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Value Sensitive Design: Applications, Adaptations, and Critiques
Abstract
Value
sensitive design (VSD) represents a pioneering endeavor to proactively consider human values throughout the process of technology design. The work is grounded by the belief that the products that we engage with strongly influence our lived experience and, in turn, our abilities to meet our aspirations. We, the authors of this piece, are members of the first cohort of scholars to receive doctoral training from the founders of VSD at the University of Washington. We do not claim to represent an officially authorized account of VSD from the University of Washington’s VSD lab. Rather, we present our informed opinions of what is compelling, provocative, and problematic about recent manifestations of VSD. We draw from contemporary case studies to argue for a condensed version of the VSD constellation of features. We also propose a set of heuristics crafted from the writings of the VSD lab, appropriations and critiques of VSD, and related scholarly work. We present these heuristics for those who wish to draw upon, refine, and improve values-oriented approaches in their endeavors and may or may not choose to follow the tenets of value sensitive design.
... Despite the significance of VSD and AI ethics guidelines for protecting the rights and freedoms of individuals affected by AI, they face critical review. Critics argue that both frameworks lack cultural pluralism, often assuming predominantly Western values as is the case for the biased landscape of AI ethics guidelines [18], or even universal values [19][20][21]. VSD has been critiqued for its lack of a normative ethical foundation [20,21] making it susceptible to misuse [19]. AI ethics guidelines, on the other hand, are criticized for the gap between abstract high-level principles and practical application [22]. ...
... Critics argue that both frameworks lack cultural pluralism, often assuming predominantly Western values as is the case for the biased landscape of AI ethics guidelines [18], or even universal values [19][20][21]. VSD has been critiqued for its lack of a normative ethical foundation [20,21] making it susceptible to misuse [19]. AI ethics guidelines, on the other hand, are criticized for the gap between abstract high-level principles and practical application [22]. ...
... Human welfare; ownership and property; privacy; freedom from bias; universal usability; trust; autonomy; informed consent; accountability; courtesy; identity; calmness; and environmental sustainability [4]. Critique addresses claims of at least some of these values to be presented as universal [19,21], overlooking cultural and contextual nuances [20]. More profoundly, VSD is critiqued to lack an ethical foundation to the methodology as such [20,21]. ...
Motivated by ongoing criticism of the practical operationalization of ethical principles in artificial intelligence (AI) development, this study targets the ethical practice of AI developers in Germany. We focus on design as a key technological practice and developers as designers of AI-based systems when we investigate the socially, historically, and contextually influenced practice of AI ethics in the design process. We embed our methodology in value sensitive design (VSD), conduct design thinking workshops prototyping AI tools for hypothetical use cases, and ground our analysis on established ethical guidelines for AI. The results of this study reveal not only awareness of ethical principles in developers, more importantly, a strong influence of ethics on design decisions. Developers adapt their designs with technical interventions in favor of those using and being affected by their solutions. Our contribution is threefold: we establish a fine-grained categorization system of ethical principles based on AI ethics guidelines and VSD. We corroborate previous empirical research examining the prompted and self-reported influence and prioritization of ethical principles. Finally, we synthesize our findings with tangible design recommendations for AI ethics by design. We focus on recommendations for human involvement, privacy, and non-discrimination: encourage participatory AI design and avoid end-to-end automation in cases where humans are impacted; empower developers to integrate technical interventions from the onset of the design process to establish AI privacy by design; and support developers in emphasizing non-discriminatory AI, especially in contexts historically associated with discrimination.
... Value sensitive design (VSD) proactively incorporates human values in designing new technologies, and is primarily applied in the field of human-computer interaction (Davis & Nathan, 2015;Manders-Huits, 2011). VSD iteratively integrates conceptual, empirical and technological investigations (Friedman & Hendry, 2019). ...
... As a foundation for the envisioned tool, we combined the value sensitive design (VSD) approach, which focuses on human values in new technologies (Davis & Nathan, 2015;Friedman & Hendry, 2019), with human-centered AI (HCAI), which integrates ethics into practice by prioritizing human needs and capabilities in AI (Geyer et al., 2022;Hartikainen et al., 2022;Shneiderman, 2020Shneiderman, , 2022, and participatory design methods. Based on these principles, we developed a contextually tailored toolkit and accompanying workshop. ...
... Still, mechanisms in patient-clinician interaction and freedom versus responsibility were also brought up frequently. Since participants selected almost all values, and p3 and p4 felt expected to, we note that providing a set of values can influence or bias participants, a limitation that is also recognized in VSD (Davis & Nathan, 2015;Friedman & Hendry, 2019). This workshop showed that making implementation concrete (phase 2) and providing an ethical framework (phase 3) can elicit value discussion. ...
... Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) is a design framework through which "researchers and designers can explicitly incorporate the considerations of human values into their work" (Davis and Nathan, 2021). Values may be broadly defined as "varieties of goodness" as deemed by the stakeholders (van de Poel, 2015). ...
... VSD has historically been applied in the field of human-computer interaction but has implications for fields ranging from technology design and engineering to policy and governance (Jenkins et al., 2020;Mok and Hyysalo, 2018;van de Poel, 2015). VSD consists of three iterative steps: conceptual investigations, empirical investigations, and technical investigations (Davis and Nathan, 2021). Conceptual investigations involve identifying direct stakeholders (those who will use the product) and indirect stakeholders (those who are impacted by others' use), as well as identifying and defining the values implicated by use of the technology. ...
... Related to energy justice, the empirical investigation could be used to enhance aspects of recognition justice. Finally, the technical investigation seeks to understand how values can influence various features of new or existing technologies (Davis and Nathan, 2021). VSD will likely look different in energy system design given the expansive scope and broad range of values and stakeholders. ...
We have a unique opportunity to consider justice in our design of a cleaner energy system. This paper introduces the Justice-Embedded Requirements Engineering (JERE) process, which was created to enable engineers to consider project goals, requirements, and potential project impacts on historically marginalized, climate-vulnerable communities. Given JERE's focus on energy technologies, we demonstrate the process using a concentrating solar power example. JERE provides engineers with a tool to better ensure justice is embedded in the system design process from the beginning.
... In addition, some techniques have been proposed to consider human values in software development. They are Value-Based Requirements Engineering (VBRE) [6], Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) [7], Value-Sensitive Software Development (VSSD) [8], Values-First SE [9], and Values Q-sort [10]. ...
... However, these values should be used in apps development to develop values-based apps. We recommend to consider values as input to the readily available values-based techniques such as Value-Based Requirement Engineering (VBRE) [6], Participatory Design (PD) [113], Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) [7], Value-Sensitive Software Development (VSSD) [8], Values-First SE [9] and Values Q-Sort [10]. Implication 2 for Apps Development PVQ, factor analysis, and regression analysis are recommended to be used to elicit and understand end-users' values. ...
... Monitoring and Verifying Values Throughout the software develop-ment. There are methods to address values in the design and development phases such as Value-Sensitive Design (VSD) [7] and Value-Sensitive Software Development (VSSD) [8]. However, there are limited considerations of values in other phases of the software development life cycle (SDLC). ...
The omnipresent nature of mobile applications (apps) in all aspects of daily lives raises the necessity of reflecting end-users' values (e.g., fairness, honesty, social recognition , etc.) in apps. However, there are limited considerations of end-users' values in apps development. Value violations by apps have been reported in the media and are responsible for end-users' dissatisfaction and negative socioeconomic consequences. Value violations may bring more severe and lasting problems for marginalized and vulnerable end-users of apps, which have been explored less (if at all) in the software engineering community. One of the main reasons behind value violations is the lack of understanding of human values due to their ill-defined, ambiguous, and implicit nature. Furthermore, addressing all the values of the end-users in a single app might cause dissatisfaction for some of the end-users if they have different values. Therefore , it is essential to identify if there are different groups of end-users of apps who share similar values and develop different sets of apps design strategies accordingly, which is the essential first step towards values-based apps development. This research aims to fill this gap by investigating different groups of Bangladeshi female farmers as a marginalized and vulnerable group of end-users of Bangladeshi agriculture apps based on their values. We conducted an empirical study that collected and analyzed data from a survey with 193 Bangladeshi female farmers to explore the underlying factor structure of Bangladeshi female farmers' values and the significance of demographics on their values. The results identified three underlying factors of Bangladeshi female farmers. The first factor comprises five values: benevolence, security, conformity, universalism, and tradition. The second factor consists of two values: self-direction and stimulation. The third factor includes three values: power, achievement, and hedonism. We also identified strong influences of demographics on some of the values of Bangladeshi female farmers. For example, area has significant impacts on three values: hedonism, achievement, and tradition. Similarly, there are also strong influences of household income on power and security. The results provide a direction for Bangladeshi agriculture app developers to develop different sets of apps design strategies for different groups of Bangladeshi female farmers based on their values.
... This process is iterative and can proceed both ways (from existing norms and design specifications to values and from abstract values to concrete requirements). The literature onVSD further distinguishes between value conflicts (and resulting trade-offs), value thresholds, and value dams (Davis & Nathan, 2015;Van de Poel, 2015). This first occurs when augmenting the possible realization of one goal (e.g., safety) decreases the possible realization of another goal (e.g., autonomy). ...
... TheVSD approach thus allows for both innovation and design to be perceived as important ethical practices, always involving questions about the good life, human flourishing, and issues such as responsibility. However, this approach can become more complicated once we design for improvements in sociotechnical systems with a multigenerational lifespan (Davis & Nathan, 2015). As thistopical collection shows, embedding certain values in an energy system can lead to temporal value conflicts since we cannot know what kind of goals future generations will hold. ...
This paper is the introduction to a topical collection on “Changing Values and Energy Systems” that consists of six contributions that examine instances of value change regarding the design, use and operation of energy systems. This introduction discusses the need to consider values in the energy transition. It examines conceptions of value and value change and how values can be addressed in the design of energy systems. Value change in the context of energy and energy systems is a topic that has recently gained traction. Current, and past, energy transitions often focus on a limited range of values, such as sustainability, while leaving other salient values, such as energy democracy, or energy justice, out of the picture. Furthermore, these values become entrenched in the design of these systems: it is hard for stakeholders to address new concerns and values in the use and operation of these systems, leading to further costly transitions and systems’ overhaul. To remedy this issue, value change in the context of energy systems needs to be better understood. We also need to think about further requirements for the governance, institutional and engineering design of energy systems to accommodate future value change. Openness, transparency, adaptiveness, flexibility and modularity emerge as new requirements within the current energy transition that need further exploration and scrutiny.
