Values as hypotheses: Design, inquiry, and the service of values

Design Issues

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 2015, Pages 91-104

  JafariNaimi, Nassim ^a   Nathan, Lisa ^b   Hargraves, Ian ^c  

^a GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA   (Canada)

^c MAYO CLINIC   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84932606703     PISSN: 07479360     EISSN: 15314790     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/DESI_a_00354     Document Type: Article

References (46)

1. For a thorough scholarly explication of the history of ethics and design from a European perspective see, Anna Valtonen, “Back and Forth with Ethics in Product Development—A History of Ethical Responsibility as a Design Driver in Europe” (presentation, Conference of the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management (EIASM), Cergy-Pontoise, France, October 13, 2006).
2. Bruno Latour, “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change, ed. Wiebe E. Bijker and John Law (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1994), 225-58.
3. Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,” in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for the Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19-39.
4. Roland Barthes, Mythologies, 1st edition, Annette Lavers, trans. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972); cf. (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1957).
5. Victor J. Papanek, Design for the Real World: Human Ecology and Social Change, 1st ed. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).
6. Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby, Design Noir: The Secret Life of Electronic Objects (Boston: August Media, 2001).
7. Carl DiSalvo, Adversarial Design (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2012).
8. Batya Friedman, “Value-Sensitive Design,” Interactions 3, no. 6 (1996): 17-18.
9. Batya Friedman and Helen Nissenbaum, “Software Agents and User Autonomy,” in Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents (New York: The ACM Press, 1997), 467.
10. Friedman and her colleagues describe VSD as a theory, a methodology, and an approach for addressing values during the design process.
11. Batya Friedman, Peter H. Kahn, and Alan Borning, “Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems,” in Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems: Foundations: Ping Zhang and Dennis Galletta, ed. (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2006), 348-72.
12. The original set of values put forward by Friedman et al. includes: human welfare, ownership and property, privacy, freedom from bias, universal usability, trust, autonomy, informed consent, accountability, courtesy, identity, calmness, and environmental sustainability.
13. Friedman, Kahn, and Borning, “Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems,” 364-65.
14. The resulting list of values is compiled from multiple sources, including values in the definition of a project; values that emerge in specifying design features; designers’ values; and user values.
15. Mary Flanagan, Daniel C. Howe, and Helen Nissenbaum, “Embodying Values in Technology: Theory and Practice,” in Information Technology and Moral Philosophy, Jeroen van den Hoven and John Weckert, ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 334-38.
16. An-Shou Cheng and Kenneth R. Fleischmann, “Developing a Meta-Inventory of Human Values,” Proceedings of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 47, no. 1 (2010), 1-10.
17. This approach is similar to research that uses survey methodology and content analysis—for example, in Jes A. Koepfler and Kenneth R. Fleischmann, “Studying the Value of Hard-to-Reach Populations: Content Analysis of Tweets by the 21st Century Homeless,” in Proceedings of the iConference 2012 (New York: The ACM Press, 2012), 48-55.
18. Alan Borning and Michael J. Muller, “Next Steps for Value Sensitive Design,” in Human Factors in Computing (New York: The ACM Press, 2012), 1125-84.
19. For details, see Friedman, Kahn, and Borning, “Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems,” 348-72.
20. Flanagan, Howe, and Nissenbaum, “Embodying Values in Technology,” 338-47.
21. Christopher A. Le Dantec, Erika Shehan Poole, and Susan P. Wyche, “Values as Lived Experience: Evolving Value Sensitive Design in Support of Value Discovery,” in Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing CHI 2009 (New York: The ACM Press, 2009), 1141-50.
22. Christopher A. Le Dantec, Erika Shehan Poole, and Susan P. Wyche, “Values as Lived Experience: Evolving Value Sensitive Design in Support of Value Discovery,” in Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing CHI 2009 (New York: The ACM Press, 2009), 1144.
23. Le Dantec et al. cast the issue of values application as accounting for human values in the design of computer systems. However, their emphasis remains on the discovery of values so that “we can derive system designs that reflect the values of the people they are meant to serve rather than the values of the system designers.” Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Human Factors in Computing CHI 2009, 1147.
