Moral QFD: Incorporating Moral Considerations in Product Development

摘要

Our lives are formed by the deep, moral values we hold dear. In the design of products we give expression to these deeper, often moral values. And, we make sure that the products we buy do not offend our moral values. This is mostly done unconsciously/implicitly. We argue that giving explicit attention to the values we hold dear will increase the quality and acceptance of the products we design. Functional and technical requirements paint a necessary but incomplete picture. This is even more pressing in the cases were we delegate decision-making to software agents and machines. In this paper, we demonstrate how QFD can be extended and used to express deep, moral values and translate them into product features/quality functions. We enlarge the esteem function as proposed and promoted by Miles and Mazur amongst others. We draw an analogy to expression of aesthetic values as developed by Mazur. In order to capture moral values we need to understand their nature, and understand in which respects they are similar to and are differ from aesthetic values. We claim that if our values are properly represented in newly designed products chances of acceptance of these products are increased.