Keeping Values in Mind
Artifacts for a Value-oriented and Culturally Informed Design
Roberto Pereira, Samuel B. Buchdid and M. Cecília C. Baranauskas
Institute of Computing, University of Campinas, Av. Albert Einstein N1251, Campinas-SP, Brazil
Keywords: Design, Organizational Semiotics, VIF, CARF.
Abstract: Identifying, understanding and explicitly involving values and cultural aspects of stakeholders have been
regarded as a challenge in the design of interactive systems. There is still a lack of principled and light-
weight artifacts, methods and tools for supporting designers in this task. In this paper we propose two
artifacts for supporting designers in making explicit both stakeholders’ values and system’s requirements
taking these values into account. A case study reports the use of the artifacts in the design of seven
prototypes of applications for the Brazilian Interactive Digital Television. The artifacts showed to be
promising for supporting designers in the complex scenario of designing value-oriented and culturally aware
interactive systems.
1 INTRODUCTION
Interactive systems are a growing reality worldwide.
People use them for different purposes, in quite
different and complex contexts, and with unforeseen
and far-reaching consequences. They are a clear
example of how technology has left the boundaries
of offices and workplaces to pervade every aspect of
people’s personal and social life. As Sellen et al.
(2009) highlight, as far as people are not just using
technology but living with it, values become a
critical issue and must be explicitly involved in the
design of interactive systems.
As design is an activity no longer confined to
specific contexts, several authors, such as Bannon
(2011) and Cockton (2005), have claimed a
rethinking of the way interactive systems are
designed. For them, it is necessary to focus on the
intention of design as a means to improve the world
by reimagining, acting, and delivering new sources
of value. Winograd (1997) had already asserted that
the design role “goes beyond the construction of an
interface to encompass all the interspace in which
people live”, requiring a shift from seeing the
machinery to seeing the lives of the people using it.
According to the author, there is a complex interplay
among technology, individual psychology and social
communication, in a way it demands attention to
relevant factors that become hard to quantify and
even identify.
Knobel and Bowker (2011) point out that
conversations and analysis of values in technology
usually occur after design and launch. Consequently,
most users are faced with design decisions that are
undecipherable to them, that do not reflect a respect
and understanding to their way of life, their
behavioral patterns and values. For the authors, the
issue of values often arises in information
technologies as disaster needing management.
Designers necessarily communicate values
through the technology they produce (Friedman,
1996). In the context of interactive systems,
depending on the way the system is designed it will
afford behaviors that are intrinsically related to
individuals and the complex context in which they
are using it (Pereira et al., 2011). Individuals will
interpret and behave over/through the system
influenced by their cultural systems (e.g., values,
beliefs, behavior patterns). In this sense, as
Friedman (1996) highlights, although the negligence
to values in any organization is disturbing, it is
particularly damaging in the design of computer
technology, because, unlike the situation where
people can disagree and negotiate with each other
about values and their meanings, they can hardly do
the same with technology. Therefore, understanding
the role of human values in technology design is a
key factor to the development of technologies that
make sense to people and do not produce side effects
that harm them.
25
Pereira R., B. Buchdid S. and C. Baranauskas M..
Keeping Values in Mind - Artifacts for a Value-oriented and Culturally Informed Design.
DOI: 10.5220/0003996800250034
In Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS-2012), pages 25-34
ISBN: 978-989-8565-12-9
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
Miller et al. (2007) and Sellen et al. (2009) point
out values as the critical issue when designing
technologies for the digital age. Some authors have
explicitly addressed issues on values in technology
design. Cockton (2005) proposes a framework to
support a Value-Centred Design, suggesting
activities and artifacts to support designers in an
understanding of technology design as a process of
delivering value. Adopting a different perspective,
Friedman (1996) has been working on an approach
she named Value-Sensitive Design, to support
concerns regarding values, especially the ethical
ones, in the design of software systems.
