Values in Design Focusing on Socio-Technical Design with Values As a Critical Component in the Design Process

viewpoints

Vdoi:10.1145/1965724.1965735 Cory Knobel and Geoffrey C. Bowker Computing Ethics Values in Design Focusing on socio-technical design with values as a critical component in the design process.

alues often play out in in- of decisions already made on their research program (see http://www.nyu. formation technologies behalf (and often not to their benefit) edu/projects/nissenbaum/vid_council. as disasters needing man- and impossible choices if they would html). This suite of projects is aimed agement. When Facebook like to do things differently. Sensible at redesigning Internet architecture to started sharing data about responses to this problem have been handle ever-expanding modes of usage Vwhat people were buying or viewing, developed over the past 10 years, with fewer problems due to design mis- it ended up with digital egg all over its and a community of researchers has takes about values. An initial meeting face. Focusing the initial design pro- formed around the role of human of people from these projects revealed cess on complicated values of privacy values in technology design.a A new three values that need immediate at- might have helped Facebook avoid book on Values in Design from the tention. One involves the trade-off be- this uproar. To use another example, MIT Press Infrastructures series illus- tween security and privacy: for example, the “terms and conditions” that most trates the issues. can we design computing “clouds” so users simply “accept” without read- Helen Nissenbaum has created a that search queries cannot be traced to ing could be made easier to read and Values in Design Council, working with an individual user or IP except in care- understand if the values inherent in the National Science Foundation on the fully controlled circumstances subject fair contracting were incorporated Futures of Internet Architecture (FIA) to appropriate prior review. Not surpris- in the design of such agreements ingly, the U.S. National Security Agency in the first place. But conversations a Examples of existing work in along this theme wants to maintain loopholes that allow and analyses of the values found in include Batya Friedman’s values-sensitive de- it to pursue the important value of na- sign, Mary Flanagan and Helen Nissenbaum’s technologies are generally engaged Values at Play, Phoebe Sengers’ reflective de- tional security. Can these values be rec- after design and launch, and most sign, T.L. Taylor’s values in design in ludic sys- onciled through a compromise design? users are faced with a daunting set tems, and Ann Cavoukian’s privacy by design. Another involves hardwire design for Digital Rights Management (DRM) that protects digital rights while permitting flexibility as information policy evolves. A third concern, “cultural valence,” means systems designed by one group (for example, Americans) should not impose American values about struc- ture, protocol, use, and policy on non- Americans as Internet architectures go global. The point is not that designers have the wrong values, but that one of the key features of values is that different people hold different values, and often hold to those values very strongly.

Infrastructures and Values Successful infrastructures serve people with different values. A good ex- Figure 1. Results of a Google search on “Cameroon.” ample of this is mobile technologies.

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Figure 2. Designer Mary Flanagan’s reconceptualized classic Atari video games with giant joystick; http://www.maryflanagan.com/giant-joystick.

Inclusion of GPS capability creates geographic privacy and autonomy are around VID, or Values in Design (or new opportunities regarding informa- compromised. more formally, Values in the Design tion tied to geography. Mobile appli- Another good example of value of Information Systems and Technol- cations coupled to social networks al- clashes concerns search engines. ogy). It consists of researchers and low users to know when they are near Google might be the greatest infor- practitioners in computer science, friends. Loopt and FourSquareb show mation retrieval tool in world history, engineering, human-computer in- where friends have “checked in” and but it falls prey to the “Matthew ef- teraction, science and technology their distances from a user’s current fect” named for a line in the Gospel studies, anthropology, communica- location to facilitate social gathering of Matthew (25:29): “For to all those tions, law, philosophy, information and serendipitous meeting. However, who have, more will be given, and science, and art and design. They such technologies can cause tension they will have an abundance; but from find common ground through the in- in social values as the benefit of po- those who have nothing, even what terdisciplinarity implied by the broad tential meetings with friends causes they have will be taken away.” The re- spectrum of interests. Decades of re- problems of attention and interroga- sults of a simple Google search on the search in the sociology of science and tion, as when a paramour says, “You word “Cameroon” shown in Figure 1 technology have shown that technical said you were going to the store, then indicate Wikipedia, the CIA, the U.S. infrastructures reveal human values the library, and then home, but you State Department, and the BBC seem most often through counterpro- never checked in. Where were you?” a to know more about Cameroon than ductivity, tension, or failure. Work- GPS-based network applications may any of its inhabitants. The highest- shops conducted over the past six increase locational accountability be- ranked site from the country does years by Helen Nissenbaum, Geof- cause, unlike a phone call that might not appear until page 4, a link to the frey Bowker, and Susan Leigh Star originate anywhere, GPS-enabled ap- country’s main newspaper. Given that have sparked conversations among plications carry information about most users never go beyond the first people in these fields, producing a specific geographic location. In prin- few links,d few will get to information cohort of interdisciplinary schol- ciple, a user can work around “stalk- about Cameroon from Cameroon. The ars of values in design. This group ing” and other problematic situations country is officially French-speaking, so departs from a traditional view of with some mobile apps such as Tall sophisticated searchers might find bet- critical theory that tackles technol- Tales and Google Latitudec that allow ter results searching for “Cameroun,” ogy once it is in place, and focuses a user to lie about location, but equat- but few English-speaking users would instead on socio-technical design ing privacy with lying creates its own do this. The algorithm that provides with values as a critical component values-centric problems. An “open nearly universal access to knowledge in the design process. The objective hand” of location-based transparency also unwittingly suppresses knowledge of VID is to create infrastructures can easily become a “backhand” when of African countries. Or is this always un- that produce less friction over values witting? A search on “Obamacare” pro- than those created in the past. This b With over 4 million and 6.5 million registered duces a taxpayer-paid-for link to http:// objective is timely given the rise of 1 users as of February 2011, respectively; see www.healthcare.gov as a top hit. social computing and networks, http://about.loopt.com/tag/loopt/ and http:// games that address social problems foursquare.com/about. Interdisciplinary Scholars and change (see http://www.gamesfor- c http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tall-tales- A community of scholars has formed change.org/) and the interconnection geolocation-spoofing/; http://mashable. com/2009/02/04/google-latitude/; http://www. of corporate, government, and aca- androidzoom.com/android_applications/ d http://seoblackhat.com/2006/08/11/tool- demic institutions’ interests ranging fake%20locations clicks-by-rank-in-google-yahoo-msn/ from the individual to the transglobal.