... As explained by Davis and Nathan (2015), Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is an approach for considering human values, proactively and systematically, throughout the design process. VSD defines both a theoretical approach for understanding the functioning of technology and a methodology for studying specific scenarios. ...
... However, additional research is required for that to happen, since to date VSD has focused primarily on applications in human-computer interaction. Work on values for civil and environmental systems is limitd to an effort with large-scale urban planning simulation (cited by Davis and Nathan 2015) and a study of value conflict in an urban renewal project (Kuitert, Volker, and Hermans 2023). ...
Ethics is receiving increased emphasis in civil and environmental engineering. However, despite the proliferation of college textbooks and courses encouraging ethical reasoning, engineers in practice often limit their understanding narrowly to their individual actions. Broader issues of global importance are usually addressed in an ad-hoc manner, if at all. Our goal is to present the topic of ethics in a way that appeals to engineers, especially those receptive to ‘systems thinking’. Our broader motivation is to encourage the development of educated, virtuous and caring professionals who engage in contextual ethical reasoning about complex systems. To these ends, we summarise relevant theoretical and applied concepts for ethical analysis, building from a recent chapter that reflects on ethics from an engineering systems perspective (but applied to the healthcare industry). We emphasise virtue ethics and the ethics of care as crucial supplements to duty ethics and utilitarianism. Analytical methods we discuss include Value Sensitive Design, Design for Care, and a multi-level classification of ethical issues into the micro (individual), meso (institutional), and macro (societal) levels. This work collects relevant considerations for designers of civil and environmental engineering systems and researchers interested in developing related design and analysis methods that include practical ethical reasoning.
... One study concerned conceptual investigations; the other outlined a VSD design process for a recommendation system for the Wikipedia WikiProjects. The paper aims to systematically draw attention to VSD in the future design of learning analytics systems Davis and Nathan (2015) The authors outline strengths and weaknesses in the history of VSD and propose a condensed version of the VSD constellation of features and a set of heuristics. The authors propose guiding questions based on VSD critiques and related work Friedman and Hendry (2019) The authors argue that VSD adopts the position that technologies provide value suitabilities that follow from properties of the technology and suggest two forms of technical investigations: Retrospective analyses focus on how existing technological properties and underlying mechanisms support or hinder human values, whereas proactive design involves the proactive design of systems to support values identified in the conceptual investigation Friedman (1996) The author presents theoretical reflections on balancing human values in design and draws attention to values and bias Friedman et al. (2002) The authors present a foundational article and distinguish VSD from Computer Ethics, Social Informatics, CSCW, and Participatory Design and emphasize that VSD focus on proactively integrating values into the design of technology Friedman et al. (2017) The authors argue that three heuristics can prove helpful. ...
... Instead, the author introduces axiology and normative ethics to incorporate the evaluative relation of 'parity', which, combined with rational decision theory, may help resolve problems concerning value incommensurability. Davis and Nathan (2015) propose guiding heuristics based on VSD critiques, case studies, and related valuebased work. In responding to the criticism that VSD lacks an ethical theoretical foundation, the authors note that, in some cases, committing to an ethical theory may help identify and prioritize relevant values. ...
This article presents a systematic literature review documenting how technical investigations have been adapted in value sensitive design (VSD) studies from 1996 to 2023. We present a systematic review, including theoretical and applied studies that either discuss or conduct technical investigations in VSD. This systematic review contributes to the VSD community when seeking to further refine the methodological framework for carrying out technical investigations in VSD.
... A critical weakness of the VSD is its lack of concrete ethical commitment and claims of universal values (Davis & Nathan, 2015). Davis and Nathan, for example, highlight in their paper that VSD draws various ethical theories, for example, deontological, consequentialist, and virtue, to name a few, but does not commit to any one of them. ...
Despite the prolific introduction of ethical frameworks, empirical research on AI ethics in the public sector is limited. This empirical research investigates how the ethics of AI is translated into practice and the challenges of its implementation by public service organizations. Using the Value Sensitive Design as a framework of inquiry, semi-structured interviews are conducted with eight public service organizations across the Estonian government that have piloted or developed an AI solution for delivering a public service. Results show that the practical application of AI ethical principles is indirectly considered and demonstrated in different ways in the design and development of the AI. However, translation of these principles varies according to the maturity of the AI and the public servant's level of awareness, knowledge, and competences in AI. Data-related challenges persist as public service organizations work on fine-tuning their AI applications.
... This means that designers and engineers, whether they mean to or not, embed values into the things they make. VSD is a leading approach for acquainting -or sensitizing -engineers and designers with values, and further, guiding how they engage values more deliberatively, comprehensively, and with the involvement of stakeholders in engineering and design processes (Davis & Nathan, 2015;Friedman & Hendry, 2019). 2 The insight that values are expressed in technologies, whether or not their designers or engineers gave any thought to these values ahead of time, is important for design and engineering students who often view technology as neutral with respect to values. That VSD as an approach helps students recognize and understand how values can be embedded in technologies, rather than just that they are, makes it especially useful in educational contexts for challenging the pervasive idea of technologies as neutral tools. ...
... Going back to the review of privacy-related design orientations, Value Sensitive Design deserves to be discussed (Friedman et al. 2003;Cummings 2006;Davis and Nathan 2013; Hendry 2019)-incidentally, another relevant and interesting approach that considers privacy in the design process is Disclosive computer ethics, that is attentive to the ethical decoding of values and norms set in computer systems, applications, and practices, proposing 4 key values (justice, autonomy, democracy, and privacy) (Brey 2000). ...
This chapter lays the groundwork for an ethical approach to privacy in service design. It begins by identifying a gap in current service design and human-centered design research regarding informational privacy, and critiques Value Sensitive Design and its practical implications. The author argues that privacy legislation, such as in the EU, is insufficient due to loopholes and its inability to challenge surveillance capitalism. Privacy by Design is also critiqued for its compliance focus without addressing deeper privacy needs in service design. The second part emphasizes the importance of ethics over legislation for protecting informational privacy in service design. The author identifies the need to integrate privacy into service design practice and sustain it through ethics. They explore various moral approaches, ultimately advocating for Luciano Floridi’s information ethics due to its ontological link between information and human identity. This view, supported by intercultural information ethics, positions privacy as a universal human need, culturally specific yet universally relevant.
... A good overview of some criticisms and limitations of particularly VSD can be found in Davis and Nathan (2015). Here, three main criticisms and related limitations are discussed. ...
... The past few decades have seen the birth and development of various research frameworks and methodologies in Europe and the US that have tried to embed ethical, social and political concerns in engineering and design practices. Four of these are: a) the Responsible Innovation movement, that has campaigned for and supported methodologies for a more inclusive and plural deliberation about the values and principles that should govern new technologies (beyond just efficiency and productivity) (Owen, Von Schomberg, and Macnaghten 2021); (b) the Value-Sensitive Design approach, that has proposed specific design frameworks and strategies to define relevant human values to be embedded in technology and to translate them into actionable design requirements (Friedman 1996;Davis and Nathan 2015) (c) Social and Participatory Design, that have promoted research and projects to support and empowering communities in developing their own existing projects and (technical) expertise and skills (DiSalvo 2022); and (d) Critical and Speculative Design, that have devised design strategies to spark awareness, reflection, and imagination among designers and the general public, to identify risks, concerns, visions, and opportunities that go beyond the dominant mainstream technological discourse (Dunne and Raby 2013). Given the significant impact of their choices and activities in shaping the future of society and humanity, engineers and designers are arguably responsible for engaging in some of these methodologies, rejecting technological determinism and granting a more systematic embedding of a broader range of ethical, societal and political considerations in their projects. ...
This article introduces seven ethical issues raised by the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) at work. Each ethical issue is presented in connection to broader and older philosophical topics as well as topics in the more specialised literature on applied ethics of technology. The seven issues are: (1) How to govern the impact of AI on job losses and other social issues raised by the reshaping of the job market? (2) AI may contribute to create new forms of oppression and violation of rights of the workforce; (3) AI may negatively affect workers’ (moral) agency, autonomy or responsibility; (4) AI may create hidden labour, that is, economically valuable tasks are performed by human agents without their work being sufficiently recognised, rewarded or protected, with (technological) companies acquiring an unfair gain and an increasing socio-economic power over people; (5) To what extent can AI affect the opportunity for people to perform good or meaningful work, and how should meaningful work be defined in a pluralistic society? (6) The introduction of AI at work may have a broader impact on social values and norms; (7) Who is responsible for making AI have a positive rather than a negative impact on ethical and societal values? In addition to providing a critical introduction to the ethical debate on AI and the future of work, the article also positions on this broader ethical and philosophical map the five articles of The Journal of Ethics special issue ‘Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Work’.
... The increased focus on moral values in technology development and technology-human interaction [3,64] underscores the role of designers and the need for specific methods for considering values in technology design [26]. One of the most commonplace methods used for such considerations is value sensitive design (VSD) [14]. VSD identifies how stakeholders might be affected by technology [24] and presents a proactive approach for considering human values in technology development, including well-being, dignity and justice [23]. ...
Emerging AI technologies are changing teachers’ assessment practices and posing higher education institutions with novel ethical dilemmas. While frameworks and guidelines promise to align technology with moral and human values, the dilemma of how AI may impact existing valuing practices is often overlooked. To examine this gap, we conducted an interview study with university teachers from different disciplines at a university in Sweden. Following a semi-structured study design, we explored university teachers’ anticipations of AI in assessment and examined how emerging AI technologies may reconfigure the fit between values, challenges, and activities situated in everyday assessment contexts. Our findings suggest that anticipated AI, including automation and AI-mediated communication and grading, may amplify and reduce teachers’ possibilities to align activities with professional, pedagogical, and relational values and solve current challenges. In light of the study’s findings, the paper discusses potential ethical issues in the anticipated shifts from human to automated assessment and possible new and reinforced challenges brought by AI for education.
