AbstractThis paper investigates how to better understand end users’ human values at an early phase of system design in an innovative new‐energy project. By early involvement of end‐user, companies can avoid making costly design mistakes that reduce the usability of the system. For the innovative system there were no end‐users from where to directly obtain the operational knowledge. The paper has adopted research methods from the Design Thinking process, and uses industry‐as‐laboratory, conducting in‐depth interviews with end‐users from related applications. The research focuses on needs that originate from “human values” defined as an expressed emotional feeling addressing how the users perceive the system. The interviews resulted in 105 user needs translated into 17 relevant stakeholder requirements. The results showed that conducting interviews showing an illustrative ConOps gave 17% more chance of finding needs originating from human values compared to not using this attribute. This research proposes a process for integrating the human values into the early phase of systems engineering.