Values in Technology Design

Stanford University: Terry Winograd, CS47N, 2011

Technologies

A technology is any kind of human creation that plays a role in human lives. This is broad enough to include the wheel, face paint, and organized religion. We will be focusing on computer-based technologies. It is important not to see them in isolation, but as part of a larger system.

Example: Consider the iPod as a technology. Taken directly, it is a music storage and playing device which has innovative hardware for play control, and a beautiful industrial design that makes it attractive to a wide audience. Taken one step more broadly, the technology is not the iPod alone, but the combination of the iPod, iTunes and the Internet that makes possible online music finding and downloading.

Take Apple. I love Apple, always have, but please don't tell me that the iPod is a new product. Every piece of the product already existed and was sourced elsewhere by Apple. The true innovation was the iTunes business model, which was considered absolutely nuts by competitors and analysts. It was nuts, until it changed the way we all behave.
     - Tom Koulopoulos, iTunes shows innovation is about imagination, not dollars May 14, 2008

More broadly, the technology of iPod also includes all of the music sharing and music review sites on the Internet, since these are part of the technological ecology in which music gets chosen and played on the iPod.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are the people who are affected by a technology. There are direct stakeholders (e.g., the people who actually use the technology) and indirect stakeholders.

Example: The direct stakeholders in iPod/iTunes obviously include the music lovers who use it, and Apple who makes money from it. But there are also the artists, orchestras, music publishers, and others involved in creating the music. There are also the people involved in alternative technologies, such as CD manufacturers, "record" stores, and audio cassette players. Going further, since iPods are used for podcasts of all sorts of material, there are radio stations, book authors, and even professors, universities, and students (see http://itunes.stanford.edu/ )

It is impossible to anticipate all the ways in which a technology will be used, and all the stakeholders who will be affected. But it is often possible to see much of the potential, both positive and negative, and to think about it in doing design.

Values

In the end, when we say that stakeholders are affected, we mean that there is an impact on things they value. It may be obvious (you value listening to music, Apple values money for its stockholders), but there are often less visible values that are affected.

Example: If we look at the musicians, there are multiple values at stake. One is obviously the financial gain they get from their music. Another (not always aligned with it) is their fame and recognition. Free distribution of music can increase fame at the expense of income. The uniform pricing of iTunes music has an effect as well.

Conflicts

If every issue in the world were win-win, then design would be easy. But most often, values will be in conflict. In designing a technology, you may be privileging some values over others - some stakeholders over others. Or maybe you can find solutions that reduce the conflict.

Example: Students want to hear music and don't want to pay money (a value of thrift). Music producers want to make money (a basic capitalist value). Some technologies (e.g., file sharing) favor the students, while others (e.g., digital rights management) favor the producers. Some are less clear. For example one of the key values for a performing group is public exposure, which contributes to their financial future in ways beyond the immediate payback. How do different on-line music technologies help or hinder these values?

Value sensitive design

The basic idea of value sensitive design is to explicitly include a broad view of these considerations in the steps of creating a new technology. Often this goes beyond the scope of the "client" - whoever is paying for the design - to include indirect stakeholders and values.

Example: Putting a Global Positioning (GPS) unit in phones enables users to get information based on their location, including maps, local search etc. But it also has the potential to allow institutions (e.g., government) to track there whereabouts whenever they are carrying the phone. What aspects of the phone design will affect conflicts between interests of convenience and privacy?