Value Sensitive Design: Charting the Next Decade

Human values, such as autonomy, sustainability and privacy, play an important role in the design of technology. Designers’ values affect the way they design technology, and technology, in turn, affects the values of its direct and indirect stakeholders. The increased interconnectedness of technology in our urban and rural communities creates new challenges. First, computing and information systems are increasingly embedded in society, with the possibility of a fairly near-term realization of smart cities, the Internet of Things, unified data sets, and the vision of Ubiquitous Computing. This means that design methods need to take into account a wide range of stakeholders and their diverse values. Simply put, in addition to considering individual values, technologists need to consider societal values. Second, there is a growing need to consider interaction with technology over time and context, rather than focusing on the immediate effects of a design. This requires new techniques for envisioning alternatives and future uses of technology.

Value sensitive design, under development for almost two decades, offers a theoretical and methodological framework for addressing these and related challenges. Seeking to deepen and extend value sensitive design, this workshop will bring together researchers from artificial intelligence, computer science, ethics, human-centered computing, law, philosophy, and the social sciences. Workshop participants will discuss and reflect on their experiences using value sensitive design and chart the next decade of its development and its diffusion to new application areas.