... To effectively encode experiences that change behaviours, there is a need for a much more practical understanding gained from value-based design activities. Without this understanding, designers are mostly guessing at solutions or maybe even imitating techniques that work without understanding why that is the case, which can lead to submerged and sustained value conflicts between system and users (Bos-de Vos, 2020; Davis, 2009;Davis & Nathan, 2015;Fogg, 2009 (Popenici & Kerr, 2017) where the latter point out that there should be ongoing awareness of education as a student-centred activity, which can't be replaced by technology-centred solutions (Popenici & Kerr, 2017). ...
This article presents an application of a design methodology to envision implicit value hierarchies in the design process of a digital learning platform meant to encompass learning processes and activities conducive to experiential collaborative learning (ECL). The authors argue that many technologies for the field of education fall short of their purposes and neglect intended underpinning pedagogy and didactics. Previous research efforts in networked learning have primarily focused on conceptual critiques of the implementation of EdTech and warned of technological euphoria undermining relevant caution. This means, that when a design team tries to conceptualize technological artefacts into a script the more ethical and value-oriented parts of the learning process tend to be ignored. While we agree with the conceptual critiques, our approach has instead been to engage with the design process and implement appropriate methodologies in an attempt to highlight implicit value hierarchies in the underlying learning theory. When using technologies in Networked learning we thus emphasize that both designers and stakeholders should engage in a systematic discussion and reflection of values and related judgements while constructing a value hierarchy. Through a Value-based design methodology based on semantic zooming we thus present 7 interconnected envisioning scenarios developed in the UnFoLD project to demonstrate how it is possible to operationalize values into detailed design briefs or technological scripts. This article will through presented experiences from a design process, show how the methodology of envisioning scenarios can be applied to mitigate the risks of implementation technology in a learning situation. We argue that an awareness and mapping of values as a part of the design process is essential and that an increased focus on the ethical and moral responsibilities of designers and involved researchers are important as technologies should not be seen as isolated, value-neutral, or uncomplicated translations of analogue teaching activities. The purpose of the article is to inspire other researchers and designers to implement value hierarchies, envisioning scenarios, or other similar methods to ensure that pedagogical and didactic priorities are not lost in accommodating marketability, practicalities, or technological constraints.
... The methodological approach we followed was inspired by the tripartite VSD approach, but it does not strictly adhere to each step of the original VSD approach (conceptual, empirical, technical). We acknowledge that the VSD approach is iterative and integrative, as described by Friedman et al. (2006a), and are designed to interact with each other rather than being conducted as independent, standalone, and predefined tasks [83]. The methodology used in the current paper consists of three main steps: First, a literature review to identify the relevant norms (i.e. ...
The present study utilizes a value sensitive design (VSD) inspired approach to contribute to the design and implementation of CO 2 electrolysis (CO 2 E) within the framework of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technologies, which convert CO 2 into valuable products. The focus of this study is on a low technology readiness level (TRL) technology, yet likely relevant to reach climate neutrality by 2050. We examine the perspectives of stakeholders along the supply chain and proactively identify relevant sustainability-related values and potential conflicts among them. Thus the current work highlights the importance of considering a broad range of stake-holders and their values in the early stages of technological design. The research approach is consisting of various steps inspired by value sensitive design (VSD): identifying relevant values and norms associated with CO2 electrolysis through literature analysis, conducting qualitative interviews with relevant stakeholders to trian-gulate the results. Subsequently, a value-based alignment network analysis was employed to examine shared values that are central for the design of the technology. The findings indicate that sustainability-related values such as concern for nature, climate change mitigation, the use of renewable energy, critical raw materials, cost, and return on investment, albeit with potential differences in interpretation, are increasingly becoming central considerations in the decision-making processes of individuals, businesses, and governments alike. Based on these findings, specific aspects of technology design, namely scale, location, integration, and synthesized product, that can impact a wide range of identified values, are discussed.
... Regulation can be perceived as an implementation of normative ethics, which alone lacks the strength to enforce its normativity. Several studies point out that ethical standards alone have little to no impact on decision-making across a wide range of professional fields [62,103,346,442,74], something even more pronounced in STEM-related fields that do not have a study tradition in Humanities [190,406,73,132,395,596,112,229]. This lack of praxis is known, and many authors have raised concerns about this state in which much of the field rests. ...
The critical inquiry pervading the realm of Philosophy, and perhaps extending its influence across all Humanities disciplines, revolves around the intricacies of morality and normativity. Surprisingly, in recent years, this thematic thread has woven its way into an unexpected domain, one not conventionally associated with pondering "what ought to be": the field of artificial intelligence (AI) research. Central to morality and AI, we find "alignment", a problem related to the challenges of expressing human goals and values in a manner that artificial systems can follow without leading to unwanted adversarial effects. More explicitly and with our current paradigm of AI development in mind, we can think of alignment as teaching human values to non-anthropomorphic entities trained through opaque, gradient-based learning techniques. This work addresses alignment as a technical-philosophical problem that requires solid philosophical foundations and practical implementations that bring normative theory to AI system development. To accomplish this, we propose two sets of necessary and sufficient conditions that, we argue, should be considered in any alignment process. While necessary conditions serve as metaphysical and metaethical roots that pertain to the permissibility of alignment, sufficient conditions establish a blueprint for aligning AI systems under a learning-based paradigm. After laying such foundations, we present implementations of this approach by using state-of-the-art techniques and methods for aligning general-purpose language systems. We call this framework Dynamic Normativity. Its central thesis is that any alignment process under a learning paradigm that cannot fulfill its necessary and sufficient conditions will fail in producing aligned systems.
... For more studies, seeDavis & Nathan (2015) Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved. ...
Carl Mitcham has recently pointed out that the current approach to the ethics of technology has failed to solve large-scale socio-ethical challenges in the technological world, such as climate change. He then suggests that, in the face of an iceberg of issues regarding technological development, philosophers should recognize the intellectual heritage of the classical philosophers of technology to better deal with the escalating crises that threaten humankind. While Mitcham’s proposal is inspiring, there are several lacunae in his work. In this paper, we contribute to Mitcham’s idea by developing it and filling the important gaps. Our efforts have led to a new style of holistic thinking about the ethics of technology, according to which it is necessary to focus on the system of technologies as a whole (while not ignoring individual technologies, of course) to understand and address issues related to technology development.
... One of the requirements for the Final Deliverable Package (in the Development Plan) was a discussion of Distributional Energy Equity impacts of the design. Our capstone courses implemented a Value Sensitive Design [9], [10] approach to analyzing the stakeholders for the design. Students completed a detailed stakeholder and value analysis for the client, and produced a set of customer needs that was used to guide subsequent stages of the design process. ...
... Há inúmeros exemplos de tais intervenções engajadas, desde a engenharia popular brasileira (FRAGA et al., 2020;ARAUJO;RUFINO, 2021;CRUZ, 2021b) NATHAN, 2015), e Terceira Margem (GUIZZO, 2021). Todos eles geralmente reconhecem algum grau de não neutralidade da tecnologia, o papel da tecnologia na conformação da sociedade e, inversamente, o papel da sociedade na conformação da tecnologia e da intervenção técnica (ALVEAR et al., 2021a;2021b). ...
Engenheiras/os engajadas/os pretendem transformar a sociedade trabalhando com pessoas em desvantagem estrutural ou vulnerabilizadas. No entanto, a questão de como superar a vulnerabilidade ou alcançar uma transformação radical comu-
mente não merece a devida atenção nesse campo. Neste artigo, introduzimos um marco teórico-metodológico de oito dimensões para fortalecer os efeitos potencialmente transformadores de projetos sociotécnicos a partir de um posicionamento do conceito de empoderamento. Na primeira seção, examinamos cinco periódicos na área de engenharia engajada e extensão para concluir que a maioria das/os autoras/es utiliza a ideia de empoderamento sem definir seu significado. Em seguida, lançamos luz sobre o conceito, debatendo algumas de suas características essenciais e interpretações equivocadas. Na terceira seção, rgumentamos por que um marco teórico-metodológico de dimensões empoderado-
ras pode ser útil para pessoas engajadas em projetos sociotécnicos transformadores. O marco é apresentado na quarta seção. As oito dimensões, que vão da inclusão sociotécnica à emancipação política, são ilustradas e explicadas com exemplos de projetos reais de engenharia. Na seção cinco, afirmamos que o empoderamento é uma condição necessária, mas insuficiente para a emancipação. O empoderamento para a emancipação não deve incluir apenas uma articulação adequada de todos os aspectos mencionados do quadro (densidade), mas também resultar de uma intervenção com cuidado e senso crítico (qualidade). A seção seis compara as intervenções praticadas pela Enactus brasileira e iniciativas de engenharia popular à luz da densidade e qualidade e dos seus impactos empoderadores. A conclusão sintetiza os argumentos centrais do artigo e esboça três questões nesse campo que demandam mais pesquisa.
... Instead, they call for "value discovery" [44, p. 1145] or value elicitation, which they define as "inquiring about the values present in a given context and responding to those values-being sensitive to those values-through design." [p.1143], instead of "favouring known values" [44] or "frontloading" [46]. This is known as a bottom-up approach that learns from human actions and experiences and elicits underlying values from those to work with [24]. ...
This paper presents a critical review of how different socio-technical design processes for AI-based systems, from scholarly works and industry, support the creation of value-sensitive AI (VSAI). The review contributes to the emerging field of human-centred AI, and the even more embryonic space of VSAI in four ways: (i) it introduces three criteria for the review of VSAI based on their contribution to design processes’ overall value-sensitivity, and as a response to criticisms that current interventions are lacking in these aspects: comprehensiveness, level of guidance offered, and methodological value-sensitivity, (ii) it provides a novel review of socio-technical design processes for AI-based systems, (iii) it assesses each process based on the mentioned criteria and synthesises the results into broader trends, and (iv) it offers a resulting set of recommendations for the design of VSAI. The objective of the paper is to help creators and followers of design processes—whether scholarly or industry-based—to understand the level of value-sensitivity offered by different socio-technical design processes and act accordingly based on their needs: to adopt or adapt existing processes or to create new ones.
