Keynote Value-Sensitive Design: Case parental controls and tracking technologies

Being a Value-Sensitive Design Critic

Prof. Bieke Zaman@biekezaman

Inforte.fiUniversity of Oulu, Finland

November 2015

Value-Oriented Design: Why?

Why?

• Because…• it is not only instructive to question how technology is shaping the

way we behave, think, interact and socialize, • but also how we are shaping technologies

Technologies and design choices are not value free

Why values matter

“We have noticed a shift in the body of HCI work from a focus on the context of use to the context of impact” Cockton (2006), while pointing to the key role of engaging with values in HCI to achieve this shift

• Values have the power to change• Shaping decision making• Guiding our behaviour• Affecting the judged importance

Value-Oriented Design: The Challenges

Engaging with values? A paradigmatic discussionVarious strands of engaging with values in HCI1. Value-Sensitive Design (Friedman and colleagues)2. Worth-centered Design (Cockton and colleagues) 3. Values-led Participatory Design (Iversen and colleagues)4. …

What are values? A conceptual discussion

Challenge 1 “Values to who?”• User value? End user values? • Designer values?• Organizational values? • Cultural values?


Challenge 2 “How and when do values emerge?”• Is it something that a company can impose to a product (cf. strategic

management and the notion of a value chain)• Is it something created by the user after the product has been launched

(e.g., consumer research experiences)• Is it something you can design or only design for (and to which extent is it

concerned with production and consumption & aligned with multi stakeholder concerns)


Challenge 3 “How to identify, recognize and understand values?”• Quantifiable? E.g., profits or economic revenues as an

indicator of (economic) values• Interpretable? User values: an (anticipation/ reflection

upon) an interaction between user and product • Designable? How to recognize /understand values in

designs?


Challenge 4 “How to design and negotiate values?”• How to ‘translate’ something abstract in something tangible?• Who to negotiate with? • How to deal with value conflicts / tensions, i.e. when one

value undermines another (cf. security vs privacy)?• When creating something that has no precedent, how to

anticipate upon values and how to know whose to be involved? • How to anticipate the consequences of design choices, e.g.

in judging alternatives?

Engaging with values? Methodological Issues• Tapping into the unconscious? E.g.,

Laddering, projective techniques• How to ‘solve’ value tensions, e.g. Value

dams, value flows• Power issues, e.g., who is heard, when,

and how• Theoretical notions shaping our analytical

lens, e.g., child as active agent

Zaman, B., & Vanden Abeele, V. (2010). Laddering with Young Children in User eXperience Evaluations: Theoretical Groundings and a Practical Case. In Interaction Design and Children. Barcelona: ACM Press.Zaman, B., & Jafarinaimi, N. (2015). A Value Sensitive Design Case Study: Why Values Do (not) Design. Charting the next decade of Value Sensitive Design Workshop, Aarhus Conference.

Engaging with values? Communicative issues• Summarizing and

categorizing versus focusing on in-depth, contextual insights• Communication tools:

value inventories, personas, stories

Zaman, B., & Vanden Abeele, V. (2010). Laddering with Young Children in User eXperience Evaluations: Theoretical Groundings and a Practical Case. In Interaction Design and Children. Barcelona: ACM Press.Zaman, B., & Jafarinaimi, N. (2015). A Value Sensitive Design Case Study: Why Values Do (not) Design. Charting the next decade of Value Sensitive Design Workshop, Aarhus Conference.

The problem? Understanding the difficulty

• Engaging with values in design: a problem of practice• Values-oriented practitioners regularly encounter the empirical

fact that a given value may be both desirable and non desirable when unfolding in the situated product interaction• What can values-oriented practitioners then rely on if values are

sometimes appropriate and sometimes problematic?• Even when we know the values, how do we design for them?

• Problem of the Identify / Apply logic• Values do not serve as fixed, pre-established formulas

Zaman, B., & Jafarinaimi, N. (2015). A Value Sensitive Design Case Study: Why Values Do (not) Design. Charting the next decade of Value Sensitive Design Workshop, Aarhus Conference. Jafarinaimi, N., Nathan, L.P., & Hargraves, I. (2015). Values as Hypotheses: Design, Inquiry, and the Service of Values. Design Issues 31(4), pp. 91-‐104.

The solution? A Reorientation

• Rather than focusing on what values are, focusing on what values do• A question of how values serve in action• Values as hypotheses • = a lens to look at , Is a way to understand / making sense of

the situation• = a lens to / Is a way to judge the action that the situation

demands (what needs to be done?)• But, values do not designZaman, B., & Jafarinaimi, N. (2015). A Value Sensitive Design Case Study: Why Values Do (not) Design. Charting the next decade of Value Sensitive Design Workshop, Aarhus Conference. Jafarinaimi, N., Nathan, L.P., & Hargraves, I. (2015). Values as Hypotheses: Design, Inquiry, and the Service of Values. Design Issues 31(4), pp. 91-‐104.

