Introduction to values in Design

Specification:

PILLAR:

Ethics & Values

Design phase:

Value Theory

SOLO TAXONOMY LEVEL:

Multistructural

TIME:

Short

Summary

This teaching activity is an introductory lecture in which students gain knowledge about the role of values in design. They will briefly be introduced to some design approaches that consider values in design, and receive a more detailed introduction to the Value-Sensitive Design approach in particular.

BACKGROUND

While students are often introduced to different design approaches, such as Agile, User-Centered, Critical or Participatory Design, they often have the notion that design is value-neutral. This prohibits them from taking a reflective and active stance towards values in present and future design projects.

Furthermore, even if students recognise the role that values play in design, they usually lack the knowledge to think about this issue and identify possible approaches to address values during the design process. This lack of knowledge may make them fall short when being confronted with or working with values in design projects.

In this teaching activity, students gain knowledge about the role of values in design, and are briefly introduced to some other design approaches that take values into account. The Value-Sensitive Design approach is explained in more detail, specifying the three types of investigation commonly found in VSD: conceptual investigations, empirical investigations, and technological investigations.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

After the teaching activity students will be able to:

  • describe why values are important in design and what role they may play,
  • enumerate several approaches to addressing values in design (i.e. Values-Led Participatory Design, Value-Centered Design, Designing for Worth),
  • characterise Value-Sensitive Design with its three types of investigations as a specific approach to addressing values in design.

PREPARATIONS

  • Go through the slides provided and adapt them to fit the purpose of the specific course and lecture. For example, by providing examples of values in design that showcase the broad range of working with values in design within a certain domain, product, system or service.
  • Find a relevant text on values in design and/or value-sensitive design and ask students to read it ahead of the lecture. Take inspiration from the texts mentioned in the materials. Ask students to read the selected relevant text as preparation for the lecture.

TEACHING ACTIVITY

  1. Give an introductory lecture on values in design based on the adapted slides (see the slides provided under Materials).
  2. Ask the students to individually think and note down a couple of concrete examples of technologies within their field of study where they have come across values in design.
  3. Ask the students to individually identify and note down some of the implications of values in design in relation to their field, course or subject. For example, if students are in an AI course they can think of implications for society when it comes to AI, but if they are in an EdTech course they can think of implications of values in technologies for teachers and students.
  4. After some time, ask the students to get together in groups of 3-4 and share the examples and points between them.
  5. Distribute a link to a shared documentation tool (e.g. Padlet, Google Docs, Teams, Miro or similar) with the groups.
  6. Ask all groups to put the most important points or implications of values for design, design processes and for themselves as designers into the tool. The groups can also fill out a flipchart paper and hang them up side by side.
  7. Run through the document and highlight important points or implications for values in design in relation to the groups’ input in the document.

ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES

To assess whether the intended learning outcomes were attained by the teaching activity the following assessment activities can be carried out (in class or after class).

SUGGESTED ASSESSMENT ACTIVITIES

Assess students’ learning by asking them to create maps of their knowledge about values (summative assessment) focusing on a) mapping different approaches to addressing values in design (i.e. Values-Led Participatory Design, Value-Centered Design, Designing for Worth) and b) mapping the three types of investigations as a specific approach to addressing values in design.

Assess students’ learning by making them use their knowledge to co-create a round robin chart (formative assessment) with open-ended questions. Ask them to focus their questions around issues such as why values are important in design and what role they may play, the difference between different approaches to values in design (and their implications) or the different types of investigations one can take to address values in design in present and future design projects.

SUGGESTED ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

In the assessment activity ask students to focus on:

  • explaining why values are important in design and what role they may play,
  • giving examples of several approaches to addressing values in design,
  • describing Value-Sensitive Design, its interactional stance and the three types of investigations it entails.

References

SUGGESTED READING FOR STUDENTS

Friedman, Batya: Kahn Jr, Peter H.; and Borning, Alan (2009). Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems. In Himma and Tavani (Eds), The Handbook of Information and Computer Ethics. Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley & Sons, Inc. http://doi:10.1002/9780470281819.ch4

REFERENCES IN MATERIALS

Cockton, Gilberti (2004). Value-centred HCI. In Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction (pp. 149-160). Tampere, Finland: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/1028014.1028038

Friedman, Batya & Hendry, David (2019). Value sensitive design: shaping technology with moral imagination. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Winner, Langdon (1980). Do artifacts have Politics?. In Daedalus, 109(1), Winter 1980. Reprinted in The Social Shaping of Technology. D. A. MacKenzie and J. Wajcman (Eds.) London: Open University Press.

Zollman, Dan (2019). Presentation: How Do I Know If I’m Doing Good? Practicing Ethical Design in a World of Systemic Complexity. Retrieved 2021 April 14 from http://danzollman.com/presentation-how-do-i-know-if-im-doing-good-practicing-ethical-design-in-a-world-of-systemic-complexity

Links:

Materials:

Suggested Assessment Activities: