MIT Media Lab Colloquium series

Batya Friedman
University of Washington

Cultivating Moral and Technical Imagination:
A Toolkit to Design for Human Values in Information Systems

Monday May 5, 2008
Wiesner Room (2nd floor)
4:00-5:30 pm

abstract: Tool use is a fundamental part of the human condition. In turn, our tools shape how we experience and interact with the world - what Winograd and Flores refer to as "our ways of being." Arguably, in the 21st century information tools more than any other type have the potential to transform human experience, including what we value most as human beings. At stake is nothing less than what it means to trust, live with dignity, engage in public life, and experience privacy and intimacy. Those who design information systems have much to contribute here.

In our work in the Value Sensitive Design Research Lab we have been engaging these and related questions for close to two decades. My goal with this talk is to share key aspects of the Value Sensitive Design approach, methods, and design tools. First, I will discuss the interaction among information systems, adaptation, and human values through three projects involving privacy: one about users' views and values about privacy in public both in the United States and in Sweden; one on the design of a groupware system to balance privacy, reputation, and awareness; and one on the development of an open source license to provide privacy protections. My discussion will highlight value sensitive design methods that involve indirect stakeholder analyses, value dams and flows, co-evolution of technology and organizational policy, and the integration of informed consent and threat models. In the second part of the talk, I will turn to the challenge of envisioning longer-term implications for human values in the design of future systems. I will briefly describe the Envisioning Cards toolkit for use in design research, practice and education, and a new research agenda that engages multi-lifespan information system design.

bio: Batya Friedman is a Professor in the Information School and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington where she directs the Value Sensitive Design Research Lab. She received both her BA (1979) and Ph.D. (1988) from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Friedman's research interests include human-computer interaction, especially human values in design, social and cultural aspects of information systems, and design methodology. Her 1997 edited volume (Cambridge University Press) is titled Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology. Her work on Value Sensitive Design has focused on the values of informed consent, privacy in public, trust, freedom from bias, moral agency, environmental sustainability, and human dignity; and engaged such technologies as web browsers, large-screen displays, urban simulation, robotics, open-source code bases, and location-enhanced computing. She is currently working on value sensitive tools for envisioning and multi-lifespan HCI.