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  This section showcases exemplary efforts that explictly invoke values in the design and analysis of technology, serving as a resource for research, practice and pedagogy.

Programs                             Projects

Programs:

  • Values-Sensitive Design, University of Washington.
    • Value-Sensitive Design refers to an approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process. Primarily concerned with values that center on human well being, human dignity, justice, welfare, and human rights, VSD connects the people who design systems w' those who think about & understand the values of the stakeholders affected. Ultimately, VSD requires that we broaden the criteria for judging technological systems to include those that advance human values.

  • Design For Values, Harvard University.
    • Technologies have politics... they include some participants and can exclude others; they enable certain social economic and political potentials, and discourage others. Yet all too often, technical systems are seen as immutable realities, part of some idea of Progress, or an aspect of the env. to which we must adapt our policies, ethics and lives...

  • Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
    • CPSR is a public-interest alliance of computer scientists and others concerned ith the impact of computer technology on society. We work to influence decisions regarding the development and use of computers because those decisions have far-reaching consequences and reflect our basic values and priorities. As technical experts, CPSR members provide the public and policymakers with realistic assessments of the power, promise, and limitations of computer technology. As concerned citizens, we direct public attention to critical choices concerning the applications of computing and how those choices affect society.

  • Democracy Design Workshop, New York University Law School.
    • The Democracy Design Workshop is a laboratory dedicated to fostering innovation in support of participatory and deliberative practice. The Workshop, like its affiliated project, the Institute for Information Law and Policy at NYLS, is, above all, a "do tank," where thinkers & practitioners come together to innovate, harnessing the new tools of information & communications visualization to the goals of collaborative governance and justice.

  • Ross Anderson/the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge.
    • Ross Anderson is a leading researcher in security engineering and a Reader in Security Engineering at Cambridge University. He is widely recognised as one of the world's leading computer security experts. He is an outspoken critic of the Trusted Computing Platform Alliance, including Microsoft's plans for the Palladium operating system.

  • iPerCS at UCLA.
    • Pervasive Computing (PerC) is what happens when the Internet gets physical. The three trends of ubiquity, embeddedness, and animation will converge to create a remarkable new computing atmosphere that raises extraordinary possibilities and dangers. iPerCS is the Institute of Pervasive Computing and Society--an interdisciplinary initative at UCLA to examine the social, ethical, and legal issues surrounding the emergent technology of pervasive computing.

  • DIRC at Edinburgh, Newcastle, Lancaster, York, & City Universities.
    • The Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration in Dependability aims to address the dependability of computer-based systems. Dependability is a deliberately broad term to encompass many facets including reliability, security & availability. The term "computer-based systems" highlights the involvement of human participants. The interdisciplinary approach includes, for example, sociologists & psychologists as well as computer scientists & statisticians. This project is funded by the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

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Projects:

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Value Sensitive Design (VSD)
Description
Value-Sensitive Design refers to an approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner throughout the design process.

Value-Sensitive Design is primarily concerned with values that center on human well being, human dignity, justice, welfare, and human rights. Value-Sensitive Design connects the people who design systems and interfaces with the people who think about and understand the values of the stakeholders who are affected by the systems. Ultimately, Value-Sensitive Design requires that we broaden the goals and criteria for judging the quality of technological systems to include those that advance human values.

--Quoted from VSD home page: http://www.ischool.washington.edu/vsd

Democracy Design Workshop
Description
The Democracy Design Workshop is a laboratory dedicated to fostering innovation in support of participatory and deliberative practice. The Workshop, like its affiliated project, the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School, is, above all, a "do tank," where thinkers and practitioners come together to innovate, harnessing the new tools of information and communications visualization to the goals of collaborative governance and justice. The Workshop is a meetinghouse for those from a variety of disciplines interested in exploring through research, dialogue and cutting-edge design how to use technology to strengthen democracy on-line and off.

For more info please see: http://www.nyls.edu/democracy and http://www.nyls.edu/infolaw

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility
Description
CPSR is a public-interest alliance of computer scientists and others concerned about the impact of computer technology on society. We work to influence decisions regarding the development and use of computers because those decisions have far-reaching consequences and reflect our basic values and priorities. As technical experts, CPSR members provide the public and policymakers with realistic assessments of the power, promise, and limitations of computer technology. As concerned citizens, we direct public attention to critical choices concerning the applications of computing and how those choices affect society.