Other authors have investigated the influences
and impacts of cultural factors in technology design
(Del Gado and Nielsen, 1996; Marcus, 2001) and
other have argued for studies, methods, artifacts and
examples for supporting designers to deal with the
complexity and different requirements that current
technologies demand (Harrison et al., 2007; Miller et
al., 2007). Although the previously cited works have
shed light on this subject, there is a gap between
discussions about values in technology design and
practical solutions for supporting designers in this
task. Additionally, despite the acceptance of the
cultural nature of values, values and culture are
frequently approached as independent issues in
technology design. To our knowledge, no informed
approach or method is explicitly concerned with
supporting the understanding and involvement of
both values and their cultural nature in the design of
interactive systems.
In this work, we draw on Organizational
Semiotics (SO) theory (Liu, 2000) and the Building
Blocks of Culture (Hall, 1959) to create two artifacts
for supporting designers in a value-oriented and
culturally aware design of interactive systems. The
first artifact, named Value Identification Frame
(VIF), supports designers to reason about and list the
values related to the different stakeholders that may
be direct or indirectly interested and/or affected by
the system being designed. The second one, named
Culturally Aware Requirements Framework
(CARF), organizes the identification of requirements
related to cultural aspects that may impact on
stakeholders’ values. The artifacts were conceived to
facilitate their use by professionals that are not
familiar with social sciences, and were experienced
by 34 prospective designers in the context of seven
different projects of social applications for the
Brazilian Interactive Digital Television (iDTV). In
this paper we present the artifacts, the theories
underlying them, and discuss the results obtained
from their usage in the practical context.
2 THEORETICAL AND
METHODOLOGICAL
FOUNDATION
Friedman et al. (2006) understand values as
something that is important to a person or group of
people, and Schwartz (2005) as desirable, trans-
situational goals that vary in importance and that
serve as principles that guide people’s lives. For
Schwartz, values are motivational constructs that
transcend specific situations and actions, serving as
standards or criteria to guide the selection of actions,
policies, people and events.
Values are bound to culture (Hall, 1959;
Schwartz, 2005) in so subtle ways that people realize
they exist usually when rules that impact on them
are broken or violated. In many different ways,
culture influences on what people pay attention to
and what they ignore, what they value and what they
do not, the way they behave and the way they
interpret other’s behavior. The natural act of
thinking is strongly modified by culture (Hall,
1977). In this sense, if we are to approach values in
interactive systems design, we must pay attention to
their cultural nature and complexity.
When talking about culture, Hall (1977) believes
it is more important to look at the way things are put
together than at theories. Hall (1959) introduces the
notions of informal, formal and technical levels in
which humans operate and understand the world,
and approaches culture as a form of communication
giving emphasis to the nonverbal. In the OS theory
(Liu, 2000), the informal, formal and technical
levels are structured in a scheme named “Semiotic
Onion” that represents the idea that any technical
artifact is embedded in a formal system, which in
turn, exists in the context of an informal one. The
OS considers an organization and its information
system as a social system in which human behaviors
are organized by a system of norms. For Stamper et
al. (2000), these norms govern how members, think,
behave, make judgments and perceive the world,
being directly influenced by culture and values.
Aiming to formalize and structure the
characterization, analysis and comparison between
different cultures, Hall (1959) proposes 10 Primary
Messages Systems (PMS), or areas, named the basic
building blocks of culture — see Table 1. According
to the author, all cultures develop values with regard
to the 10 areas. For instance, values in “Defense” are
related to the rules, strategies and mechanisms
developed in order to protect the space (physical,
personal), the objects used to guarantee protection,
ICEIS2012-14thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
26
the kind of medical therapy adopted/preferred, etc.
Table 1: Hall’s (1959) building blocks of culture.
PMS
DESCRIPTION
Interaction
Everything people do involves interaction with
something/someone else: people, systems, objects, animals,
etc. The interaction is at the centre of the universe of
culture and everything grows from it.
Association
All living things organize their life in some pattern of
association. This area refers to the different ways that
society and its components are organized and structured.
Governmental and social structures may vary strongly
according to the culture.
Learning
Learning is one of the basic activities present since the
beginning of life. Education and educational systems are
strongly tied to emotion and as characteristic of a culture as
its language.
Play
Funny and pleasure are terms related to this area. Although
its role in the evolution of species is not well understood
yet, “Play” is clearly linked to the other areas: in learning it
is considered a catalyst; in relationships a desirable
characteristic, etc.
