Welcome to Value Engine
Exploring how values create value
I started value engine to explore the strategic and productive power of positive values in design.
Design trends tend to swing between two extremes: negative design—cost-cutting, dark patterns, and short-term convenience—or moral design—virtue-signaling, performative ethics, or the implementation of positive values because they’re “right”. My goal is to make the case for positive humanistic values on strategic grounds, based on their efficacy, not their ethics. Clearly, ethics isn’t every business’ priority, especially not when it opposes profit.
But I believe positive design can generate profit rather than oppose it. I want to understand how positive values—values like hope, discovery, learning, creativity, play, authenticity, and human connection—can generate tangible results, and how better business can, in turn, create a better world.
Value Engine is about the way value can be created with values. This publication explores ideas, examples, tactics, and trends at the intersection of positive design and strategy, and is for anyone interested in how values can be operationalized to move beyond idealism, into real engines of not only profit generation but of quality of life.
If that’s you, join me in the conversation! Let’s uncover the value engine together.