Every project we undertake is based on five principles:
  • We foster and support public discussion of, and public responsibility for decisions involving the use of computers in systems critical to society.
  • We work to dispel popular myths about the infallibility of technological systems.
  • We challenge the assumption that technology alone can solve political and social problems.
  • We critically examine social and technical issues within the computer profession, both nationally and internationally.
  • We encourage the use of information technology to improve the quality of life.
See the CPSR homepage for more info.

Design For Values (DFV)
Description
Technologies have politics. They make some things easier, and some things harder; they include some participants and can exclude others; they enable certain social economic and political potentials, and discourage others. Yet all too often, technical systems are seen as immutable realities, part of some idea of Progress, or an aspect of the environment to which we must adapt our policies, ethics and lives.

The solution, then, is to design technologies that respect the human values of society. While not a revolutionary concept, its wide-spread acceptance grows more critical as information technology systems pervade every aspect of our lives. This community exists to advance the ideas of improving technology and the lives of its users by integrating consideration of a range of values into the conceptualization and implementation of Information Technologies.

--Quoted from DFV info page: http://www.designforvalues.org/about.htm

Search Engines: Shaping the Web
Description
This research by Introna and Nissenbaum, employs a 'Values-in-Design' approach to argue that search engines raise not merely technical issues but also political ones.This study suggests that search engines may systematically exclude (in some cases by design and in some accidentally) certain sites, and certain types of sites, in favor of others, as well as giving prominence to some at the expense of others.

The paper concludes that such biases, which lead to a narrowing of the Web’s functioning in society, run counter to the basic architecture of the Web as well as the values and ideals that have fueled widespread support for its growth and development.

This unique approach to addressing the politics of search engines, raises serious doubts as to whether, in particular, market mechanisms can serve as acceptable correctives for such situtations. The full text of this article is available in .pdf format here.

Mozilla/Informed Consent
Description
Informed consent provides a critical protection for privacy, and supports other human values such as autonomy and trust. In this project we developed a conceptual model, criteria, and design principles for informed consent to be applied to online interactions. We then conducted an analysis of informed consent with respect to cookies and browser behavior, finding that, in brief, while cookies were initially employed simply to provide a way for users to easily re-visit sites.

In subsequent years, however, cookies have been used in ways that substantively invade users' privacy. For example, cookies have been used by third party Web sites to create user profiles without the users' knowledge, and to track users' online activities across Web sites and visits. These and many other concerns have garnered national attention.

Our analyses leads us to conclude that while cookie technology has improved over time regarding informed consent. To address these we we have drawn on our model, criteria, and design principles to redesign the browser Mozilla (the open-source code for Netscape Navigator) to better support informed consent in online interactions. Our modifications will be made available to the Mozilla community and, we hope, incorporated into future releases of Mozilla.

Full text of the paper can be found in (PDF) here.

Portia: Sensitive Information in a Wired World
Description
Increasing use of computers and networks in business, government, recreation, and almost all aspects of daily life has led to a proliferation of online sensitive data, i.e., data that, if used improperly, can harm the data subjects. As a result, concern about the ownership, control, privacy, and accuracy of these data has become a top priority. This project focuses on both the technical challenges of handling sensitive data and the policy and legal issues facing data subjects, data owners, and data users.

Further description of the project can be found at the PORTIA Project Home Page,
NYU PORTIA sponsored projects, Press release (Sept. 2003) can be found here.

Netomat
Description

Netomat is a commercial software project that introduces two-way personal multimedia communication.

  • Create and send personal multimedia emails using unlimited digital pictures, audio, voice, free-form drawing, text and animation which are bandwidth friendly and don't require large attachments.
  • Create personal multimedia websites which can be published at the push of a button.
  • Turn these emails and websites into personal multimedia blogs by making it easy to embed tools so the recipients/viewers can annotate, respond and forward.
  • Instantly update or change any component of these interactive emails, websites and blogs - even after they have been emailed or published.

