What does the Value-based Engineering example of a fashion store for older customers show?

That relevant values depend on context: asked freely, without a value list, the customers valued help more than privacy. It also shows that such priorities must then be aligned with legal expectations, which put privacy back ahead of help.

The store considered location tracking, which touches privacy but would also let customers call for help. VbE asks teams to think with their stakeholders about the values of the specific System of Interest (SOI), free of predefined value lists. An SOI is always a socio-technical system: technology embedded in processes, people, policies and incentives.

This raises two questions:

1. What does a value like "help" have to do with ethics? Supporting people who need it is a moral good in its own right.
2. Doesn't this push a legally and morally recognised value (privacy) behind an application-level one? VbE's answer is the alignment step: value priorities are checked against external legal and political expectations, and these ensure privacy is ranked before help or comfort.