Defense
Defense is a specialized activity of vital importance.
People must defend themselves not only against hostile
forces in nature, but also against those within human
society and internal forces. Cultures have different
mechanisms and strategies of protection.
Exploitation
It is related to the use of materials in order to explore the
world. Materials in an environment are strongly related to
the other aspects of a culture. It is impossible to think
about a culture with no language and no materials.
Temporality
Time is related to life in several ways: from cycles, periods
and rhythms (e.g., breath rate, heartbeat) to measures (e.g.,
hours, days) and other aspects in society (e.g., division
according to age groups, mealtime). The way people deal
with time and the role of time in society varies across
cultures.
Territoriality
It refers to the possession, use and defence of space.
Having a territory is essential to life; the lack of a territory
is one of the most precarious conditions of life. There are
p
hysical (e.g., country, house) as well as social (e.g., social
p
osi
t
ion, hierarchy) and personal spaces (e.g., personal
data, office desk).
Bisexuality
It is related to the differences in terms of form and function
related to gender. Cultures have different forms of
distinction and classification and give different importance
to each one.
Subsistence
This area includes from people’s food habits to the
economy of a country. Professions, supply chains, deals,
natural resources, are all aspects developed in this area and
that vary strongly according to the culture, being
influenced not only by the other areas but also by
geographical and climatic conditions.
Values may also be developed in the intersection
of different areas and one may approach them in
terms of the informal, formal and technical levels.
For instance, “Privacy” may be understood as a
value developed in the intersection of “Protection”
and “Territoriality” areas. People from different
cultures tend to have their own informal
understanding of what privacy is and what it means.
There are social protocols, conventions, rules and
laws that are formally established to define the
meaning, limits and guarantees of an individual’s
privacy and that varies according to the culture
being analyzed. There are also some facets of
privacy that are so formally accepted that can be
technically supported, such as a curtain to cover a
window, the wall for restricting the visibility of a
house and the privacy of medical examinations.
In the context of interactive systems, the way the
value of “Privacy” (or the lack of it) has being
handled and supported by applications, mainly the
so-called Social Software, has been the cause of
several problems widely reported in the Web.
Winter (2010) draws attention to how Facebook
®
has become a worldwide photo identification
database and highlights that privacy issues go from
what the application does with users’ data to what it
allows other applications to do. In the complex
scenario of designing interactive systems for wide
audiences, designers have to show an understanding
of the different ways people value and manage their
privacy, and also to comply with the laws
established in the social environment these people
live. Otherwise, the produced system may trigger
undesired side-effects both in the environment it is
introduced and on the people living in it.
The OS theory (Liu, 2000) provides methods
(e.g., Problem Articulation Method, Norm Analysis
Method) and artifacts (e.g., Semiotic Ladder,
Ontology Charts) that support designers in
considering the social world and its complexity from
the articulation of problems stage to the modeling of
computer systems. The Stakeholders Identification
Diagram (SID) is an artifact from OS — see Figure
1, that supports the identification of all the
stakeholders direct or indirectly affected by the
system being designed. The artifact distributes
stakeholders into different categories: from the
actors directly involved in the project to the people
who may not use the system but may be affected by
it. The SID considers that each group of stakeholder
brings different perspectives to the innovation being
designed, having its own cultural system that
governs the way it will see, understand, value and
react to the proposed innovation (Kolkman, 1993).
KeepingValuesinMind-ArtifactsforaValue-orientedandCulturallyInformedDesign
27
Understanding the way different stakeholders
would value and react to an innovation requires
designers to see the world through the lenses of
these different stakeholders. The Valuation Framing
(VF) is another artifact from OS (Liu, 2000) that
helps in carrying out this kind of analysis by
favoring the analysis of the cultural dimensions of a
product — see Figure 2.
The VF is built on Hall’s (1959) areas of culture
with a few adjustments. For instance, “Defense” was
renamed to “Protection” and “Bisexuality” to
“Classification” (Kolkman, 1993) in order to
encompass, beyond the notion of gender, issues of
age, instructional, social and economical levels. In
the artifact, the analyst’s work consists of
questioning, predicting and hypothesizing how the
innovation may affect/is affecting the different
groups of stakeholders regarding the 10 areas.