... In theory, these specifications can be modified later on. In practice, this often turns out to be expensive, long to carry out, or simply impossible (Bekiaris et al., 2009;Davis and Nathan, 2015). For instance, Van Kuijk et al. (2014) argue that too little attention has been given to users in the development of the Dutch public transport smartcard system. ...
... For this, we must be in continuous non-hierarchical dialogue with its practitioners and make clear what our intentions are, how we appreciate and even share their values, and how we position ourselves in relation to ITM's past, present, and future. Approaches such as Value Sensitive Design can provide guidance for integrating reflective and participatory perspectives into such research and development work, as richly illustrated by the work of Batya Friedman and others (Friedman and Hendry, 2019; Davis and Nathan, 2015;Borning and Muller, 2012;van den Hoven, 2007). It is important to note here that superficial involvement of the practitioners is not a sufficient end goal in itself, since without genuine reflections of the nature and reciprocity of the interaction, attempted agonism runs a risk of turning into hollow "participation-washing" (Birhane et al., 2022;Sloane et al., 2022). ...
Musical worlds, not unlike our lived realities, are fundamentally fragmented and diverse, a fact often seen as a challenge or even a threat to the validity of research in Music Information Research (MIR). In this article, we propose to treat this characteristic of our musical universe(s) as an opportunity to fundamentally enrich and re-orient MIR. We propose that the time has arrived for MIR to reflect on its ethical and cultural turns (if they have been initiated at all) and take them a step further, with the goal of profoundly diversifying the discipline beyond the diversification of datasets. Such diversification, we argue, is likely to remain superficial if it is not accompanied by a simultaneous auto-critique of the discipline’s raison d’être. Indeed, this move to diversify touches on the philosophical underpinnings of what MIR is and should become as a field of research: What is music (ontology)? What are the nature and limits of knowledge concerning music (epistemology)? How do we obtain such knowledge (methodology)? And what about music and our own research endeavor do we consider “good” and “valuable” (axiology)? This path involves sincere inter- and intra-disciplinary struggles that underlie MIR, and we point to “agonistic interdisciplinarity” — that we have practiced ourselves via the writing of this article — as a future worth reaching for. The two featured case studies, about possible philosophical re-orientations in approaching ethics of music AI and about responsible engineering when AI meets traditional music, indicate a glimpse of what is possible.
... A critical weakness of the VSD is its lack of concrete ethical commitment and claims of universal values (Davis & Nathan, 2015). Davis and Nathan, for example, highlight in their paper that VSD draws various ethical theories, for example, deontological, consequentialist, and virtue, to name a few, but does not commit to any one of them. ...
Despite the prolific introduction of ethical frameworks, empirical research on AI ethics in the public sector is limited. This empirical research investigates how the ethics of AI is translated into practice and the challenges of its implementation by public service organizations. Using the Value Sensitive Design as a framework of inquiry, semi-structured interviews are conducted with eight public service organizations across the Estonian government that have piloted or developed an AI solution for delivering a public service. Results show that the practical application of AI ethical principles is indirectly considered and demonstrated in different ways in the design and development of the AI. However, translation of these principles varies according to the maturity of the AI and the public servant's level of awareness, knowledge, and competences in AI. Data-related challenges persist as public service organizations work on fine-tuning their AI applications.
... The human rights perspective on design falls under the big umbrella of Value Sensitive Design (VSD), which can be defined as the proactive consideration of human values throughout the design process (Davis and Nathan, 2015). VSD is a growing domain since 'designers themselves are increasingly shifting their perspective toward one in which moral, social, and personal values are to be included in the requirements and in which designers develop products, utilities, and buildings that realize these values' (Van den Hoven et al., 2015: 2). ...
Zusammenfassung
Im Zuge der zunehmenden Digitalisierung von Unternehmen stellt sich die Frage, wie Informationssysteme nicht nur wirtschaftlich, sondern auch ethisch verantwortungsvoll gestaltet werden können. Enterprise Systems (ES) spielen für die Digitalisierung eine wichtige Rolle, doch bisher fehlt es an einer fundierten Wissensbasis darüber, welche Rolle ethische Werte für Einführung und Nutzung von ES spielen. Dieser Artikel basiert auf einer systematischen Literaturanalyse, bei der 66 Publikationen aus wissenschaftlichen Zeitschriften und Konferenzen analysiert werden. Es werden 18 ethische Werte identifiziert, die für Einführung und Nutzung von ES relevant sind, wie bspw. Autonomie, Transparenz, Fairness und Verantwortung. Diese Werte bieten sowohl für die Wissenschaft als auch für die Praxis eine Grundlage, um ES nicht nur wirtschaftlich und funktional, sondern auch ethisch und zukunftsweisend zu gestalten. Die hier vorliegende Analyse liefert sowohl theoretische Implikationen für die Weiterentwicklung von ES als auch praktische Konsequenzen für Unternehmen und Anwender, indem Auswirkungen der Werte für Einführung und Nutzung von ES abgeleitet werden.
Objectives: Pilot 5 utilizes AI and robotics to develop a robotic nurse assisting hospital staff in response to workforce shortages and rising care demands due to an aging population. This project aims to optimize resources, reduce errors, and improve patient satisfaction through personalized care. Methods: The Living Lab approach was implemented to split the study into sprints. The first split involves working with project partners and stakeholders to define the problem, brainstorm functionalities, and identify limitations (24 participants). The second split focuses on further requirement gathering, exploring real-world use cases, and considering ethical and privacy concerns (51 participants). Results: The project used iterative development cycles (5-8 months) to continuously improve the solution. Surveys revealed high satisfaction rates, with average scores of 4.0 and 3.6 for Sprints 1 and 2, respectively. Similarly, a team morale survey indicated a positive trend, with average scores of 7.6 and 8.18 for Sprints 1 and 2, respectively. Conclusion: Pilot 5 offers a promising solution to the evolving needs of modern hospitals. This study explores the integration of a social robotic system into nursing care to enhance quality and emphasizes stakeholder engagement, participatory design, and user-centered approaches in AI healthcare solutions.
Drawing on multiple sources of qualitative data, I describe a case of open science infrastructure (OSI) abuse. The case illustrates how developers navigated scholarly value tensions and issues of epistemic and platform legitimacy while battling spam on their open science webapp. Notably, their struggle used precious financial resources and drew attention away from other development tasks like feature expansion. This research makes evident that not only is OSI abuse like spam a financial burden, but it puts scholarly information security—specifically, the legitimacy of open science content—at risk. However, protecting against such abuse is not a trivial matter; it raises questions of who is responsible for defining and enforcing scholarly values. The urgency of this issue is magnified by OSI’s relationship to public trust in science.
Embedding ethics modules within computer science courses has become a popular response to the growing recognition that computer science programs need to better equip their students to navigate the ethical dimensions of computing technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data analytics. However, the popularity of this approach has outpaced the evidence of its positive outcomes. To help close that gap, this empirical study reports positive results from Northeastern University's program that embeds values analysis modules into computer science courses. The resulting data suggest that such modules have a positive effect on students’ moral attitudes and that students leave the modules believing they are more prepared to navigate the ethical dimensions they will likely face in their eventual careers. Importantly, these gains were accomplished at an institution without a philosophy doctoral program, suggesting this strategy can be effectively employed by a wider range of institutions than many have thought.
Background. Digital health innovations increase the options to enhance care practices, such as providing support in the complex task of organizing timely and appropriate care for long-term care recipients. Aiming to provide directions for technology development, this study investigated the needs of care recipients, specifically those facing cognitive challenges. We used a taxonomy of human goals to identify what long-term care recipients and caregivers value regarding care and support.
Method. Ten focus groups with 36 participants (23 care recipients and 13 caregivers) were conducted. Data were analyzed through a hybrid approach to thematic content analysis. The taxonomy of human goals served as a deductive framework, whereas inductive coding was applied to derive main themes and subthemes, elucidating the needs underlying the identified human goals.
Results. Three overarching human goals emerged from the analysis: 1) Tranquility, 2) Self-determination, and 3) Social responsibility, with 18 human goals clustered under the overarching goals. Five main themes underlying the overarching goals provided a comprehensive understanding of the needs and desired outcomes for technology use. Additionally, two new human goals were identified: 4) Connectedness and 5) Being understood.
Discussion. The existing taxonomy should be expanded with the newly identified human goals to enhance the representation of more vulnerable populations such as long-term care recipients. Moreover, various directions for technology are discussed, including the potential of a virtual assistant (i.e., conversational agent) sensitive to the different needs of long-term care recipients and caregivers.
There is a need for modernizing the Dutch collective management system of music copyright to match the rapidly changing digital music industry. Focusing on the often-neglected human values aspect, this study, part of a larger PhD research, examines the value preferences of music rights holders: creators and publishers. It aims to advise on technological redesign for music copyright management system and contribute to discussions on equitable collective management. Building upon prior research, which comprehensively analyzed the Dutch music copyright system and identified key stakeholders, this paper analyses 24 interviews with those key stakeholders to identify their values and potential value tensions. Initial findings establish a set of shared values, crucial for the next phases of the study – values operationalization. This research makes a academic contribution by integrating the Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approach with Distributive Justice Theory, enriching VSD's application and enhancing our understanding of the Economics of Collective Management (ECM).
Just court systems are enabled by inclusive justice practices. Toward creating conditions for more inclusive justice–specifically engaging with and enabling experiential experts–we applied the Diverse Voices method to improve the Access to Justice Technology Principles (ATJ-TPrinc) which guide court administration in Washington State, USA. We situate our work in literature on inclusive justice, public interest technology in the courts, value sensitive design, and experiential experts. Then we present our research context, the Washington State ATJ-TPrinc, and our method, the Diverse Voices. We provide details on our methods, including our project genesis and implementation of the Diverse Voices process. We conducted experiential expert panels with four stakeholder groups: legal professionals, currently/formerly incarcerated people, immigrant communities, and rural communities. We then report key concerns and insights which surfaced during the panels as well as the review process and adoption of the revised Principles by the Washington State Supreme Court. We document changes to the ATJ-Princ informed by feedback from the expert panelists, including two new principles – P11 Human Touch and P12 Language Access. The discussion focuses on evidence for success, skillful implementation of the Diverse Voices method, the need for complementary regulation, and benefits to inclusive justice efforts and public interest technology projects. Our contributions entail: (1) a case study demonstrating the use of the Diverse Voices method to improve a tech policy document for the Washington State court system; (2) for public interest technology, a model for public engagement around tech policy that foregrounds participation of experiential experts, as well as the conditions necessary to ensure concerns raised are both heard and acted upon; (3) facilitation techniques and skills for enabling diverse stakeholder groups to express their concerns around responsible computing systems; and (4) revised and expanded access to justice technology principles to support more inclusive justice.
