Purpose. This activity will give you experience thinking through the wider consequences of design decisions, using the framework of value-sensitive design.

Tasks

VSD provides four dimensions (or criteria) with associated prompts: stakeholders (identifying the people directly or indirectly impacted); time (thinking through short, medium, and long-term effects); pervasiveness (imagining what might happen if the design is broadly adopted); and values (evaluating in terms of common values such as autonomy, community, inclusion and fairness).

For each of the four dimensions, read through all the prompts, and consider how they might apply to your project with respect to its goals (as formulated in the problem statement) and its proposed features. Think about not only the negative consequences that might arise but also how the opportunities to have positive impact.

Record your insights as a list of points each comprising: (a) an observation that explicitly refers to the relevant criterion, prompt, and features; and (b) a design response, which might involve removing, limiting, adjusting, extending a feature, or even adding a new one. Aim to have at least five insights that are explained in 30-75 words each.

Rubric

Part Description (what good work looks like) Common Failures (examples of falling short)
VSD analysis A crisp and thoughtful analysis that uncovers non-obvious issues in your problem or features, and that includes several well-considered and/or creative design modifications. A shallow analysis that yields insights that are relatively trivial or misses larger, more important issues. Design modifications are minor and routine.

Advice

  • VSD analysis. When applying the VSD prompts, always try and think not only about bad consequences of your design but good ones too. What value might your app bring beyond serving the needs of individual users? Consider whether the design responses that you identify (eg.removing, limiting, adjusting, extending a feature), can also create more overall value for everyone (think curb-cut effect).

  • Read around, and do your research. Conducting a good VSD analysis will require more than just thinking really hard about the criteria and prompt. Augment your thinking by doing some research around the prompt. For instance, are there news articles (e.g., on The Verge, TechCrunch, TechMeme, or the tech columns of the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal) that are relevant to your problem domain?