24. Further, defining a value as what a person or group considers important in life collapses a useful distinction between values and preferences. Caroline Whitbeck helpfully distinguishes preferences and values. She explains that statements of preference are statements about the person uttering the statement. Statements of value are claims about the subject, or situation, under discussion. See Caroline Whitbeck, “The Trouble with Dilemmas: Rethinking Applied Ethics,” Professional Ethics 1, no. 1-2 (1992): 119-42.
25. Shades of this fuller issue are present in Le Dantec, Poole, and Wyche’s work. When they argue that “the classifications of values derived from empirical work are more effective and relevant for informing the design of computational systems for those contexts than are conceptions of values in the abstract,” they are not suggesting that all values empirically present serve the situation; rather, they mean that some values discovered locally are relevant and effective (i.e., they serve). Le Dantec, Shehan Poole, and Wyche, “Values as Lived Experience,” 1147.
26. In collating this research, we are not suggesting that these works are the same or even similar in their philosophic grounding. VSD scholarship encompasses a broad range of philosophical and methodological approaches. Nonetheless, all of the perspectives described here share the two-step logic that begins with identifying the values to be subsequently applied to products or incorporated in design processes.
27. The separation of understanding values from the conduct of design, which is inherent in the two-step logic, is in part driving the disquiet that scholars have voiced with the conception and application of VSD in practical design situations.
28. Le Dantec et al. are among the recent critics of this approach. Other critiques can be seen in Noëmi Manders-Huits, “What Values in Design? The Challenge of Incorporating Moral Values Into Design,”Science and Engineering Ethics 17, no. 2 (2010): 271-87
29. Alan Borning and Michael J. Muller, “Next Steps for Value Sensitive Design,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing (New York: The ACM Press, 2012), 1125.
30. Langdon Winner, “Do Artifacts Have Politics?,” in The Whale and the Reactor: A Search for the Limits in an Age of High Technology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 19-39.
31. Michael J. Muller, “Participatory Design: The Third Space in HCI,” in Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, Andrew Sears and Julie A. Jacko, ed. (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2003), 1061-82.
32. For example, the recent controversies around the U.S. National Security Agency’s PRISM program challenges— in the particular—the service of the value of security, the technologies it produces, and the practices it animates. Interrogating the service of values in concrete situations exposes the issue of design in those situations.
33. John Dewey, “Moral Theory and Practice,” International Journal of Ethics 1, no. 2 (1891): 186-203.
34. ohn Dewey, “Moral Theory and Practice,” International Journal of Ethics 1, no. 2 (1891): 193.
35. John Dewey, The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898, Volume 3, 1889-1892: Essays and Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, Jo Ann Boydston, ed. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 156-57.
36. John Dewey, The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898, Volume 3, 1889-1892: Essays and Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics, Jo Ann Boydston, ed. (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2008), 156-67.
37. For an overview of envisioning cards see, Batya Friedman and David G. Hendry, “The Envisioning Cards: A Toolkit for Catalyzing Humanistic and Technical Imaginations,” in Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (New York: The ACM Press, 2012), 1145-48.
38. Lisa P. Nathan, Batya Friedman, Predrag Klasjna, Shaun K. Kane, and Jessica K. Miller, “Envisioning Systemic Effects on Persons and Society Throughout Interactive System Design,” in Proceedings of the 7th ACM Conference on Designing Interactive Systems DIS 2008 (New York: The ACM Press, 2008), 1-10.
39. We distributed card sets to 30 design professionals during the Design Thinking unConference in Vancouver, Canada in 2011. During the following month, we contacted the designers to schedule interviews, and 15 individuals were interested in providing extensive feedback via interviews. The majority of those who declined a full interview stated that, despite initial enthusiasm, they never engaged the card set.
40. Batya Friedman, “Value-Sensitive Design,” Interactions 3, no. 6 (1996): 17-18.
41. Batya Friedman and Helen Nissenbaum, “Software Agents and User Autonomy,” in Proceedings of the First International Conference on Autonomous Agents AGENTS 1997 (New York: The ACM Press, 1997), 467.
42. The example is drawn from Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010).
43. The example is drawn from Barry Schwartz and Kenneth Sharpe, Practical Wisdom: The Right Way to Do the Right Thing (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010)13-14.
44. Dewey, “Moral Theory and Practice,” 193.
45. Schwartz and Sharpe, Practical Wisdom, 13-14.
46. Richard McKeon, “A Philosopher Mediates on Discovery,” in Selected Writings of Richard McKeon: Volume One: Philosophy, Science, and Culture, Richard McKeon ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1998), 49.