Ein Tag ohne die Nutzung von digitalen Produkten und Dienstleistungen ist für einen Großteil der Menschen undenkbar geworden. Von der Gesundheit über soziale Kontakte und der Arbeit bis hin zur Mobilität werden mobile Applikationen und Webseiten eingesetzt, um den Alltag zu organisieren. Dadurch wächst der Einfluss von Technologie auf unsere Gesellschaft. In menschzentrierten Gestaltungsprozessen (HCD) werden die Bedürfnisse und Anforderungen sowie der Nutzungskontext der Nutzenden untersucht und in das Design der digitalen Produkte miteinbezogen. Die Werte von Zielgruppen werden aktuell selten bei der Gestaltung berücksichtigt. Homogenität von Mitarbeitenden in Technologieunternehmen kann unter anderem dazu führen, dass die Unternehmensprodukte und -services die Werte der Zielgruppe nicht widerspiegeln, wodurch die Vielfalt an Anforderungen und Werten dieser verfehlt werden kann. Hybrides Arbeiten kann in Technologieunternehmen dazu beitragen, dass Heterogene Teams gebildet werden, was wiederum dazu führen kann, dass die Werte und Anforderungen diverser Zielgruppen erfüllt werden.
The Justice40 Initiative, established by the Biden Administration through Executive Order 14008, aims to ensure 40% of the benefits associated with relevant governmental investments in areas such as climate and energy go to disadvantaged communities. However, persistent structural limitations pose challenges for energy researchers and engineers seeking to integrate justice into research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) activities, ultimately inhibiting full realization of Justice40. Using the Systemic Equity framework, this policy position paper highlights inadequacies in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) funding model and proposes changes to RD&D funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) to support the in-depth community engagement necessary for more equitable technology creation and demonstration. The recommended changes to FOAs are provided to encourage DOE Program Offices to rethink the RD&D funding process, the values that are fortified (intentionally or unintentionally) in that process, and systematically recenter RD&D processes on the goal Justice40 set out to achieve—a more just, equitable, and sustainable future.
This work explores resource recovery coupled to seawater desalination in small islands. As small islands depend on seawater desalination for water access, they make an excellent ground for exploring the trade-offs associated to resource recovery, like potential economic gains, energy use, and environmental impacts. Here, we investigated these tensions in the context of Lampedusa, in Italy. We then developed and evaluated scenarios for the recovery of additional water, Mg, and other resources from brines, to identify if and how resource recovery is an interesting approach for the island vis-à-vis these tensions. We have found that the potential to increase water production with water recovery from brine is an interesting alternative for small islands, especially when harnessing waste heat. However, while some technologies offer possibilities for recovering additional resources, in places like small islands the potential benefits from additional recovery do not seem to justify the costs to the local system.
Aligning the design of Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) technologies to relevant ethical values raises many challenges. In this regard, a particularly delicate step is the transition from prototypes to products. Research and testing on prototypes usually put ethically relevant aspects on hold to focus on more pressing functional aspects. When prototypes are transformed into products, however, ethical issues can no longer be set aside, but require to be responsibly assessed and dealt with. Nevertheless, the consideration of ethical requirements at the stage of product design might lead to results that are far from optimal. Aligning technologies to relevant values at a later stage might indeed imply massive repercussions necessitating profound design revisions. Undesirable trade-offs might thus surface between technical and socio-ethical requirements. This chapter explores pitfalls that might hinder compliance with important ethical values in the design of CAV technologies during the delicate transition from prototypes to products. After some introductory considerations, it discusses the issue by presenting a hypothetical case study on privacy and cybersecurity problems in the prototypical design of a communication system connecting CAVs and smart infrastructure devices. Insights from the field of design ethics are examined to stress the importance of supporting interdisciplinary collaboration since the very outset of the design process.
This anthology contains selected papers from the conference organised by ‘Forum Privatheit’ in 2022, analysing questions relating to privacy, data sharing and data fairness from different perspectives. The contributions focus on the protection of weak interests, questions of fair competition in the data economy with its strong power asymmetries and governance approaches to creating more fairness. Conceptual ideas, technical solutions and concrete use cases provide insights into this increasingly relevant topic. With contributions by Hartmut Aden | Jürgen Anke | Stefanie Astfalk, Lorenz Baum | Felix Bieker | Fabiola Böning | Paulina Bressel | Jeong-Eun Choi | Fabian Dantscher | Leyla Dewitz | Simon Engert | Michael Friedewald | Marie-Louise Gächter | Armin Gerl | Daniel Guagnin | Simon Hanisch | Björn Hanneke | Marit Hansen | Antonios Hazim | Gunnar Hempel | Maria Henkel | Mar Hicks | Timo Hoffmann | Gerrit Hornung | Dietmar Jakob | Paul C. Johannes | Sebastian J. Kasper | Wolfgang Kerber | Steven Kleemann | Marcel Kohpeiß | Jonathan Kropf | Uwe Laufs | Florian Müller | Maxi Nebel | Rahild Neuburger | Isabella Peters | Lars Pfeiffer | Alexander Roßnagel | Sascha Schiegg | Tom Schmidt | Sabrina Schönrock | Christian Schunck | Rachelle Sellung | Tahira Panahi | Louisa Specht-Riemenschneider | Martin Steinebach | Juliane Stiller | Thorsten Strufe | Milan Tahraoui | Julian Todt | Violeta Trkulja | Markus Uhlmann | Inna Vogel | Melanie Volkamer | Sebastian Wilhelm | Matthias Winterstetter.
The article argues that mainstream value-sensitive approaches to design have been based on narrow understandings of personhood and social dynamics, which are biased toward Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic cultures and contradicted by empirical evidence. To respond to this weakness, the article suggests that design may benefit from focusing on user behaviours from the joint perspective of values and norms, especially across cultural contexts. As such, it proposes Norm Sensitive Design as a complement to value-sensitive approaches when designing and implementing new technologies. Versus values, norms serve as more accurate predictors or descriptors of behaviours and can thus support value-sensitive approaches to realize the aspiration of informing user behaviour via design. The article makes two key contributions. On the theoretical side, it promotes the consideration of norms in design. On the practical side, it offers designers and instructors prompts for reflecting on design ethics from the perspective of norms.
This article introduces Designing for Care (D4C), a distinctive approach to project management and technological design informed by Care Ethics. We propose to conceptualize “care” as both the foundational value of D4C and as its guiding mid-level principle. As a value, care provides moral grounding. As a principle, it equips D4C with moral guidance to enact a caring process. The latter is made of a set of concrete, and often recursive, caring practices. One of the key assumption of D4C is a relational ontology of individual and group identities, which fosters the actualization of caring practices as essentially relational and (often) reciprocal. Moreover, D4C adopts the “ecological turn” in CE and stresses the ecological situatedness and impact of concrete projects, envisioning an extension of caring from intra-species to inter-species relations. We argue that care and caring can influence directly some of the phases and practices within the management of (energy) projects and the design of sociotechnical (energy) artefacts and systems. When issues related to “value change” emerge as problematic (e.g., values trade-offs, conflicts), the mid-level guiding principle of care helps evaluate and prioritize different values at stake within specific projects. Although there may be several actors and stakeholders involved in project management and technological design, here we will focus on the professionals in charge of imagining, designing, and carrying out these processes (i.e., project managers, designers, engineers). We suggest that adopting D4C would improve their ability to capture and assess stakeholders’ values, critically reflect on and evaluate their own values, and judge which values prioritize. Although D4C may be adaptable to different fields and design contexts, we recommend its use especially within small and medium-scale (energy) projects. To show the benefits of adopting it, we envisage the application of D4C within the project management and the technological design of a community battery. The adoption of D4C can have multiple positive effects: transforming the mentality and practice of managing a project and designing technologies; enhancing caring relationships between managers, designers, and users as well as among users; achieving better communication, more inclusive participation, and more just decision-making. This is an initial attempt to articulate the structure and the procedural character of D4C. The application of D4C in a concrete project is needed to assess its actual impact, benefits, and limitations.
The negotiation of stakeholder values as a collaborative process throughout technology development has been studied extensively within the fields of Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Human-Computer Interaction. Despite their increasing significance for cybersecurity incident response, there is a gap in research on values of importance to the design of open-source intelligence (OSINT) technologies for this purpose. In this paper, we investigate which values and value conflicts emerge due to the application and development of machine learning (ML) based OSINT technologies to assist cyber security incident response operators. For this purpose, we employ a triangulation of methods, consisting of a systematic survey of the technical literature on the development of OSINT artefacts for cybersecurity (N = 73) and an empirical value sensitive design case study, comprising semi-structured interviews with stakeholders (N = 9) as well as a focus group (N = 7) with developers. Based on our results, we identify implications relevant to the research on and design of OSINT artefacts for cybersecurity incident response.
The article argues that mainstream value-sensitive approaches to design have been based on narrow understandings of personhood and social dynamics, which are biased towards Western Educated Industrialized Rich and Democratic cultures and contradicted by empirical evidence. To respond to this weakness, the article suggests that design may benefit from focusing on user behaviours from the joint perspective of values and norms, especially across cultural contexts. As such, it proposes Norm Sensitive Design as a complement to value-sensitive approaches when designing and implementing new technologies. Versus values, norms serve as more accurate predictors or descriptors of behaviours and can thus support value-sensitive approaches to realize the aspiration of informing user behaviour via design. The article makes two key contributions. On the theoretical side, it promotes the consideration of norms in design. On the practical side, it offers designers and instructors prompts for reflecting on design ethics from the perspective of norms.
