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account of Value Sensitive Design, with enough detail for other researchers and designers to crit-
ically examine and systematically build on this approach.
We begin by sketching the key features of Value Sensitive Design, and then describe its inte-
grative tripartite methodology, which involves conceptual, empirical, and technical investiga-
tions, employed iteratively. Then we explicate Value Sensitive Design by drawing on three case
studies. One involves cookies and informed consent in Web browsers; the second involves HDTV
display technology in an office environment; the third involves user interactions and interface for
an integrated land use, transportation, and environmental simulation. We conclude with direct and
practical suggestions for how to engage in Value Sensitive Design.
WHAT IS VALUE SENSITIVE DESIGN?
Value Sensitive Design is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that accounts
for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process.
What Is a Value?
In a narrow sense, the word “value” refers simply to the economic worth of an object. For exam-
ple, the value of a computer could be said to be two thousand dollars. However, in the work
described here, we use a broader meaning of the term wherein a value refers to what a person or
group of people consider important in life.
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In this sense, people find many things of value, both
lofty and mundane: their children, friendship, morning tea, education, art, a walk in the woods,
nice manners, good science, a wise leader, clean air.
This broader framing of values has a long history. Since the time of Plato, for example, the
content of value-oriented discourse has ranged widely, emphasizing “the good, the end, the right,
obligation, virtue, moral judgment, aesthetic judgment, the beautiful, truth, and validity” (Frankena,
1972, p. 229). Sometimes ethics has been subsumed within a theory of values; at other times, con-
versely, ethical values have been viewed as just one component of ethics more generally. Either
way, it is usually agreed (Moore, 1903/1978) that values should not be conflated with facts (the
“fact/value distinction”) especially insofar as facts do not logically entail value. In other words,
“is” does not imply “ought” (the naturalistic fallacy). In this way, values cannot be motivated only by
an empirical account of the external world, but depend substantively on the interests and desires
of human beings within a cultural milieu. In Table 16.1 in “Human Values (with Ethical Import)
Often Implicated in System Design,” later in this chapter, we provide a list of human values with
ethical import that are often implicated in system design, along with working definitions and ref-
erences to the literature.
Related Approaches to Values and System Design
In the 1950s, during the early periods of computerization, cyberneticist Norbert Wiener (1953/1985)
argued that technology could help make us better human beings, and create a more just society. But
for it to do so, he argued, we have to take control of the technology. We have to reject the “wor-
shiping (of ) the new gadgets which are our own creation as if they were our masters” (p. 678).
Similarly, a few decades later, computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum (1972) wrote:
What is wrong, I think, is that we have permitted technological metaphors . . . and technique
itself to so thoroughly pervade our thought processes that we have finally abdicated to technology
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