In‐Action Value
Framework– Participatory
Design with Values
Eva Eriksson
Published on: May 29, 2020
Updated on: Jun 02, 2020
In‐Action Value Framework– Participatory Design with
Values
By Eva Eriksson, Daisy Yoo and Elisabet M. Nilsson
Aarhus University, Denmark & Malmö University, Sweden Contact: evae@cc.au.dk
Similar to the In‐Action Ethics framework (Frauenberger et al, 2017), we hereby call for an In‐Action Value framework that we can draw on as educators, researchers and practitioners within participatory design. While the In‐Action Ethics framework links anticipatory ethics with the practice of HCI
research, an In‐ Action Value framework would complement more formal approaches that professional organizations develop, e.g. standards and codes of conduct (ACM, 2018; IEEE, 2019a; IEEE, 2019b; ISO, 2019), with a responsible participatory design practice. An In‐Action Value framework could help to conceptualize skillful practice and cultivate a community of practice. Also, in order to support educators of the next generation of practitioners and researchers within participatory design to not only be sensitive to values, but also to dare handling uncomfortable value conflicts, this In‐Action Value framework could be structured around illustrative examples of progression in participatory design with values.
The importance of responsible innovation in technical education has grown, raising a number of concerns related to the human‐technology relationship, and will hopefully lead to technology that leads to greater justice, more human dignity and well‐being, and better odds for human survival, also over time, and in times of pandemic and climate emergency. This means that we, who bear the responsibility to educate and inspire future designers and researchers, have an enormous
responsibility on our shoulders. How can values in design be considered as cool to practice, teach and learn such as e.g. design thinking or programming? In addition, how can we inspire and train the future generation to handle uncomfortable value tensions in PD?
We see a new tendency of value shift in many professional organizations, that they currently develop standards based on ethically‐aligned design which seeks to prioritize human well‐being over
engineering and economic values (IEEE Standards Association, 2019a; IEEE Standards Association, 2019b), and where peoples values have been prioritized over technical aspects (ISO/TC173, 2019). Simultaneously, with the impact of emergent technologies such as artificial intelligence and human‐ robot interaction on society, we see a shift in technical educations, where societal and ethical questions become part of the curriculum (Grosz et al, 2019; Frauenberger & Purgathofer, 2019). We also note that
identifying ethical and social dilemmas is becoming a part of explicit learning goals in a growing number of courses in Scandinavian universities.
As educators responsible for the next generation of socio‐technical designers and researchers, our overarching goal must be to make sure that, our students become caring, daring and responsible designers of the future society in a holistic and grounded manner. This means to not only focus on developing conceptual knowledge about values and ethics and gaining practical skills to design in a value‐sensitive way, but more importantly, on becoming a reflective and responsible designer ready to act also in uncomfortable situations. To do that, we need to further structure how a practice and understanding of values develops from a simple to a more complex level. This raises questions on curriculum design and pedagogical practices (Hendry et al, 2020). How do you adjust to different level of expertise in responsibly designing with values (beginner/advanced)? How do you conceptualize and teach ’skillful practice’? What are the learning goals? What is progression in participatory design with values?
In an ongoing project, we have identified three main pillars for teaching about values in design: 1) Ethics and Human Values, 2) People and Stakeholders, and 3) Technology and Context (Barendregt et al 2020). Building the In‐Action Value framework on these three pillars, we can illustrate how those pillars can be operationalized in relation to the realities of practice and formal standards, and structure how progression of values in participatory design develops from a simple to more complex level.