INTRODUCTION: The idea that values may be embodied in technical systems and devices (artifacts) has taken root in a variety of disciplinary approaches to the study of technology, society, and humanity (Winner 1986; Latour 1992; Hughes 2004; MacKenzie and Wajcman 1985). A pragmatic turn from this largely descriptive posture sets forth values as a design aspiration, exhorting designers and producers to include values, purposively, in the set of criteria by which the excellence of technologies is judged. If an ideal world is one in which technologies promote not only instrumental values such as functional efficiency, safety, reliability, and ease of use, but also the substantive social, moral, and political values to which societies and their peoples subscribe, then those who design systems have a responsibility to take these latter values as well as the former into consideration as they work. (See, for example, Friedman and Nissenbaum 1996, Mitcham 1995, and Nissenbaum 1998.) In technologically advanced, liberal democracies, this set of such values may include liberty, justice, enlightenment, privacy, security, friendship, comfort, trust, autonomy, and sustenance. It is one thing to subscribe, generally, to these ideals, even to make a pragmatic commitment to them, but putting them into practice, which can be considered a form of political or moral activism, in the design of technical systems is not straightforward. Experienced designers will recall the not too distant past when interface, usability, and even safety were overlooked features of software system design.
Although privacy is broadly recognized as a dominant concern for the development of novel interactive technologies, our ability to reason analytically about privacy in real settings is limited. A lack of conceptual interpretive frameworks makes it difficult to unpack interrelated privacy issues in settings where information technology is also present. Building on theory developed by social psychologist Irwin Altman, we outline a model of privacy as a dynamic, dialectic process. We discuss three tensions that govern interpersonal privacy management in everyday life, and use these to explore select technology case studies drawn from the research literature. These suggest new ways for thinking about privacy in socio-technical environments as a practical matter.
Explicitly considering human values in the design process of socio-technical systems has become a responsibility of designers. It is, however, challenging to design for values because (1) relevant values must be identified and communicated between all stakeholders and designers and (2) stakeholders’ values differ and trade-offs must be made. We focus on the first aspect, which requires elicitation of stakeholders’ situated values, i.e. values relevant to a specific real life context. Available techniques to elicit knowledge and requirements from stakeholders lack in providing the context and means for reflection needed to elicit situated values as well as an explicit concept of value. In this paper we present our design of a tool to support active elicitation of stakeholders’ values and communication between stakeholders and designers. We conducted an exploratory user study in which we compared the suitability of methods used in social sciences for (1) eliciting situated values, (2) supporting people’s expressions of values and (3) being implemented in value elicitation tool. Based on the outcomes we propose a design for a value elicitation tool that consists of a mobile application used by stakeholders for data collection and in-situ self-reflection, and a website used collaboratively by designers and stakeholders to analyse and communicate values. Discussion focuses on contributions to value sensitive design.
This paper reports on the use of social network sites (MySpace and Facebook) by homeless young people, an extraordinary user population, made so in part by its vulnerability. Twenty-three participants of diverse ethnicities, 11 women and 12 men (mean age, 21.7 years), were interviewed in same-sex discussion groups of four participants each. The interviews consisted of questions about the uses, benefits, and harms of social network sites and how people present themselves online. Qualitative analysis of the discussion group transcripts shows how young people explore their identities, cultivate and exploit social ties, experience interpersonal tensions, manage incompatible audiences, and respond to shifting affiliations and transitions. From this analysis, implications for social intervention and technical design are presented, focused on maintaining ties with pro-social family and friends and with maintaining separation between communication spheres of incompatible audiences. This work contributes to the growing literature on vital, deeply human experiences that have become associated with social network sites.
Questions of human values often arise in HCI research and practice. Such questions can be difficult to address well, and a principled approach can clarify issues of both theory and practice. One such approach is Value Sensitive Design (VSD), an established theory and method for addressing issues of values in a systematic and principled fashion in the design of information technology. In this essay, we suggest however that the theory and at times the presentation of VSD overclaims in a number of key respects, with the result of inhibiting its more widespread adoption and appropriation. We address these issues by suggesting four topics for next steps in the evolution of VSD: (1) tempering VSD's position on universal values; (2) contextualizing existing and future lists of values that are presented as heuristics for consideration; (3) strengthening the voice of the participants in publications describing VSD investigations; and (4) making clearer the voice of the researchers. We propose new or altered approaches for VSD that address these issues of theory, voice, and reportage.
The importance of values in design work is gaining increasing attention. However, some of the work to date takes an approach which starts with generic values, or assumes values are constant. Through discussion of three accounts of value discovery and value evolution in projects focused on exploring novel uses of ubiquitous computing, we complement current thinking by arguing for the use of users' values as a resource in the co-design process. In particular, this paper shows how users' values: (a) are spontaneously expressed whether or not particular elicitation methods are used; (b) are not fixed, but can change dynamically during the co-design process in response to ideas, prototypes and demonstrators; (c) help mediate and shape the relationships of users to designers; (d) can support users' creative, functional and technical engagement in co-design – areas that can often prove difficult. Focusing on practical examples that demonstrate this approach, we conclude that values may act as a central resource for co-design in a larger variety of ways than has hitherto been recognised.
The universality of S. H. Schwartz and W. Bilsky's (see record
1988-01444-001) theory of the psychological content and structure of human values was examined with data from Australia, Finland, Hong Kong, Spain, and the United States. Smallest space analyses of the importance ratings that individuals assigned to values revealed the same 7 distinct motivational types of values in each sample as had emerged earlier in samples from Germany and Israel: achievement, enjoyment, maturity, prosocial, restrictive conformity, security, self-direction. Social power, studied only in Hong Kong, also emerged. The structural relations among the value types suggest that the motivational dynamics underlying people's value priorities are similar across the societies studied, with an exception in Hong Kong. The interests that values serve (individual vs. collective) and their goal type (instrumental vs. terminal) also distinguished values in all samples. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Humans will continue to adapt to an increasingly technological world. But are there costs to such adaptations in terms of human well being? Toward broaching this question, we investigated physiological effects of experiencing a HDTV quality real-time view of nature through a plasma display ''window.'' In an office setting, 90 participants (30 per group) were exposed either to (a) a glass window that afforded a view of a nature scene, (b) a plasma window that afforded a real-time HDTV view of essentially the same scene, or (c) a blank wall. Results showed that in terms of heart rate recovery from low-level stress the glass window was more restorative than a blank wall; in turn, a plasma window was no more restorative than a blank wall. Moreover, when participants spent more time looking at the glass window, their heart rate tended to decrease more rapidly; that was not the case with the plasma window. Discussion focuses on how the purported benefits of viewing nature may be attenuated by a digital medium.
This paper presents a discursive approach to the critical examination of information and describes its implementation options. The approach provides a set of concepts to ensure that examination dialogs on information objects take place in a systematic way. For this purpose, this paper takes a critical perspective on information, considers structural characteristics of examination dialog, and arranges some basic categories of critical issues and discursive concepts from Habermas' (1984) discourse theory. In addition, this paper discusses the pros and cons of two implementation op-tions of the theoretical concepts; this concerns their modeling as templates within the existing discourse-support system, Compendium, to provide users predefined-structures for examination dialogs and their implementation as features of a novel prototype, DISCOURSIUM, to facilitate critical discussions. Finally, this paper discusses extensions of the approach and illustrates, by means of a case example from argumentation theory, how the proposed concepts can be instanti-ated to provide participants of examination dialogs with context-specific questions for criticizing arguments. This research may be of value to practitioners as it provides them with categories of critical issues and with some orienting information on how the categories can be used to design further context-sensitive sets of questions.
Digitally capturing and displaying real-time images of people in public places raises concerns for individual privacy. Applying
the principles of Value Sensitive Design, we conducted two studies of people's social judgments about this topic. In Study
I, 750 people were surveyed as they walked through a public plaza that was being captured by a HDTV camera and displayed in
real-time in the office of a building overlooking the plaza. In Study II, 120 individuals were interviewed about the same
topic. Moreover, Study II controlled for whether the participant was a direct stakeholder of the technology (inside the office
watching people on the HDTV large-plasma display window) or an indirect stakeholder (being watched in the public venue). Taking
both studies together, results (showed the following): (a) the majority of participants upheld some modicum of privacy in
public; (b) people's privacy judgments were not a one-dimensional construct, but often involved considerations based on physical
harm, psychological well-being, and informed consent; and (c) more women than men expressed concerns about the installation,
and, unlike the men, equally brought forward their concerns, whether they were The Watcher or The Watched.
This article offers a discussion of the connection between technology and values and, specifically, I take a closer look at
ethically sound design. In order to bring the discussion into a concrete context, the theory of Value Sensitive Design (VSD)
will be the focus point. To illustrate my argument concerning design ethics, the discussion involves a case study of an augmented
window, designed by the VSD Research Lab, which has turned out to be a potentially surveillance-enabling technology. I call
attention to a “positivist problem” that has to do with the connection between the design context and the use context, which
VSD seems to presuppose, and I argue that it is necessary to clearly distinguish between the two, since the designers’ intentions
do not always correspond with the users’ practice; in fact, the relation between design and use is very complex and principally
unpredictable. Thus, a design theory must accept that foresight is limited to anticipation rather than prediction. To overcome
the positivist problem, I suggest a phenomenological approach to technology inspired by Don Ihde’s concept of multistability.
This argument, which is general in nature and thus applies to any theory of design ethics, is intended as a constructive criticism,
which can hopefully contribute to the further development of design ethics.
Although applications are being developed and have reached the market, nanopharmacy to date is generally still conceived as an emerging technology. Its concept is ill-defined. Nanopharmacy can also be construed as a converging technology, which combines features of multiple technologies, ranging from nanotechnology to medicine and ICT. It is still debated whether its features give rise to new ethical issues or that issues associated with nanopharma are merely an extension of existing issues in the underlying fields. We argue here that, regardless of the alleged newness of the ethical issues involved, developments occasioned by technological advances affect the roles played by stakeholders in the field of nanopharmacy to such an extent that this calls for a different approach to responsible innovation in this field. Specific features associated with nanopharmacy itself and features introduced to the associated converging technologies- bring about a shift in the roles of stakeholders that call for a different approach to responsibility. We suggest that Value Sensitive Design is a suitable framework to involve stakeholders in addressing moral issues responsibly at an early stage of development of new nanopharmaceuticals.
