Designing with Value Maps

Value maps can often be thought of as additional ways to begin projects, however, I believe they ought to be used throughout the entire process to place the goals in perspective and to remember the why behind our processes.

Where is it that values come at a cost, and what’s the risk worth taking?

A Value Map takes into consideration the core of the product/service and how they measure their impact and success. By creating these, designers are forced to engage with stakeholders including those within the client/company and also with the audience/users. It is the job of the designer to listen, synthesize, and evaluate the insights in order to create data that is both visual and accessible. Six steps to begin the process of documenting and visualizing values can include:

1. Discuss with clients what their values are, what success looks like, and how it is their values direct that success. Ask clients how well they know their audience and the values they hold as individual users. Consider what the client is saying and how they are telling the story, this is important to understand what they say their values are and how that may differ from their actions. Not for judgment purposes, but for understanding the complexity of considering values.
2. Consider the context of the product/service and decide what research methods may be most effective. It is not appropriate to apply a method without first considering the role of the product in the users’ lives. Does a formal interview make sense to conduct, or would a more passive method, rooted in observation, be more insightful?
3. Regardless of the research methods chosen, at least one method should be interviewing users and asking them or observing them, in order to decide what the value is of using the product and/or service. If this is not a direct interview, but more of a contextual study, the researcher can still gather what the user values by witnessing and listening for how they engage.
4. Collect data from both parties and synthesize it by conducting affinity map sessions or something similar, to gain an understanding of the commonalities as well as divisions among the values of the client and users. By having cross-department participation in these, the insights are able to be seen and therefore deciphered from the eyes of all, or at least some, of those who will be collaborating on the creation of the product; ie designers, researchers, developers, content writers, product managers, etc. This builds for a complex and nuanced understanding of the insights, which is often pivotal for a successful project.
5. Get visual! Draw circles, squares, triangles, charts, whatever seems fitting, and plot out the values and what their impacts may be when honored and when ignored. What are the capabilities when the values of the user/client are embedded in the product and what are the risks when they are ignored? Are there overlaps in the two parties' values? Are there contradictions? What are decisions that need to be made as we move forward into ideating, prototyping, and testing?
6. Once the design team has the values of the audience and clients mapped out and understood, they will need to share these with the client while articulating the insights. This a crucial phase of this process. The way in which we convey the story of our findings is crucial as to how the client receives our insights, and therefore supports our direction of the design.

With all the great problems we face as a society, it is important that we realign our values, and place them at the center of our processes, as designers and co-conspirators in a world built on equity, liberation, and collective support.