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Value Sensitive Design: New Directions and Applications

The center is closed, and the website is therefore no longer being updated.

Alan Borning
https://www.cs.washington.edu/people/faculty/borning

University of Washington
Seattle, USA

Value sensitive design is a theoretically grounded approach to the design of technology that accounts for human values in a principled and systematic manner throughout the design process.  It has been under active development and use since the 1990s, led by Professor Batya Friedman at the University of Washington, along with a wide range of other researchers.  The first part of the talk will be a description of the value sensitive design theory and methodology, and of some open problems and critiques, as well as some ideas on its applicability to issues of technologies and (dis)empowerment.  Next will be an outline of a recent project: SEED (Solutions for Environment, Economy and Democracy), and an exploration of applying value sensitive design and related approaches to the very different kind of design problem presented by SEED, namely that of building a network of scholar/activists, advocates and practitioners to address pressing global issues.