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for fostering openness and accountability are also intended to support credibility. These include
using open-source software (releasing the source code along with the executable), writing the code
in as clear and understandable a fashion as possible, using a rigorous and extensive testing method-
ology, and complementing the open-source software with an open process that makes the state of
our development visible to anyone interested. For example, in our laboratory, a battery of tests is run
whenever a new version of the software is committed to the source code repository. A traffic light
(a real one) is activated by the testing regime—green means that the system has passed all tests, yel-
low means testing is under way, and red means that a test has failed. There is also a virtual traffic
light, mirroring the physical one, visible on the Web (www.urbansim.org/fireman). Similarly, the
bug reports, feature requests, and plans are all on the UrbanSim project Web site as well. Details of
this open process approach may be found in Freeman-Benson and Borning (2003).
Thus, in summary, Borning et al. are using Value Sensitive Design to investigate how a tech-
nology—an integrated land use, transportation, and environmental computer simulation—affects
human values on both the individual and organizational levels; and how human values can con-
tinue to drive the technical investigations, including refining the simulation, data, and interaction
model. Finally, employing Value Sensitive Design in a project of this scope serves to validate its
use for complex, large-scale systems.
VALUE SENSITIVE DESIGN'S CONSTELLATION OF FEATURES
Value Sensitive Design shares and adopts many interests and techniques from related approaches to
values and system design—computer ethics, social informatics, CSCW, and participatory design—as
discussed in “Related Approaches to Values and System Design,” earlier in this chapter. However,
Value Sensitive Design itself brings forward a unique constellation of eight features.
First, Value Sensitive Design seeks to be proactive: to influence the design of technology early
in and throughout the design process.
Second, Value Sensitive Design enlarges the arena in which values arise to include not only the
workplace (as traditionally in the field of CSCW), but also education, the home, commerce, online
communities, and public life.
Third, Value Sensitive Design contributes a unique methodology that employs conceptual,
empirical, and technical investigations, applied iteratively and integratively (see “The Tripartite
Methodology: Conceptual, Empirical, and Technical Investigations,” earlier in this chapter).
Fourth, Value Sensitive Design enlarges the scope of human values beyond those of coopera-
tion (CSCW) and participation and democracy (Participatory Design) to include all values, espe-
cially those with moral import. By moral, we refer to issues that pertain to fairness, justice, human
welfare, and virtue, encompassing within moral philosophical theory deontology (Dworkin,
1978; Gewirth, 1978; Kant, 1785/1964; Rawls, 1971); consequentialism (Smart and Williams,
1973); see Scheffler (1982) for an analysis; and virtue (Foot, 1978; MacIntyre, 1984; Campbell
and Christopher, 1996). Value Sensitive Design also accounts for conventions (e.g., standardiza-
tion of protocols) and personal values (e.g., color preferences within a graphical user interface).
Fifth, Value Sensitive Design distinguishes between usability and human values with ethical
import. Usability refers to characteristics of a system that make it work in a functional sense,
including that it is easy to use, easy to learn, consistent, and recovers easily from errors (Adler and
Winograd, 1992; Norman, 1988; Nielsen, 1993). However, not all highly usable systems support
ethical values. Nielsen (1993), for example, asks us to imagine a computer system that checks for
fraudulent unemployment benefit applications by asking applicants numerous personal questions
and then checking for inconsistencies in their responses. Nielsen's point is that even if the system
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