Robotic Pets

 
Description

Interaction with animals has been shown to increase children's physiological health, social competence, and learning opportunities (Beck & Katcher, 1996; Kahn, 1999; Melson, 2001; Myers, 1998.)

In turn, there has been a movement to create technological substitutes for pets, such as the Tamagotchi, Furby, Tama, and AIBO. As this technology becomes more sophisticated and pervasive, its impact on children's lives will increase.

But how, exactly, do robot pets impact children's cognitive, social, and moral development? In this study, we investigate these and other related questions.

--Quoted from RoboPets home page: http://www.ischool.washington.edu/robotpets/children/

UrbanSim

 
Description
UrbanSim is a software-based simulation model for integrated planning and analysis of urban development, incorporating the interactions between land use, transportation, and public policy. It is intended for use by Metropolitan Planning Organizations and others needing to interface existing travel models with new land use forecasting and analysis capabilities.

The UrbanSim software, including full source code, is available for download via this website. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License, which means it is free, open source, and any derived works are also covered under the license. The intent of this licensing approach is to avoid proprietary obstacles and costs, and to facilitate collaboration between researchers and practitioners in improving land use and transportation planning and policy.

--Quoted from UrbanSim home page: http://www.urbansim.org

Rapunsel

 
Description
The Rapunsel Project is an NSF-funded research program attempting to build a successful software environment for realtime, applied programming for underrepresented students' early literacy (RAPUNSEL) in order to address the critical shortage of women in Computer Science (CS) careers and degree programs.
    Fewer girls than boys enroll in CS related programs, feel self-confident with computers, and use computers outside the classroom. Much research ties this shortage to problems at the middle school age, and both women and girls report a lack of confidence in their computer skills.
    The goal of this program to develop an engaging, socially-oriented, online system with which to teach computer programming to middle school girls.

--For more information visit the RAPUNSEL homepage.

Trusted Computing
Description
The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is an alliance of Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD which promotes a standard for a `more secure' PC. Their definition of `security' is controversial; machines built according to their specification will be more trustworthy from the point of view of software vendors and the content industry, but will be less trustworthy from the point of view of their owners. In effect, the TCG specification will transfer the ultimate control of your PC from you to whoever wrote the software it happens to be running. (Yes, even more so than at present.)

The TCG project is known by a number of names. `Trusted computing' was the original one, and is still used by IBM, while Microsoft calls it `trustworthy computing' and the Free Software Foundation calls it `treacherous computing'. Hereafter I'll just call it TC, which you can pronounce according to taste. Other names you may see include TCPA (TCG's name before it incorporated), Palladium (the old Microsoft name for the version due to ship in 2004) and NGSCB (the new Microsoft name). Intel has just started calling it `safer computing'. Many observers believe that this confusion is deliberate - the promoters want to deflect attention from what TC actually does...

--Quoted from Ross Anderson's Trusted Computing FAQ.

The Newcastle Security Project
Description
The Newcastle Security Project(NSP), is researching electronic voting within the security strand DIRC project. A primary focus is trying to understand the socio-technical systems that surround technical e-voting systems, and in particular to produce a dependability analysis of such systems. This work is ongoing with colleagues at City University, London

--More information available here.

The Josie True Project
Description
The Adventures of Josie True is an online web adventure game designed to help girls gain confidence in science and mathematics at the 5th grade level. How could software increase girls' confidence and possibly performance in these curricular areas, especially when games are primarily attractive to young boys? The project, supported by the National Science Foundation, engages with political and social issues in part by incorporating girls' preferences and research into in software design.

--For more information see Mary Flanagan's Josie True page.

Understanding "Code": How Information Technologies Regulate Behavior
Description
This NSF-funded project investigates protocols and mechanisms (e.g., "cookies," "finger" commands, the design of message headers), which have the ability to affect experiences in online environments and to regulate behavior. A series of historical case studies will be conducted to understand how the use of these mechanisms can have social consequences. These case studies will encompass the historical development of the Internet as well as the ways in which social values such as free speech, privacy, and intellectual property rights have intersected these developments. The results of these case studies will allow a better understanding of the processes that build norms, customs, and consensus in online environments. For more information see the project abstract.

--For more information see the project abstract.

 

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