Figure 1: SID artifact. Adapted from (Kolkman, 1993).
Figure 2: Valuation framing. Adapted from (Liu, 2000).
3 TWO NEW ARTIFACTS
As Sellen et al. (2009) suggest, the curricula in
Computer Science do not traditionally direct much
effort in enabling its students to cope with social
issues. It stresses as important the work with
multidisciplinary teams that can contribute with
different visions to a project. Multidisciplinary
teams, however, are not always possible or viable
due to project’s scope, restrictions and limitations.
Consequently, as Miller et al. (2007) highlight, if
designers working in industrial settings are to
account for values, we have to provide them light-
weight and principled methods to do so.
We have used artifacts from OS and techniques
inspired on Participatory Design (Schuler and
Namioka, 1993) to support design activities in
different contexts (Pereira and Baranauskas, 2011).
However, dealing with values is not a trivial activity,
and designers need practical artifacts to help them to
think of values in an explicit way and to identify the
project’s requirements related to these values.
Following, we present the VIF and CARF artifacts,
both created on the grounds of OS theory (Liu,
2000) and Hall’s (1959) building blocks of culture
— the artifacts’ templates can be downloaded at
www.nied.unicamp.br/ecoweb/products/artifacts.
The VIF artifact was created to support the
identification of the values related to the different
stakeholders that may be direct or indirectly
interested and/or affected by the system being
designed — see Figure 3. Its input is the list of
stakeholders identified through the SID artifact; and
its output is a list of the values each different
stakeholder brings to the project.
Figure 3: Value identification frame.
The basic principles of the artifact are: each
stakeholder has a set of values that may cause/suffer
impact with the introduction of the innovation being
designed. The analyst’s work is to map what values
each stakeholder brings to the project and have to be
considered in the design.
The artifact is inspired on the SID — illustrated
by Figure 1. Its header has a space in which
designers can put the name of the project —
corresponding to the SID’s core layer, and a list of
values to serve as a start point for the activity. The
VIF has also four blocks related to the other layers
of SID: “Contribution”, “Source”, “Market” and
“Community”. Each block has two columns: in the
first one, designers put the stakeholders identified in
the respective layer; in the second one, they indicate
what values the stakeholder is bringing to the project
ICEIS2012-14thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
28
and must be taken into account. Because the SID
induces designers to think of all the stakeholders
direct/indirectly involved in the system being
designed, by preserving its structure, the VIF leads
designers to think of the values of all the different
stakeholders making them explicit.
The CARF artifact was created to support the
identification and organization of requirements that
are related to cultural aspects of the different
stakeholders and their values — see Figure 4. Its
inputs are: the 10 areas of culture; the stakeholders
identified through the SID; and the values mapped
for each stakeholder through the VIF. The output is
a ranked list of requirements that are related to the
stakeholders and their values.
Figure 4: Culturally aware requirements framework.
The basic principles of the artifact are: values are
culturally developed according to the Hall’s 10 areas
of culture. Depending on the way the innovation is
designed it will impact on different aspects of these
areas, promoting/inhibiting the values of different
stakeholders. The analyst’s work consists of: i)
identifying requirements for the project according to
the 10 areas in order to respect the values of the
stakeholders, ii) defining priorities among these
requirements and iii) dealing with possible conflicts.
The artifact is inspired on the VF — illustrated
by Figure 2. The column “PMS” presents the Hall’s
10 areas; the column “P” indicates the priority of
each requirement specified (“3”–High, “2”–
Average; “1”–Low); the column “Requirements”
describes the requirements related to each area of
culture that may impact on stakeholders’ values; and
the column “Stakeholder” indicates the stakeholders
whose values may be positively/negatively affected
by the requirement.
In practical terms, the stakeholders identified
through the SID are inserted into the artifact, and
designers have to reason, make questions and try to
identify, in each area, the requirements that are
related to the values of these stakeholders. Finally,
they mark an “X” in the column of each stakeholder
that may be affected by the requirement and assign a
priority to the requirement (from 1 to 3).