Putting things into perspective

1. An understanding of values, then, is something that emerges along a discovery in context, that is not to be separated from the action in which values unfold, accounting for the interwoveness of values and design

2. The usefulness of any conceptualization of values depends upon its success in the exploratory and explanatory endeavor in which they are deployed.

3. Engaging with values beyond a success or failure model – not just asking whether we applied the right value or whether the design met the value target

Value-Oriented Design: Designing for families with children/teenagers

Case study: parental controls & tracking technologies

A means to which / an end?

Expectancy Value Theory (EVT) and Means-End Chain (MEC) theory

“People choose a product because it contains attributes (A) that are instrumental to achieving desired consequences (C) and fulfilling values (V) ”

• Which characteristics are at stake for tracking technologies? (A)• Why would people use it? (C, V)

Zaman, B., Geurden, K., De Cock, R., De Schutter, B., Vanden Abeele, V. (2014). Motivation Profiles of Online Poker Players and the Role of Interface Preferences: A Laddering Study among Amateur and (Semi-‐) Professionals. Computers in Human Behavior, 39, 154-‐164.

Looking through the lens of children

• What gratifications do they seek?• Example young children’s media

gratifications at home

Vanden Abeele, V., & Zaman, B. (2008). The Extended Likeability Framework: A Theoretical Framework for and a Practical Case of Designing Likeable Media Applications for Preschoolers. Advances in Human-‐Computer Interaction, 2008, 1–12. http://doi.org/10.1155/2008/719291

Looking through the lens of children

• How are they affected by their parents’ use of tracking technologies?• Example technical solutions for secure

and private parent-teen mobile safety

Czeskis, A., Dermendjieva, I., Yapit, H., Borning, A., Friedman, B., Gill, B., & Kohno, T. (2010). Parenting from the pocket: value tensions and technical directions for secure and private parent-‐teen mobile safety (pp. 1–15). ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/1837110.1837130

Looking through the lens of adults

• What are they concerned with?• Provider of parental controls

• E.g., media company, corporate values• Consumer of parental controls

• E.g., parents, parental values

Nouwen, M., Van Mechelen, M., & Zaman, B. (2015). A Value Sensitive Design Approach to Parental Software for Young Children. In Proc. IDC 2015 (pp. 363–366). Boston, MA, USA: ACM Press.


• Who is responsible?• Parents or even the parents of the

friends of your child• Considering direct and indirect

stakeholders

Czeskis, A., Dermendjieva, I., Yapit, H., Borning, A., Friedman, B., Gill, B., & Kohno, T. (2010). Parenting from the pocket: value tensions and technical directions for secure and private parent-‐teen mobile safety (pp. 1–15). ACM Press. http://doi.org/10.1145/1837110.1837130


• Who is responsible?• Companies

http://ec.europa.eu/digital-‐agenda/en/news/better-‐internet-‐kids-‐ceo-‐coalition-‐1-‐year


• Who is responsible?• Third parties: e.g., child welfare NGOs, freedom of speech advocates etc.• Researchers/designers

• Example, Interaction Design & Children (IDC) researchers and designers • When discussing the motivations for their designs and investigations, they “reveal which

qualities and behaviors of children they aspire to support as a community” Yarosh et al. (2011, p. 138)

• Common aspirations: • Social interaction• Connectedness (e.g., increased attention to support family connectedness)• Other: learning, expression & being creative, digital and physical play, personal growth

Yarosh, S., Radu, I., Hunter, S., & Rosenbaum, E. (2011). Examining values: an analysis of nine years of IDC research. Proceedings IDC 2011, pp. 136-‐144.


• What do parents/ caregivers do? • Cf. values guiding behaviour• Example parental mediation styles of

young children’s digital media use at home

Parental Mediation Styles

Restrictive Mediation(time, content, purchases, device, location)

Distant Mediation (e.g., supervision)

Active Mediation

Collaborative Play

Participatory Learning

Zaman, B., Nouwen, M., Vanattenhoven, J., de Ferrerre, E., Van Looy, J. (2016). A Qualitative Inquiry into the Contextualized Parental Mediation Practices of Young Children’s Digital Media Use at Home. Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media.

Looking through the lens of technology

• What does it afford? • Example parental controls

Parental Controls: functionalitiesTime RestrictionsContent RestrictionsActivity Restrictions:- Economic- Social- EntertainmentMonitoring & Tracking

Looking through the lens of technology

• What should these parental controls afford? • Example tracking technologies

Can you do it better? Become a Value-Sensitive Design Critic yourself

http://inforte.jyu.fi/events/value_sensitive_design

Questions?

@biekezaman

Keynote Value-Sensitive Design: Case parental controls and tracking technologies

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