Rik Berbé
This workshop introduces ValueMaps as a systemic design framework and participatory tool for making collective identity and shared values visible, discussable, and actionable. It builds on a practice-oriented research trajectory in which ValueMaps has been developed through more than 30 cases and workshops with organisations, teams, and urban places, involving over 1,000 participants and approximately 30,000 selected values. Rather than treating values as abstract words or fixed cultural labels, the workshop invites participants to experience how values can be surfaced, visualised and interpreted as behavioural patterns within a human system. The session responds to the RSD15 theme, Shades of Systemic Design, by exploring how plural meanings, vocabularies, and ways of knowing can coexist in a shared visual and dialogical space. Participants will work with a shortened ValueMaps process: selecting values, building a provisional collective profile, interpreting clusters and tensions, and translating insights into design principles or possible interventions. The workshop positions the ValueMap as a boundary object: stable enough to support shared attention, yet flexible enough to hold multiple interpretations. It combines individual reflection, collective mapping, facilitated dialogue, and action-oriented synthesis. Participants will leave with practical experience of a method for values-based systemic inquiry and with critical questions about how such tools can support inclusion, cultural sensitivity and ethical collaboration. Insights from the workshop may also inform the further refinement of ValueMaps as a design science artefact and action research method.
Keywords: systemic design, collective identity, shared values, ValueMaps, boundary objects, sense-making, participatory inquiry, action research