Information Technology Reference
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the very duty to formulate questions . . . Where a simple man might ask: “Do we need these things?,”
technology asks “what electronic wizardry will make them safe?” Where a simple man will ask
“is it good?,” technology asks “will it work?” (pp. 611-612)
More recently, supporting human values through system design has emerged within at least
four important approaches. Computer ethics advances our understanding of key values that lie at
the intersection of computer technology and human lives—for example, Bynum (1985), Johnson
and Miller (1997), and Nissenbaum (1999). Social informatics has been successful in providing
socio-technical analyses of deployed technologies—for example, Kling, Rosenbaum, and Hert
(1998), Kling and Star (1998), and Sawyer and Rosenbaum (2000). Computer-supported cooper-
ative work (CSCW) has been successful in the design of new technologies to help people colla-
borate effectively in the workplace—for example, Fuchs (1999), Galegher, Kraut, and Egido
(1990), Olson and Teasley (1996), and Grudin (1988). Finally, participatory design substantively
embeds democratic values into its practice—for example, Bjerknes and Bratteteig (1995), Bødker
(1990), Carroll and Rosson (in this volume), Ehn (1989), Greenbaum and Kyng (1991), and
Kyng and Mathiassen (1997). (See Friedman and Kahn [2003] for a review of each of these
approaches.)
THE TRIPARTITE METHODOLOGY: CONCEPTUAL, EMPIRICAL, AND
TECHNICAL INVESTIGATIONS
Think of an oil painting by Monet or Cézanne. From a distance it looks whole; but up close you
can see many layers of paint upon paint. Some paints have been applied with careful brushstrokes,
others perhaps energetically with a palette knife or fingertips, conveying outlines or regions of
color. The diverse techniques are employed one on top of the other, repeatedly, and in response to
what has been laid down earlier. Together they create an artifact that could not have been gener-
ated by a single technique in isolation from the others. So, too, with Value Sensitive Design. An
artifact or design emerges through iterations upon a process that is more than the sum of its parts.
Nonetheless, the parts provide us with a good place to start. Value Sensitive Design builds on an
iterative methodology that integrates conceptual, empirical, and technical investigations; thus, as
a step toward conveying Value Sensitive Design, we describe each investigation separately.
Conceptual Investigations
Who are the direct and indirect stakeholders affected by the design at hand? How are both classes
of stakeholders affected? What values are implicated? How should we engage in trade-offs among
competing values in the design, implementation, and use of information systems (e.g., autonomy
vs. security, or anonymity vs. trust)? Should moral values (e.g., a right to privacy) have greater
weight than, or even trump, non-moral values (e.g., aesthetic preferences)? Value Sensitive Design
takes up these questions under the rubric of conceptual investigations.
In addition, careful working conceptualizations of specific values clarify fundamental issues
raised by the project at hand, and provide a basis for comparing results across research teams. For
example, in their analysis of trust in online system design, Friedman, Kahn, and Howe (2000),
drawing on Baier (1986), first offer a philosophically informed working conceptualization of
trust. They propose that people trust when they are vulnerable to harm from others, yet believe
those others would not harm them even though they could. In turn, trust depends on people's abil-
ity to make three types of assessments. One is about the harms they might incur. The second is
about the goodwill others possess toward them that would keep those others from doing them
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