Which values are most important?

Determine relative importance of the values

What is the result of this step?

This step will provide an overview over the values that deserve to be prioritized in the design of the technology. 

Why?

It is important to find out which values are most important and deserve to be taken into account in the design of the technology.

How? 

Here you should use the output of step 3 which will be a list of values. In this step the tech developers themselves determine which values are most important. They can do this by ascribing a weight factor to each value: in the form of a number. This indicates the relative importance of each value or -in other words- their relative ranking for different stakeholders, such as noted in the following table (see for a more elaborate description box 6).

 

Tech developers

Farmers

Policy makers

Ownership

10

10

1

Fairness

3

10

3

Care for the commons

1

5

10

Transparency

10

3

10

In some situations, however, values will conflict, or stakeholders prioritize different values. These situations may raise ethical questions. Whenever such questions come forward, it may be important to move to step 5, which asks to deliberate about the right answer to these questions and come to a conclusion. If values do not conflict, step 5 can be skipped.

Box 6: Example

Applying weight

factors to each value

Example

Go to step 5