Drawing from our PD projects, this paper shows how designers enact their appreciative judgment of values by engaging in a dynamic and dialogical process of cultivating the emergence of values, developing them, and supporting their grounding. The widespread of Participatory Design (PD), have meant that different approaches and conceptualization exist in this field today. We argue that one fruitful approach is to rekindle a concern for values in PD. This requires focusing upon values as the engine that drives our activities in PD.
Supporting public participation is often a key goal in the design of digital government systems. However, years of work may be required before a complex system, such as the UrbanSim urban simulation system, is deployed and ready for such participation. In this paper, we investigate laying the foundations for public participation in advance of wide-scale public deployment, with the goal of having interaction designs ready when the system is put into such use. Moreover, in a highly politicized domain such as this one, value advocacy as well as factual information plays a central role. Using the theory and methods of Value Sensitive Design, we address three design goals toward public participation and value advocacy, and provide evidence that each of them was achieved: (1) enabling indirect stakeholders to become direct stakeholders (i.e. enabling more people to interact directly with UrbanSim in useful ways); (2) developing a participatory process by which these stakeholders can help guide the development of the system itself; and (3) enabling participating organizations to engage in value advocacy while at the same time enhancing overall system legitimation.
In this paper, we attempt to address the broader question as to why in Africa, e-government projects in general have higher rate of failure than success. Based on documentary analysis and using the information ecology framework, we critically analyze the case of The Gambia as e-government prototype country selected by the Economic Commission for Africa. We further discuss the value assumptions and implications, and propose an approach that will include value sensitive design as a way to address the designreality gap in order to minimize the risks for failure. In the process, a number of questions, issues and challenges are identified as possible foci for future research.
Designing and deploying groupware is difficult. Groupware
evaluation and design are often approached from a single
perspective, with a technologically-, individually-, or
socially-centered focus. A study of Groupware Calendar Systems
(GCSs) highlights the need for a synthesis of these multiple
perspectives to fully understand the adoption challenges these
systems face. First, GCSs often replace existing calendar
artifacts, which can impact users calendaring habits and in turn
influence technology adoption decisions. Second, electronic
calendars have the potential to easily share contextualized
information publicly over the computer network, creating
opportunities for peer judgment about time allocation and raising
concerns about privacy regulation. However, this situation may also
support coordination by allowing others to make useful inferences
about ones schedule. Third, the technology and the social
environment are in a reciprocal, co-evolutionary relationship: the
use context is affected by the constraints and affordances of the
technology, and the technology also co-adapts to the environment in
important ways. Finally, GCSs, despite being below the horizon of
everyday notice, can affect the nature of temporal coordination
beyond the expected meeting scheduling practice.
In this paper we examine a ubiquitous yet overlooked aspect of home-life, pottering. The Oxford English Dic- tionary defines pottering as "To occupy oneself in an ineffectual or trifling way; to work or act in a feeble or desultory manner; to trifle, to dabble." It is thus a term used to describe a variety of activities but none in par- ticular. Below, we give shape to the practice of potter- ing and in doing so aim to demonstrate how such an investigation has broad implications for HCI and design- ing for the home. We also report on our experiences of using design sketching as an analytical resource.
By their pervasiveness and by being worn on our bodies, mobile phones seem to have become intrinsic to safety. To examine this proposition, 43 participants, from four stakeholder groups (homeless young people, service providers, police officers, and community members), were asked to consider how homeless young people could use mobile phones to keep safe. Participants were asked to express their knowledge for place-based safety and to envision how mobile phones might be used to improve safety. Detailed analysis of the resulting data, which included value sketches, written value scenarios, and semi-structured discussion, led to specific design opportunities, related to values (e.g., supporting trust and desire to help others), function (e.g., documenting harms for future purposes), and form (e.g., leveraging social expectations for how mobile phones can be used to influence behavior). Together, these findings bound a design space for how mobile phones can be used to manage unsafe situations.
Blind and deaf-blind people often rely on public transit for everyday mobility, but using transit can be challenging for them. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 13 blind and deaf-blind people to understand how they use public transit and what human values were important to them in this domain. Two key values were identified: independence and safety. We developed GoBraille, two related Braille-based applications that provide information about buses and bus stops while supporting the key values. GoBraille is built on MoBraille, a novel framework that enables a Braille display to benefit from many features in a smartphone without knowledge of proprietary, device-specific protocols. Finally, we conducted user studies with blind people to demonstrate that GoBraille enables people to travel more independently and safely. We also conducted co-design with a deaf-blind person, finding that a minimalist interface, with short input and output messages, was most effective for this population.
Significant work in the CHI community has focused on designing systems that support human values. Designers and engineers have also become increasingly aware of ways in which the artifacts they create can embody political, social, and ethical values. Despite such an awareness, there has been little work towards producing practical methodologies that systematically incorporate values into the design process. Many designers struggle to find a balance between their own values, those of users and other stakeholders, and those of the surrounding culture. In this paper, we present the RAPUNSEL project as a case study of game design in a values-rich context and describe our efforts toward navigating the complexities this entails. Additionally, we present initial steps toward the development of a systematic methodology for discovery, analysis, and integration of values in technology design in the hope that others may both benefit from and build upon this work.
As a result of the increased interest in issues such as engagement, affection, and meaning, contemporary human-computer interaction (HCI) has increasingly come to examine the nature of interactions between artifacts, humans, and environments through concepts such as user experience and meaning. In the transition from usability metrics to user experience, what appears lacking is a more explicit characterization of what it is HCI now strives for as a discipline--i.e. what constitutes a 'good' user experience? Through a detailed look at two contemporary philosophies of technology--Albert Borgmann's notion of the device paradigm and Don Ihde's non-neutrality of technology-mediated experience--this paper seeks to explore the potential of the philosophy of technology to contribute new insights and provide well-grounded conceptual tools for coming to terms with what may become HCI's 'new good'.
This paper presents the perspective that sustainability can and should be a central focus of interaction design—a perspective that is termed Sustainable Interaction Design (SID). As a starting point for a perspective of sustainability, design is defined as an act of choosing among or informing choices of future ways of being. This perspective of sustainability is presented in terms of design values, methods, and reasoning. The paper proposes (i) a rubric for understanding the material effects of particular interaction design cases in terms of forms of use, reuse, and disposal, and (ii) several principles to guide SID. The paper illustrates—with particular examples of design critique for interactive products and appeals to secondary research—how two of these principles may be applied to move the effects of designs from less preferred forms of use to more preferred ones. Finally, a vision for incorporating sustainability into the research and practice of interaction design is described. Author Keywords
A core focus of Collaboration Engineering (CE) research has been to design and deploy codified fundamental building blocks (artifacts) of collaboration, thus making it possible for practitioner groups to collaborate even without the help of a professional facilitator. Given the fundamentally social nature of collaboration, we believe that designing such fundamental blocks (artifacts) needs to include considerations of participants' ethical values. As such, we propose a conceptual schema for a fundamental artifact having ethical features derived from the deontological view of ethics. Based on the notions of design theory, value-sensitive design, and deontological ethics, this paper develops an object-oriented representation of an Ethical Collaboration class that can be instantiated into objects that, in turn, can serve as fundamental building blocks for ethical collaboration. Contributions and future implications of such a conceptualization are also discussed.
Developers aim at providing value through their systems and products. However, value is not financial only, but depends on usage and users' perceptions of value. In this paper, we clarify the concept of value from the users' perspective and the role of user involvement in providing value. First, theories and approaches of psychology, marketing and human-computer interaction are reviewed. Secondly, the concept of 'user values' is suggested to clarify the concept of value from the user's point of view and a category framework of user values is presented to make them more concrete and easier to identify. Thirdly, the activities and methods for adopting user values in development work are discussed. The analysis of the literature shows that value has been considered in multiple ways in development. However, users' perspectives have received less attention. As a conclusion, we draw future research directions for value-centered design and propose that user involvement is essential in identifying user values, interpreting the practical meaning of the values and implementing them in development work.
Although privacy is broadly recognized as a dominant concern for the development of novel interactive technologies, our ability to reason analytically about privacy in real settings is limited. A lack of conceptual interpretive frameworks makes it difficult to unpack interrelated privacy issues in settings where information technology is also present. Building on theory developed by social psychologist Irwin Altman, we outline a model of privacy as a dynamic, dialectic process. We discuss three tensions that govern interpersonal privacy management in everyday life, and use these to explore select technology case studies drawn from the research literature. These suggest new ways for thinking about privacy in socio-technical environments as a practical matter.
This paper develops a new theoretical model with which to examine the interaction between technology and organizations. Early research studies assumed technology to be an objective, external force that would have deterministic impacts on organizational properties such as structure. Later researchers focused on the human aspect of technology, seeing it as the outcome of strategic choice and social action. This paper suggests that either view is incomplete, and proposes a reconceptualization of technology that takes both perspectives into account. A theoretical model—the structurational model of technology—is built on the basis of this new conceptualization, and its workings explored through discussion of a field study of information technology. The paper suggests that the reformulation of the technology concept and the structurational model of technology allow a deeper and more dialectical understanding of the interaction between technology and organizations. This understanding provides insight into the limits and opportunities of human choice, technology development and use, and organizational design. Implications for future research of the new concept of technology and the structurational model of technology are discussed.
Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is a comprehensive framework for advancing a value-centered research and design agenda. It provides methods for producing and evaluating a design outcome by taking human values into account. Drawing on discourse ethics, this paper first critically analyzes the status quo in VSD and identifies some gaps. These mainly concern the lack of explicit methods for supporting a deliberative and legitimate process of decision making with respect to many concerns, including the identification of stakeholders, the legitimation of common design communication, the justification of trade-offs and/or a common regulation in case of competing or incommensurable values, as well as the deliberativeness of other design decisions such as the selection of design goals and means. In addition, this paper suggests ways to move VSD toward the standards of discourse ethics by drawing on the knowledge base of critical research in the Information Systems field. In particular, the suggestions concern the inclusion of a practical method for boundary critique and different types of discourses and principles as well as discourse support methods and tools for structuring participation in a way that allows participants to deal with the plurality of values, norms, goals and means deliberatively. Finally, this paper revisits a VSD case and explores the applicability of the ideas suggested.
