In 2003 Jess McMullin wrote on Boxes and Arrows:
“Value-centered design starts a story about an ideal interaction between an individual and an organization and the benefits each realizes from that interaction.”
The article is very appropriately entitled, Searching for the Center of Design. And I think it puts things into a good perspective. Only a few years later after this article was written I started to dive deeper into the UX world and at that point me and my colleagues where already taking into consideration the Business needs on par with User needs. User needs as understanded more from an aesthetics, usability and experience point of view. Not the “business needs of the users”.
Now, this elevates the discussion to another level, questioning what should actually be the center of the approach, User-centered (in the strict sense of experience and usability)? Value-centered? any interaction between an organization and a client/user must be a win-win type of relationship, and for that to happen you need to know how to create value to both the users and the business.