Design as ‘value’
Value is an overused word. Particularly in Silicon Valley tech culture, amid investor-led conversations, value is so very heavily overused. Value this, value that. Keep generating value. Yes, yes, of course! Yet, it all seems just so trite, and empty, as a practical concept. What does value even mean to those striving to improve people’s lives with better technology? And for the design leader who is dancing across multiple levels of craft in their work from production to storytelling to principled compromise …just how does value fit into that interpretive model? How does one talk about the value of design? Of a design? Of designing? Of being a designer? Sigh. So many angles to analyze! I don’t have the time to write a doctoral dissertation on all this…but I suppose one practical way to describe design’s value is to articulate its usefulness, usability, and desirability, pertaining to the affected chain of…