This study investigates values that are positively correlated with a reduction in value conflicts during the process of designing computational models among stakeholders such as modelers, clients, users, and those affected by models. Survey results identify statistically significant differences in the values of those who have experienced various kinds of value conflicts and those who have not, in terms of values such as equality, a spiritual life, forgiving, humble, a world at peace, politeness, responsible, self-discipline, honoring of parents and elders, true friendship, and devout. Interview results shed further light on the role that these values play in reducing value conflicts. Overall, this study illustrates the importance for computational modelers to consider and design for the values of all stakeholders in the computational modeling process, which can ensure that the models that they build will be sensitive to and appropriate for the values of all of the individuals and communities that will be affected by computational models.
Privacy is a widely studied concept in relation to social computing and sensor-based technologies; scores of research papers have investigated people's "privacy preferences" and apparent reluctance to share personal data. In this paper we explore how Ubicomp and HCI studies have approached the notion of privacy, often as a quantifiable concept. Leaning on several theoretical frameworks, but in particular Nissenbaum's notion of contextual integrity, we question the viability of obtaining universal answers in terms of people's "general" privacy practices and apply elements of Nissenbaum's theory to our own data in order to illustrate its relevance. We then suggest restructuring inquiries into information sharing in studies of state-of-the-art technologies and analyze contextually grounded issues using a different, more specific vocabulary. Finally, we provide the first building blocks to such vocabulary.
We introduce the Envisioning Cards - a versatile toolkit for attending to human values during design processes - and discuss their early use. Drawing on almost twenty years of work in value sensitive design, the Envisioning Cards are built upon a set of four envisioning criteria: stakeholders, time, values, and pervasiveness. Each card contains on one side a title and an evocative image related to the card theme; on the flip side, the card shows the envisioning criterion, elaborates on the theme, and provides a focused design activity. Reports from the field demonstrate use in a range of research and design activities including ideation, co-design, heuristic critique, and more.
Adaptive processes are fundamental to the human experience. This is true not only of adaptation to natural forces but to the technologies we create. Within information science and related fields, research into the processes that surround adaption to information tools often assumes a pro-adoption stance. When researchers privilege adoption, they may overlook complex interactions among values, information tool features, and individual and organizational choice. Towards addressing these limitations, the work reported here seeks to provide a richer understanding of the information tool adaptive process. Specifically, the work draws on Value Sensitive Design to investigate the adaptive process in two intentional communities striving to balance their use of tools with a set of core values related to sustainability. In the first phase of the investigation a community in the initial stages of development was studied for two years. For the second, shorter phase, a decade old community was studied for a period of weeks. Ethnographic methods were employed to document the adaptive process, the interactions of community members, and the information tools they used. Methods included participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and the collection of a range of community artifacts. Research outcomes include: (1) a rich description of information tool use outside of the workplace; (2) a categorization of information practices; (3) an analysis of tensions and barriers which emerge as a community's values conflict with their use of information tools; and (4) the development and assessment of methods to investigate the information tool adaptive process. Most broadly this work contributes to our larger understanding of challenges related to societal adaptation to and interaction with information tools. Findings from this investigation call into question previous claims that groups of individuals with strong value commitments can adapt their use of information tools to better support their values. In contrast, this work suggests that information tool interactions are particularly resilient to local, value based, adaptations. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]
We demonstrate how value considerations can be used to analyze an information ecology that has emerged to help homeless young people. We studied the information ecology of service agencies that assist homeless young people, age 13 to 25. We focused on printed materials used at the agencies and employed surveys and semi-structured interviews to gather data. Of the printed materials considered, a flier with a map of all programs was reported to be most important and distributed most frequently. Future work would further investigate distribution and usability of these portable information sources and the values they embody.
The contemporary notion of professional competence is not grounded in an adequate notion of civil society. Professional practice tends to put citizens in a situation of incompetence, even when it is supposed to serve them. In a civil society, this is not an acceptable state of affairs. In a civil society, the ultimate source of legitimacy lies with the citizen; hence a reflective professional practice that is grounded in an adequate concept of civil society should give citizens a meaningful, and competent, role to play. Reflective practice, then, depends on competent citizenship. There is a need for a simultaneous revision of the contemporary concepts of professional competence and of citizenship. Professional practice and the practice of citizenship need to be understood in such a way that professionals and citizens can meet as equals, though not necessarily as equally skilled individuals. Methodologically speaking, this is possible if we can show that there exists a common core of competencies that both sides can contribute to reflective practice. This essay finds such a core competence in the new concept of critically systemic thinking. The author introduces some of its basic ideas and explains why they might become the source of a new critical competence for citizens as well as for professionals.
In this paper, we describe our approach of using value-sensitive design to guide the design, development, and implementation of health information systems for use in rural areas of two developing countries in Africa. By using shared conceptual investigation, we are able to create a generalized list of stakeholders and values that span multiple projects without losing any of the power of the conceptual investigation. This process can be applied to other projects to develop a stronger set of stakeholders and values. We also present a technical investigation of a vaccine delivery project in Sub-Saharan Africa and plans for an upcoming empirical investigation for a mobile-phone-based support tool for community health workers in East Africa.
Video and transcripts of two architectural design meetings are presented in an analysis of a specific design process. The focus of the analysis presented here is the social and cultural aspects of cognition in design. The argument begins with a discussion of the parallels in design studies and cognitive science as each begun to consider the importance of envi- ronmental influences in how we design and how we think. By applying three situated frameworks to understand the sit- uated nature of design meetings, the analysis shows that no- tions of social creation and cultural cognition are compli- mentary and necessary when trying to understand how the design process works.
Drawing on Value Sensitive Design, we developed a workable privacy addendum for an open source software license that not only covers intellectual property rights while allowing software developers to modify the software (the usual scope of an open source license), but also addresses end- user privacy. One central innovation of our work entails the integration of an informed consent model and a threat model for developing privacy protections for ubiquitous location aware systems. We utilized technology that provided a device's location information in real-time: Intel's POLS, a "sister" system to Intel's Place Lab. In January 2006, POLS was released under a license combining the substantive terms of the Eclipse Public License together with this privacy addendum. In this paper, we describe how we developed the privacy addendum, present legal terms, and discuss characteristics of our design methods and results that have implications for protecting privacy in ubiquitous information systems released in open source.
In this study, we investigated people's relationships with AIBO, a robotic pet, through 6,438 spontaneous postings in online AIBO discussion forums. Results showed that AIBO psychologically engaged this group of participants, particularly by drawing forth conceptions of technological essences (75%), life-like essences (49%), mental states (60%), and social rapport (59%). However, participants seldom attributed moral standing to AIBO (e.g., that AIBO deserves respect, has rights, or can be held morally accountable for action). Our discussion focuses on how robotic pets (now and in the future) may (a) challenge traditional boundaries (e.g. between who or what can possess feelings), (b) extend our conceptions of self, companionship, and community, and (c) begin to replace interactions with live pets. We also discuss a concern that people in general, and children in particular, may fall prey to accepting robotic pets without the moral responsibilities (and moral developmental outcomes) that real, reciprocal companionship and cooperation involves. This research contributes to a growing literature on the human-robotic relationship.
The Value Sensitive Design (VSD) methodology provides a comprehensive framework for advancing a value-centered researchand designagenda. AlthoughVSDprovideshelpful ways of thinking about and designing value-centered com- putational systems, we argue that the specific mechanics of VSD create thorny tensions with respect to value sensitivity. In particular, we examine limitations due to value classifica- tions, inadequateguidanceon empiricaltools for design, and the ways in which the design process is ordered. In this pa- per, we propose ways of maturing the VSD methodology to overcome these limitations and present three empirical case studies that illustrate a family of methods to effectively en- gage local expressions of values. The findings from our case studies provide evidence of how we can mature the VSD methodology to mitigate the pitfalls of classification and en- gender a commitment to reflect on and respond to local con- texts of design.
Can a set of articulated and tested methodologies be created whose endpoint is the reliable capacity for taking activist social themes into account? In this paper we explore a variety of educational and activist game approaches, and look specifically at the themes emerging from recent projects involving game design for young women. We articulate here design practices in a methodology that could be used in the creation of games as well the teaching of game design. Author Keywords
Principled knowledge is a mark of any established disciplinary practice. Its derivation and validation of varies across disciplines, but HCI has tended towards posthoc ('a posteriori') syntheses. We present an alternative a priori approach that is relatively compact and open to inspection. We use John Heskett's position on the origins of design outcomes to derive six metaprinciples for all design processes: receptiveness, expressivity, committedness, credibility, inclusiveness and improvability. Although very abstract, these meta-principles generate critical insights into existing HCI approaches, identifying gaps in suitability and coverage. Practical value is increased by progressive instantiation of meta-principles to create first craft-specific, and ultimately project-specific, Interaction Design principles. A worth-centred approach is adopted to illustrate progressive instantiation towards a framework of adapted and novel HCI approaches. The internal coherence of the six metaprinciples is shown to provide direct effective support for synergistic progressive instantiation.
We present a case study of BlueReach, an expertise sharing application that uses synchronous chat to connect question askers with subject-matter experts. We discuss how the solution evolved over time, and the generally high level of acceptance from users and volunteer experts. We include survey findings and usage data, which indicate that in spite of initial concerns that the experts would be overwhelmed by questions, usage has been fairly low and relatively flat. We examine this phenomenon and conclude with a discussion of lessons learned.
We first provide criteria for assessing informed consent online. Then we examine how cookie technology and Web browser designs have responded to concerns about informed consent. Specifically, we document relevant design changes in Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer over a 5-year period, starting in 1995. Our retrospective analyses leads us to conclude that while cookie technology has improved over time regarding informed consent, some startling problems remain. We specify six of these problems and offer design remedies. This work fits within the emerging field of Value-Sensitive Design.
In this paper we argue that there is a scarcity of methods which support critical, systemic, long-term thinking in current design practice, technology development and deployment. To address this need we introduce value scenarios, an extension of scenario-based design which can support envisioning the systemic effects of new technologies. We identify and describe five key elements of value scenarios; stakeholders, pervasiveness, time, systemic effects, and value implications. We provide two examples of value scenarios, which draw from our current work on urban simulation and human-robotic interaction . We conclude with suggestions for how value scenarios might be used by others.