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VID aims to create a new field that un- derstands values and technology in the early stages of design. Design must be The VID program depends on hav- integrated in ways ing sensible definitions for the terms “values” and “design.” The philosopher that challenge of science Jacob Metcalf provides a use- assumptions about ACM ful framing for “values” by compar- ing it with generally well-understood what can and cannot Transactions on concept of ethics. Ethics are a set of be changed. prescriptions (nouns), while values are tied to action (verbs). VID is a call Accessible to action, an effort in ”verbing” design work by practical exercises. Exercises Computing include background readings in com- implementation to actual engagement puter and information science and in- where the rubber truly hits the road. formation policy literatures. Exercises Design must be integrated in ways that also include use of Mary Flanagan’s challenge assumptions about what Values at Play cards to modify or create can and cannot be changed. A newly new values-driven computer games, forming Center for Values in Design at or Batya Friedman’s Envisioning cards the University of Pittsburgh’s School to reveal social sensitivities during the of Information Sciences will explore design process.e Workshop groups and apply these ideas as they emerge are split into interdisciplinary teams (see http://vid.pitt.edu/). that produce a values-driven design in To close, consider the work of theo- about one week. Academics and indus- rist, artist, and designer Mary Flanagan try experts judge the proposals, which (see http://www.maryflanagan.com/gi- have ranged from a system to support ant-joystick). She has reconceptualized community gardening projects and classic Atari video games by replacing green space development, to a geocach- the single-user, joystick-and-fire but- ing system that reveals the geographic ton control with a 10-foot high mecha- routes by which kidnapped women are nism that requires collaboration and trafficked into the sex trade. coordination among several people to operate the game (see Figure 2). She Conclusion subverts design by taking a nontradi- ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ The VID effort has been under way tional perspective that produces radi- This quarterly publication is a for 15 years since first articulated,2–4 cal reinterpretations of everyday prac- quarterly journal that publishes and for six years at building the cadre tice. She shows that the social values of refereed articles addressing issues of scholars through workshops. Next collaboration, cooperation, coordina- steps are to open the design space tion, and play can transform a taken- of computing as it impacts the through collaborative interdisciplinary for-granted utility, the simple joystick, lives of people with disabilities. work; in contrast to customary univer- into an opportunity for engagement The journal will be of particular sity training that teaches how to work and discourse about the design of in- interest to SIGACCESS members individually. The world demands skills formation technologies. in collaboration, and future designers and delegrates to its aﬃliated must work in highly connected and References 1. Diaz, A. Through the Google Goggles: Sociopolitical conference (i.e., ASSETS), as well intellectually fertile environments. bias in search engine design. In Web Search: The VID community sees design as a Multidisciplinary Perspectives. A. Spink and M. Zimmer, as other international accessibility Eds., Springer New York, 2008. conferences. process in which constraints impose 2. flanagan, M., Howe, D., and Nissenbaum, H. Values in new directions for innovation, and Design: Theory and Practice. Working Paper, 2005. ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ 3. friedman, B., and Nissenbaum, H. Bias in computer values are a source of constraints. The systems. ACM Transactions on Information Systems 14, 3 (1996), 330–347. www.acm.org/taccess VID community is rethinking design 4. sengers, P., Boehner, K., David, S., and Kay, J. to go beyond user studies, marketing, Reflective design. InProceedings of the 4th Decennial www.acm.org/subscribe documentation, programming, and ACM Conference on Critical Computing. (2005).

Cory Knobel ([email protected]) is an assistant e http://www.valuesatplay.org/?page_id=6 and professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Friedman, B., Nathan, L. P., Kane, S., and Lin, J. Envisioning Cards. Value Sensitive Design Re- Geoffrey C. Bowker ([email protected]) is a professor and senior scholar in Cyberscholarship at the University search Lab. The Information School, Univer- of Pittsburgh. sity of Washington. Seattle, WA, 2011; http:// www.envisioningcards.com Copyright held by author.

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