4 THE CASE STUDY
In 2003, the Brazilian government instituted the
iDTV intending to promote: i) the formation of a
national network for distance learning; ii) the access
of people to knowledge by reducing economic,
geographical and social barriers; iii) the research and
development; and iv) the national industry (Brasil,
2003). In this context, values of different
stakeholders may suffer and cause influence on the
applications, the way they are used, and the impact
they may trigger on the society. The government,
private organizations, the media etc., have different
interests and perspectives regarding the introduction
of iDTV in the country. The contents broadcasted,
the interaction possibilities, the applications’
interface, and even the devices needed for receiving
the digital signal and interacting with the iDTV,
communicate some of those interests. Brazil is the
fifth largest country in territory and population,
having a very heterogeneous population in terms of
ethnicity, social and economical conditions, and the
analogical television is present in more than 97% of
Brazilian homes (IBGE, 2010). Consequently, it
becomes critical to think of values and culture when
designing applications for the iDTV in order to not
deliver applications that trigger undesired side-
effects on the society. In this section we present a
practical activity in which the VIF and CARF were
used in the design of applications for the iDTV.
The case study was conducted in a Computer
Science undergraduate discipline for “Construction
of Human-Computer Interfaces”, in which the
Problem Articulation Method from OS (Liu, 2000)
was used as an approach for the design of
information systems. A total of 34 participants were
divided into 7 groups: G1 (formed by the
prospective designers: D1, D2, D3, D4 and D5), G2
(D6..D10), G3 (D11..D14), G4 (D15..D19), G5
(D20..D24), G6 (D25..D29) and G7 (D30..D34).
The theme proposed to the participants was “social
applications for the iDTV”. The course took place
from August to December, 2011, and by its end each
group had to present a functional prototype of its
project and socialize the final results with the other
groups.
KeepingValuesinMind-ArtifactsforaValue-orientedandCulturallyInformedDesign
29
From the 7 projects: G1 and G5 are applications
intended to promote sustainable behavior on their
users. G2 is an application to support social
interaction on football matches programs. G3 and
G4 are related to social networks for the iDTV. G6
is an application to support online chat and G7 is
related to interactive online courses through the
iDTV — see Figure 5 for some examples. After the
course was finished, the groups were asked to
voluntarily answer an online questionnaire in order
to evaluate the activity and it was requested their
permission for using all the material they produced
in the course, including their answers to the
questionnaire. Another group of 4 participants (G8)
opted for not answering the questionnaire and is not
being included in this analysis.
The activity was divided into two parts. In the
first part, the groups used the VIF to make it explicit
the values each stakeholder was bringing to the
project. In the second part, the groups used the
CARF to identify what requirements they should pay
attention to in order to develop systems that make
sense to users and do not cause negative effects on
them. When the activity started, each group had
defined the focus of its project, had identified the
stakeholders using the SID, and discussed the
possible problems, solutions and ideas related to
each stakeholder using the Evaluation Frame (EF)
(Baranauskas et al., 2005)— another artifact inspired
on OS, which organizes the stakeholders according
to the SID’s structure and invites designers to reason
about the problems and solutions related to each one.
The main steps when using the VIF artifact were:
1. Participants selected the most representative
stakeholders identified through the SID and inserted
them into the VIF’s corresponding block. 2. For
each stakeholder, participants discussed what values
it would bring to the project; what would be
important to it and how the system being designed
would (should) impact on its values. In order to give
participants a starting point, it was suggested 28
values in the context of systems for promoting social
interaction (Pereira et al., 2010). As a result, each
group had a map showing the different stakeholders
and their values — Figure 3 illustrates the
VIF filled
by G3, translations were made by the authors.
The main steps when using the CARF artifact
were: 1. Participants selected at least one
stakeholder from each SID’ layer, inserting them as
a new column into the CARF’s “Stakeholder”
section. 2. For each area (PMS), they should identify
requirements (resources, norms, quality attributes,
functionalities, etc.) that should be considered in the
system in order to support the stakeholders’ values.
3. Participants should mark an “X” in the column of
each stakeholder whose values would be promoted/
inhibited by the requirement. 4. After filling the
artifact, participants should rank the requirements
according to their importance to the project.
As a result, each group had a list of requirements
related to cultural aspects and values of its
stakeholders, a map of the possible impact of these
requirements on different stakeholders and an
indication of priority for each requirement — Figure
4 illustrates the CARF filled by G7, translations
were made by the authors.
