits/costs). In the human world of cultural values and socioeconomic resources, we can’t hope for any closures that will fully tell us when we’ve maximized this or minimized that. Instead, we have to track forms of value and types of cost, and reach a judgment about the resulting balance of worth. To do this we can begin by brainstorming on people’s needs, wants, dreams, nightmares, aversions, and related practices, as well as on relevant technical opportunities. Such brainstorming results in initial lists of human and technical sensitivities. “Sensitivities” is used broadly here to mean anything of potential relevance in terms of technical opportunities or human behavior and value. Examples appear in the first diagram, with 13 numbered human sensitivities to the right of eight technical sensitivities.

A creative step re-expresses or translates sensitivities into design and human elements that interconnect in a worth map. These elements can form an intermediate representation called a “worth sketch,” to which we add connections to make a worth map. An example is shown for a central heating controller below: Yellow elements are worthwhile outcomes, pink value elements are user experiences, light-blue design elements are qualities, gray design elements are features, white design elements are materials, and along

the bottom, red-edged elements are adverse outcomes. This worth sketch is thus populated by design elements (materials, features, qualities) and value elements (user experiences, outcomes). There are also negative versions of some elements: defects (inverse of qualities), adverse experiences, and adverse outcomes. For simplicity, only adverse outcomes appear in the example sketch and map.

Originating sensitivities are indicated by letters and/or numbers at the bottom of each element. To make the connections of the means-end chains explicit, we add associations to a worth sketch, creating the worth map in the second diagram. Sensitivities associated with sketch elements guide placement of the arrows for some positive associations. The worth map is completed by identifying desired means-end chains as arrow sequences that connect design elements via user experiences to worthwhile outcomes. A sample means-end chain is highlighted in red. It begins with the software “material” of predictive algorithms, which can enable the features of predictive cost/ usage and specifically carbon footprint information. These features in turn should give rise to user-perceived qualities of being clear and informative. If both qualities are achieved, then two user experiences should arise. The meaning of the first will take shape as the easing of environmental conscience. The other will be meaningful as a feeling of control over usage and costs.. As a result of these chains of means, two design ends may result—that is, the twin outcomes of caring for our planet and achieving a