A learning progression is a sequence of subskills that needs to be mastered to reach a curricular aim (Popham, 2007), and is characterized by starting with something simple and moving on to something more advanced, applying the knowledge in new ways. Drawing from established taxonomies of learning, such as the SOLO taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982), we can explore what makes progression in participatory design with values move from not only being able to name or identify different ethical frameworks, but to actually use different ethical frameworks to imagine consequences of design processes and products. Similarly, we should be able to not only identify the difference between indirect and direct stakeholders, but also be able to create new ways (e.g., methods, tools) to identify multiple roles of stakeholders, elicit key values, and describe relationships and value tensions. We should be able to reflect on tradeoffs between different procedures for designing with values. However, as designers and designs are never value neutral (Haraway, 1988; Søndergaard & Kofoed, 2017; Suchman, 2002; Verbeek, 2011), we need to be able to critically reflect on the impacts and consequences of our own values, and be able to take a critical stance to mediate between value tensions, including our own, in PD processes.
to handle uncomfortable value tensions in front stage, backstage, planning and documentation activities (Bødker et al, 2017).
References
Association of Computer Machinery (2018). ACM Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct. Retrieved from
https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/about/acm‐code‐of‐ethics‐and‐professional‐conduct.pdf Barendregt W, Nilsson E, Yoo D, Toft Nørgård R, Bekker T, Veldhuis A, Eriksson E. 2020. Teaching Values in Design in Higher Education – Towards a Curriculum Compass. In proceedings of Conference on the Ethical and Social Impacts of ICT ‐ Ethicomp 2020. Rioja, Spain.
Bødker, S., Dindler, C., & Iversen, O. S. (2017). Tying Knots: Participatory Infrastructuring at Work. Computer Supported Cooperative Work.
Christopher Frauenberger, Marjo Rauhala, Geraldine Fitzpatrick, In‐Action Ethics, Interacting with
Computers, Volume 29, Issue 2, March 2017, Pages 220–236, https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iww024
David G. Hendry, Eva Eriksson, Anisha Thilini Jessica Fernando, Irina Shklovski, & Daisy Yoo. 2020. PANEL: Value Sensitive Design Education: State of the Art and Prospects for the Future. In proceedings of Conference on the Ethical and Social Impacts of ICT ‐ Ethicomp 2020. Rioja, Spain.
EEE Standards Association (2019a). IEEE P7000: Model Process for Addressing Ethical Concerns During
System Design. Retrieved from https://standards.ieee.org/project/7000.html
Frauenberger, C., & Purgathofer, P. (2019). Ways of thinking in informatics. Communications of the ACM, 62 (7), 58‐64. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3329674
Grosz, B. J., Grant, D., G., Vredenburgh, K., Behrends, J., Hu, L., Simmons, A. & Waldo, J (2019). Embedded EthiCS: integrating ethics across CS education. Communications of the ACM, 62(8), 54‐61. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3330794
Haraway, Donna (1988). Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, 14(3), 575–599.
IEEE Standards Association (2019b). IEEE Ethically Aligned Design: A Vision for Prioritizing Human Well‐ being with Autonomous and Intelligent Systems. Retrieved from
https://standards.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee‐standards/standards/web/documents/other/ead_v2.pdf ISO/TC173, ISO 21801‐1 (2019). Cognitive accessibility ‐‐ Part 1: General guidelines.
Iversen, Ole Sejer; and Leong, Tuck Wah (2012b). Values‐led participatory design: mediating the emergence of values. Conference proceedings resented of the 7th Nordic Conference on Human‐
Computer Interaction: Making Sense Through Design.
Iversen, Ole Sejer; Halskov, Kim; and Leong, Tuck Wah (2012a). Values‐led participatory design.
CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts, 8(2‐3), 87–103.
Popham, W. J. (2007). All about accountability/The lowdown on learning progressions. Educational Leadership, 64(7), 83–84.
Søndergaard, Marie Louise Juul; and Koefoed Hansen, Lone (2017). Designing with Bias and Privilege?.
Nordes 2017, 1–8.
Suchman, Lucy (2002). Located accountabilities in technology production. Scandinavian Journal of
Information Systems, 14(2), 91–105.
Verbeek, Peter‐Paul (2011). Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press
W3C, “WCAG, Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1,” (2017). Retrieved from:
