Blog 5 - Design That Matters II ​

I was thinking about the fundamental goal of creating value after Wednesday's lecture, and I got curious about how many different ways this might happen or does happen today.

When considering value, is it enough that the service or product itself of a company creates something of value? If so, to what extent does it matter the quality or amount of value something brings? Also, of value to whom (i.e. the general public, societal values, individuals, community), and does that matter?

Then, moving on from inherent value, one might also consider downstream value; are there by-products or effects of the service or good that create value? For example, education is valuable to individuals because it empowers them to pursue more opportunities in society, and in many cases, this path leads to more value for society, be it new inventions or someone who is just very good at an everyday job, bringing value to society. In contrast, if there is not a downstream value but a cost associated with a product, how should we evaluate this cost against the value brought by the company? A common case would be environmental pollution as a result of production. Especially now, we are thankfully seeing several companies be rewarded for mitigating the cost they bring about on the environment, which suggests that this is another form of recognizing value in a company's infrastructure and workflow design.

Then there is also newly created value. Perhaps this might also be called artificial value, since in this train of thought I am referring to value that is not directly associated with the good being produced, but rather a commitment or choice made by the company in conjuction with a product. This might mean a restaurant choosing to source from local farms to boost their businesses or committing a margin of their revenue to donations, for this, too, is a method by which companies create value today.

All of these are maybe more easily outlined methods of creating value, but I also wonder if there are some subtler ways that work on less tangible means. More specifically, I wonder if we can evaluate value that relates to how trends change because of a company or product? That is, is there value that is not just downstream, but woven into changes in individual or societal expectations or behavior? I wonder if the dawn of the information age can be seen as bringing such a value. Digital media has transformed so much, from our ways of communicating to finding information to living our everyday lives, and we are seeing both the positive (value) and negative effects of that today. Should we interpret those social, human changes as value? How can one even begin to do so? It sounds so complex and difficult to fully explain, yet I wonder if such considerations might be useful, especially as new technologies arise. With ChatGPT and Generative AI in particular, I can understand how these technologies can be an extremely useful tool and help level the playing field. However, I worry about certain areas in which use of ChatGPT and Generative AI might warp our social expectations and behaviors, mostly in the arts and humanities, and especially with writing. If we stop writing ourselves and delegate to machines, what effect will that have on our ability to think, create, imagine? What will happen to our voice? How do we predict or evaluate that change?

This has strayed a bit from the original topic, but I do hope that considerations of value might encourage society to adapt to technology with caution and care. To a degree, I have seen this with people deleting social media when they feel it is not bringing value to their lives, and perhaps that is a step in a positive direction and something that may be considered in design.