Product designers were asked about whether and how their values influenced their decisions to focus on finding ways to embed sustainability into their design work – see the journal article on these findings in She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. We might expect that the participants would respond to such questions by providing explanations of how their values influenced their design decisions. However, instead, a pattern was noticed of participants giving detailed explanations of where their values came from. These explanations, often including details of childhood experiences in nature, and choices to eat more vegetarian food from a young age, act to justify the designers’ sustainability values as reasonable, rather than representing personal biases.

This pattern of justifying values as longstanding and reasonable also occurred when participants were simply asked where their interest in sustainability came from. In this example, a vehicles designer in the US is asked how he came to focus on vehicle sustainability issues. He portrays himself as someone who ‘really doesn’t like cars’, distancing himself from his professional role and its impacts. He then continues with an anecdote about riding his bike in presumably rural Yorkshire as a child, contrasting this with a vivid depiction of cars as ‘big hulking lumps of metal that people drive around in too fast’. These descriptions work to portray his focus on vehicle sustainability as warranted.

Interviewer: but (.9) >i guess how< how did that happen or did it come from you o:r

Participant: er it pretty much i mean (1.0) i’m (.4) considering i’ve worked for so long in the car indus↑try i really don’t like cars (.4)

Interviewer: (huhuhuh)

Participant: (huhuh)i mean i i gr- grew up i grew up in er in er in yorkshire it’s like

Interviewer: [yeah]

Participant: [i just] liked riding my bike and it’s like i just (.7) you just notice that like they’re these big hunking big big hulking (.4) lumps of metal that people drive around in too fast