Innovating with values: 3 perspectives

Designing from values is in the spotlight. Susanne van Mulken (Informaat): "In the application of new technology, we see values being used as the basis for ethical considerations. In the business world, people are looking for ways to distinguish themselves better, to be even more valuable than the competition; and more and more people, when choosing to do business with a brand or organisation, are looking to see if the way that organisation does business is in line with their personal values."

Organisations that look for the sweet spot of shared values and express them in an authentic and credible way reap the benefits. It results in higher customer satisfaction, it leads to more turnover and their employees are more loyal. The importance of values is also increasing for governments. For example, to restore citizens' trust in the government.

Bas van Abel, founder of Fairphone, shared his experiences of innovating the mobile phone and founding a company based on values. The Fairphone is a smartphone whose parts, unlike most other phones, you can easily replace and whose raw materials are produced in a fair and ethical way to minimise its impact on people and the environment.

"Who can still replace their phone's battery themselves?", Bas asked the audience. "Most consumers choose to buy a new smartphone every 2 or 3 years. What a waste. If you use a device twice as long, only half as many new devices need to be made and you have twice as little waste." That seems like a no-brainer. "So why doesn't that happen? The industry is focused on the short term. If we want to operate in the long term, we encounter all kinds of barriers."

A phone consists of more than 1,000 parts from hundreds of factories. "Where do you start to address that problem?" Take cobalt, which is needed for the battery. Much cobalt is mined in Congo, where working conditions and wages for the miners do not immediately deserve the label 'fair'. "As a company or designer, how can I make a difference in such a complex chain?" Starting small. "I went to KPN with a piece of cobalt in hand with the proposal to make fair phones. Two weeks later, KPN had bought 1,000 non-existent Fairphones from a company that just existed. We were able to spread that around and people started believing in it because of that."

Not only are sustainable materials important to Fairphone, good and fair employment is also a high priority. For instance, the making of the first Fairphones turned out to take months longer than promised to customers. Instead of making the factory workers rush and work overtime, Fairphone chose to honestly tell customers to wait a bit longer. Resulting in only 3 negative reactions, and lots of sympathetic ones.

Fairphone's values (fair materials, fair factories, long-lasting design and reuse and recycling) lead to conflicting interests. Bas: "We sometimes deliberately have conflicting goals: selling as many phones as possible and making sure people use their phones for as long as possible. That challenges us to think about new ways of generating revenue, such as 'Fairphone-as-a-service'."

And what if every company in the world started making fair phones? "If our mission is achieved, we will no longer be needed. And that's OK: eternity is not our starting point."

Victor Visser of Informaat talked about his experiences with values-driven design at Boon Edam, producer of 'entrance solutions'. These include revolving doors, entrance gates and security doors. Once started as a maker of wooden swing doors, Boon Edam has grown into a company with 20 subsidiaries, over 1,300 employees and more than 55 distributors worldwide.

Despite adding more and more digital technology to the products themselves, when it comes to digital services, it still lags a bit behind. And therein lies one of the key challenges: how can Boon Edam stay relevant in this rapidly changing digital world?

The solution was a 'simple' circuit board for new and existing doors and gates. This made it possible to configure or control products remotely. A dashboard collects and displays all the data. So you can see which gate is working or not, what is broken, and so on.

The differing values of two target groups, represented in personas Jos Sleutelbos and Felicity Facility, helped to visualise customer needs. For instance, Jos wants the gates to 'just work' while Felicity is much more concerned with themes such as performance improvement, sustainability and smart buildings. And these values were translated into a concrete value proposition, service processes and a customer application.

Whereas previously, when a breakdown occurred, a mechanic had to go on site to analyse the problem, return to the workshop to pick up a part and then head back to the customer, now a problem can be read immediately and the mechanic can go to the customer with the right part. So you halve the number of trips. Good for the environment, lower costs for BoonEdam and a satisfied customer who is helped faster and more efficiently.

And in the long run, the customer can benefit from advantages such as predictable maintenance, smart spare part use continuous performance improvement in terms of hospitality, security and sustainability.

So Jos and Felicity's values are cleverly combined for short- and long-term solutions.

Astrid Poot, designer, artist, researcher and initiator of GoedMaken.org, deals with design and ethics. In her presentation 'Being intelligent in an age of AI', she observed that 'the raised finger' is not the way to ensure that people act out of love for the world.

Several forces are at play in the application of artificial intelligence (AI). What is possible (the tech companies), what is allowed (the legislation) and what we want (the people). "According to the tech industry, the only challenge is to achieve better quality. But what is quality? AI makes an average representation of all available information. The final result is grey. So is that the quality we are aiming for? Are we using AI to 'get away with it'? Or to do the most beautiful and best out of love for the world?"

In San Francisco, activists have started to get self-driving cars to stop by putting a traffic pylon ('the cone of shame') on the bonnet. "They wonder: what is that car doing in the city at all? This is the solution. You think primarily from the people's point of view, not from legislation or technology."

As a designer, how do you discover what important values are? "Everyone is different, has value and can have a say," says Astrid. "I have discovered that the one answer to the question 'What is the right thing?' does not exist. 'Your' answer does exist. And 'your' answer has to be found together. Everyone knows a little bit and it's about what we know and can do as a group."

It was an evening full of inspiration, practical approaches and food for reflection. Afterwards, the three presentations were extensively discussed over drinks. It was great to see how people from different disciplines found each other and shared their experiences of working with values.

In short, a very successful and inspiring evening. We are already looking forward to event number 3.