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the area is both a direct stakeholder (i.e., through his or her direct use of the simulation to
evaluate proposed transportation plans) and an indirect stakeholder (i.e., by virtue of living
in the community for which the transportation plans will be implemented).
• An organizational power structure is often orthogonal to the distinction between direct and
indirect stakeholders. For example, there might be low-level employees who are either direct
or indirect stakeholders and who don't have control over using the system (e.g., workers on
an assembly line). Participatory design has contributed a substantial body of analysis to
these issues, as well as techniques for dealing with them, such as ways of equalizing power
among groups with unequal power. (See the references cited in “What Is a Value?” earlier in
this chapter.)
Identify Benefits and Harms for Each Stakeholder Group
Having identified the key stakeholders, systematically identify the benefits and harms for each
group. In doing so, we suggest attention to the following points:
• Indirect stakeholders will be benefited or harmed to varying degrees; and in some designs it
is probably possible to claim every human as an indirect stakeholder of some sort. Thus, one
rule of thumb in the conceptual investigation is to give priority to indirect stakeholders who
are strongly affected, or to large groups that are somewhat affected.
• Attend to issues of technical, cognitive, and physical competency. For example, children or
the elderly might have limited cognitive competency. In such a case, care must be taken to
ensure that their interests are represented in the design process, either by representatives
from the affected groups themselves or, if this is not possible, by advocates.
• Personas (Pruitt and Grudin, 2003) are a popular technique that can be useful for identifying
the benefits and harms to each stakeholder group. However, we note two caveats. First, per-
sonas have a tendency to lead to stereotypes because they require a list of “socially coherent”
attributes to be associated with the “imagined individual.” Second, although in the literature
each persona represents a different user group, in Value Sensitive Design (as noted above)
the same individual may be a member of more than one stakeholder group. Thus, in our prac-
tice, we have deviated from the typical use of personas that maps a single persona onto a sin-
gle user group, to allow for a single persona to map onto multiple stakeholder groups.
Map Benefits and Harms onto Corresponding Values
With a list of benefits and harms in hand, one is in a strong position to recognize corresponding
values. Sometimes the mapping is one of identity. For example, a harm that is characterized as
invasion of privacy maps onto the value of privacy. At other times the mapping is less direct, if not
multifaceted. For example, with the Room with a View study, it is possible that a direct stake-
holder's mood is improved when working in an office with an augmented window (as compared
with no window). Such a benefit potentially implicates not only the value of psychological wel-
fare, but also creativity, productivity, and physical welfare (health), assuming there is a causal link
between improved mood and these other factors.
In some cases, the corresponding values will be obvious, but not always. Table 16.1 in “Human
Values (with Ethical Import) Often Implicated in System Design,” later in this chapter, provides a
table of human values with ethical import often implicated in system design. This table may be
useful in suggesting values that should be considered in the investigation.
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