value sensitive design: four challenges
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Ibo van de Poel's fPET-2010 presentationTRANSCRIPT
Value Sensitive Design: Four Challenges
Ibo van de Poel
Associate professor Delft University of Technology
Fellow-in-residence Netherlands Institute of Advanced Studies
May 16, 2010
1
What is value-sensitive design (VSD)?
May 16, 2010 2
• Systematic attempt to include values of ethical importance in design
• Three types of investigations:
• Empirical
• Conceptual
• Technical/engineering
Why VSD?
• Design is about changing the world
• Inherently normative
• Designers have being doing it all the time
• But make more explicit, transparent and systematic
• Improve design
• Include values that have not been commonly included so far
May 16, 2010 3
Four challenges for VSD
• What values to include in design?
• How to make these values bear on the design process?
• How to make choices and tradeoffs between conflicting values?
• How to verify whether the designed system embodies the intended values?
The challenges
• Seem practical in nature
• But each of them is related to a deeper underlying philosophical problem
• My aim:
• clarify problems and show ways for dealing with them or even avoiding them.
• No clear-cut methodology for engineers
Philosophical issues
• What values to include in design?
• What are values? Are they objective or subjective?
• How to make these values bear on the design process?
• How to bridge the gap between world of ideas and world of things?
• How to make choices and tradeoffs between conflicting values?
• Do incommensurable values preclude optimizing?
• How to verify whether the designed system embodies the intended values?
• Can technology embody values?
1st challenge
Sources of values in design:
• Design brief (motivation of project)
• Designers (and their professional community)
• Users and stakeholders
• Codes of ethics, codes & standards, law, society
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What values to include?
• This is a normative question
• Sources provide first approximation, but how to decide:
• What values are worth including and which ones not?
May 16, 2010 8
Correspondence between values and reasons
V: If x is valuable or is a value one has reasons for a positive response (a pro-attitude or a pro-behavior) towards x
May 16, 2010 9
Possible positive responses
• Increase
• Maximize
• Respect
• Protect
• Admire
• Enjoy
• What response is appropriate will usually depend on value and the context
May 16, 2010 10
Examples of some appropriate responses in design
• Safety
• Respect safety margins
• Maximize overall safety
• Democracy
• Involve stakeholders in the design process
• Design criteria for democratic technologies (Sclove)
May 16, 2010 11
What values to include in design?
• (v) is helpful
• To distinguish ‘real’ values from ‘mere’ values
• To determine appropriate response
• But:
• Requires judgment
• Room for (rational) discussion and disagreement
May 16, 2010 12
2nd challenge
• How to make values bear on the design process?
• Might require closing gap between humanities/social sciences (value inquiries) and engineering/sciences
• Now: focus on translation of values into design requirements
Design requirements
• Desirable characteristics of the designed system
• Usually formulated at start of design process but may be reformulated during design
• Set is often incomplete and potentially conflicting
• Hierarchically structured
Values hierarchy
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May 16, 2010 16
Example of values hierarchy
Constructing a values hierarchy
• Can be done top-down and bottom-up
• Usually combination and iterative process
• Top-down: specification
• Bottom-up: for the sake of
May 16, 2010 17
Specification
• Non-deductive
• Context-dependent
• Adds information
• Scope of norm
• Specification of goals
• Specification of means
• Adequacy: does meeting lower level norms count as an instance of meeting higher level norm or value?
May 16, 2010 18
For the sake of
• Higher level elements provide reasons for striving for lower level elements
• “For the sake of” relation is antisymmetrical
• Higher level elements done for their own sake: intrinsic value
May 16, 2010 19
Third challenge
• How to make choices and tradeoffs between conflicting values?
• Incommensurable values
• For how much money are you willing to betray your friend?
• Incommensurable values preclude optimizing
• MCDM, QFD, Pugh charts, AHP
Non optimizing approaches to value conflict in engineering
• Satisficing
• Reasoning about values
• Diversity
• Maximizing is not the (only) appropriate response to all values
4th challenge: How to verify whether the designed system embodies the intended values?
• Can technology embody values?
• Same technology in different (cultural) contexts realizes different values
• But differently designed technologies (with same function) in same user practice also realize different values
• Values embodied in “technology + user practice”