Integrating Ethics in Design through the Value-Sensitive Design Approach

Many engineering professors struggle to integrate this required ethics instruction in technical classes and projects because of the lack of a formalized ethics-in-design approach. This article describes a methodology developed in human-computer interaction research, the value-sensitive design approach, that can serve as an engineering education tool which bridges the gap between design and ethics for many engineering disciplines. The author uses a case study focusing on the development of a control system for a cruise missile to show how this approach works.