As background material for supporting the
activity each group was supplied with: i) guidelines
explaining the activity’s steps; ii) the VIF and CARF
artifacts both in press and digital format; iii) a table
containing the list of 28 values in the context of
social applications (Pereira et al., 2010); iv) a
simplified explanation of each area of culture — as
in Table 1; and v) at least 3 questions related to each
area the groups should think about — see Table 2.
The letters into the brackets in Table 2 indicate the
stakeholders directly related to each question: [D]
Designer, [G] Government, [S] TV Station, [T]
Figure 5: Prototypes from G1, G5 and G6.
ICEIS2012-14thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
30
Transmission Industry, [U] User.
Table 2: Questions in each area for the iDTV context.
PMS
DESCRIPTION
Interaction
What interaction possibilities will the application offer? [D];
What kinds of actions can users perform? With what\who?
Why? Through which devices? [U, T]; How do people
interact with the analogical TV? What will be changed? [G,
S, T, U]
Association
Is the application usage individual or collective? [U]; Is
there any dependence on other organizations/ entities (e.g.,
data supply)? [S]; May it cause impact on any aspect o
f
collective life? [G, U]; Is it associated with television
content? [S]
Learning
Is it required any prior knowledge for learning how to use
the application? What is the cognitive effort for learning it?
What kind of learning it can provide? [U]; It is required
training, new abilities or tools for developing the
application? Which ones? [D]
Play
What kind of emotions the application may/should evoke
/avoid (e.g., fun, challenge, warning)? Why? [D, G, S, U];
How the application has to be designed to promote/inhibi
t
these emotions? [D]; What are the possible impacts on
users? [U]
Defense
Can the application compromise users’ safety? [U]; What
are its policy and terms of use? [D, G, S, U]; Is there any
rights, patent or property? [G, S, T]
Exploitation
What are the physical devices required to interact
with/through the application? [D, T]; Is it required any othe
r
material or modification in the environment (e.g., sound,
media)? [D, U]; Will the introduction of new devices
generate the disposal of old ones? Is there any way to reuse?
[D, G, S, U]
Temporality
Is there a formal period for interacting (morning, lunch)? [D
, G, T]; What is the expected frequency of use (daily,
monthly)? [U]; What about the interaction duration? Is it
brief, medium or long? [D]
Territoriality
In which space the application will be used? [U]; Are there
specific requirements for the interaction space (size,
lighting, sound)? What kind of impact may
b
e generated?
[D, U]; Is the usage individual or collaborative? [D, S]
Bisexuality
Are the technologies necessary to develop the application
open source? [D]; Is its final cost (including the physical
devices) viable/accessible for the different socio-economic
conditions of users? [U, G, S]; May it cause negative impact
on economic issues? How? [U]
Subsistence
What is the target audience? [U]; Is it required minimum
age to participate? [A, G, U, S]; Is it required information
redundancy (the same information in different formats)? [D,
G, S, U]
The material produced in this activity was used
to support groups in the forthcoming steps of
their projects. 1. With the list of values and
requirements at hands, each group produced the first
version of its system’s prototype — an adapted
version of the Brain Drawing technique (Schuler and
Namioka, 1993) was conducted and the iDTV
design patterns from Kunert (2009) were followed.
2. The Balsamiq
®
tool was used to draw the users’
interfaces and the CogTool
®
was used to create the
interactive prototypes.
5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Based on the material produced in the case study,
including the final prototypes created by the groups,
it was possible to identify the VIF and CARF as
promising artifacts for supporting designers in a
value-oriented and culturally aware design. Both the
artifacts met the needs that led to their conception: i)
thinking of values in an explicit way and ii)
identifying the requirements related to these values.
As an illustration, Figure 6 shows the prototype
produced by G3 regarding a social application for
the iDTV. Through the VIF, the group made explicit
the values of the stakeholders involved in the
project. For instance, the group pointed out
“Privacy”, “Accessibility”, and “Relationship” as
values of the stakeholder “users”. Through the
CARF, the group discussed about the project
according to each area of culture, and specified
requirements that should be considered in order to
account for the values.
