IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - September 2023 - 27

as helping recognize and address moral problems
[31]. Moral values then might need to change, or
new moral values might be required if people are
confronted with new moral problems. On this reasoning,
the emergence of sustainability as a value in
the 20th century might be interpreted as a response
to the growth of environmental problems, which in
turn is caused by technical, social, and economic
developments.
Value change is relevant to the design of technology,
and in what follows, we identify types of value
change concerning technology [30] (see Figure 1).
Emergence of new values
New values can emerge over time because of
technological or social developments, or a combination
of these two. As mentioned earlier, the
value of sustainability emerged in the wake of the
energy transition, which was facilitated by new
technology. The emergence of new values is relevant
for design because established technology
may not align with new values and needs to be
redesigned. Similarly, there is a social demand to
take into account sustainability in the design of
new technology.
Emergence of the relevance of values for
technological design
Changes in the relevance of values for a specific
technology is another kind of value change.
Recall the example of the wind turbine. The
continued use of wind turbines has provided
new information about their impact on (mental)
health. As a consequence, (mental) health, which
was previously not considered relevant for wind
turbine design, became relevant and should be an
important consideration in the design and implementation
of wind turbines.
Changes in the priority of values
Besides the emergence of new values and irrelevant
values becoming relevant for technology, values
can change in priority. That means the same
values remain relevant for technology design, but
their relative importance changes. The change in
value priority can be illustrated with car design and
the relative importance of the safety of drivers and
passengers compared to the safety of other traffic
participants, like cyclists or pedestrians. Originally,
car design focused on protecting drivers and
September 2023
passengers, but this emphasis has gradually shifted
toward the protection of other vulnerable traffic
participants [22].
Changes in the meaning of values
Values are often expressed as abstract ideals or
principles that people need to interpret to make
them meaningful. For instance, the value of justice
is rather abstract, and people often provide different
interpretations of it. Justice may, for example,
be understood in terms of equal outcomes for different
people, but also in terms of equal opportunities,
which may lead to unequal outcomes for
different people.
Technological and social change can lead to
changes in how values are conceptualized, with
potential consequences for technology design. Consider
the value of privacy (e.g., [13]). Arguably, facilitated
by the widespread use of communication and
media technology, people commonly define privacy
nowadays in terms of information and data (informational
privacy). In the past, privacy was more often
understood in spatial terms (e.g., a " room for one's
own " ), and arguably such spatial understanding of
privacy is still relevant for some technologies today.
Change in the meaning of a value has implications
for technology design because to design for values,
one needs to know how people clarify the meaning
of a value and how this meaning may have changed
over time. Otherwise, one may design a technology
that does not align with the new value conceptualization.
For example, if people understand privacy
in spatial terms, designing for informational privacy
might not be sufficient.
Changes in value specification
Finally, changes in value specification are another
kind of value change relevant to the design of technology.
Specification is the translation of values into
design requirements. That means, value specification
is usually context-dependent and focuses on
a specific technology. For example, the European
Union (EU) changed the law regarding animal welfare
and outlawed battery cages. Thus, the value of
animal welfare needs to be translated into design
requirements for housing animals that meet these
new regulatory requirements [27]. This does not
necessarily mean that animal welfare emerged as
a new value or that the understanding or priority of
animal welfare has changed. It merely means that an
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