Designing worth is worth designing

Value is a unifying concept for design. The intended value of digital artefacts provides a focus for field research, design and evaluation, as well as common ground with project sponsors, future users, and other stakeholders. The challenge lies in operationalising value to create a well-defined, well-understood and manageable development process. This requires a clear definition and strong understanding of the nature of value as a human motivator. It further requires this understanding to be transformed into methods and techniques within a development framework that supports a focus on value from the initial identification of product opportunities to the installation and operation of digital products and services. This paper revisits the logic and evolution of value-centred design, and then renames it to the near synonym of worth-centred to avoid confusion (especially 'value' vs. 'values') and distracting associations of the word 'value'. It locates worth in arenas of individual and collective discourses which scope different human perspectives on value. Finally, it relates worth to an evolving development framework.