For promoting the value of “Privacy”, in CARF’s
“Protection” area, the group specified that: 1. “Users
have to agree explicitly for letting their profile
publicly visible”. 2. “The application must be
included in the ‘Parent’s Control’ functionality,
protected by a password”. 3. “The application must
allow users to turn on/off the ‘History recording’
feature”. The detail (1) in Figure 6 represents the
configuration feature that allows users to choose: i)
whether their activity history will be recorded; ii)
whether other users are allowed to see their updates;
and iii) whether they want to receive
recommendations from other users.
For promoting the value of “Accessibility”, in
CARF’s “Exploitation” area, participants specified
that the application must have: 1. “The possibility of
changing the size of interface elements and the color
contrast”. 2. “Subtitles for spoken communication”.
3. “A help section and additional information about
the features”. The detail (2) in Figure 6 indicates the
possibility of changing the size of the interface
KeepingValuesinMind-ArtifactsforaValue-orientedandCulturallyInformedDesign
31
elements and the detail (4) indicates a “Help” feature
— it is related to the “Learning” area. Understanding
the “Exploitation” and “Learning” areas of culture is
key to design an accessible solution in the proposed
scenario because, as Neris et al. (2007) argue,
designers need to know users in their abilities,
preferences, and motor and cognitive limitations,
formalizing the interaction requirements and
investigating solutions of interaction and interface
for the diversity. This is very different from
developing applications for the “average user” that
would not capture the reality of a plural context such
as the Brazilian one.
Figure 6: Prototype designed by G3.
For promoting the value of “Relationship”, in
CARF’s “Association” and “Interaction” areas the
participants specified that: 1. “It must be possible for
users to interact with each other through chat and
messages”. 2. “The application should recommend
‘friends’ to users according to the information of
their profile”. 3. “It must be possible for users
creating their lists of friends, family members, other
groups, etc.”. The detail (3) in Figure 6 indicates the
feature for managing “friends”. Furthermore, we can
point out another example: through the VIF, the G3
identified the value of “visibility” for the stakeholder
“Sponsorship”. In CARF’s area of “Subsistence”,
G3 adopted the strategy of providing ads services for
funding the maintenance costs: “The profit will be
generated through ads from sponsors and the TV
programs”. The detail (5) in Figure 6 indicates a
banner where ads are displayed.
Values of other stakeholders and their related
requirements were also considered by G3. For
instance, “Reputation” is a value of the stakeholder
“TV Station” and is related to the area of
“Classification”. The group specified requirements
and designed a feature in which users can rate
programs, add them to their favorite list, and share
the list with their friends. The same was identified
on the projects of other groups. For instance, before
using the artifact, G1 (designing a game for
sustainable behavior) was not paying attention to the
value of “Identity” of its stakeholder “user”. When
discussing the area of “Classification”, participants
perceived that their initial ideas would lead to a
biased design in which users would have to use the
avatar of a little boy — no possible changes were
possible. After filling the artifacts, they designed a
feature where users could choose between a little
boy and a girl avatar, accounting for the differences
of gender and preferences when playing.
According to the answers in the evaluation
questionnaire, identifying the values of the
stakeholders involved in the application being
designed led the groups “to evaluate the impact of
the project on each stakeholder and, then, to adapt
the project according to the stakeholders’ needs and
values” [G4]. Other group mentioned that thinking
of values “contributes to have a wider perception
and understanding of the stakeholders involved in
the project, their point of view, and the real purpose
of the application we should develop to them” [G5].
And also, that thinking of values “is of critical
importance because it helps us to see who may be
affected by the project, and what values we should
pay attention to in order not to cause negative side-
effects on any stakeholder” [G6].
Regarding the utility of VIF and CARF, groups
were asked about their perceived utility and
contribution to the project. Two groups answered
that both artifacts contribute strongly and were
determinant to the identification of the values (VIF)
and the requirements related to stakeholders’ values
and culture (CARF). Four groups answered they
contribute to the process, and a group answered they
are indifferent (neutral). None answered the artifacts
do not contribute or make the activity difficult —
see Figure 7.
Figure 7: Contribution of the artifacts to the projects.
For G2, understanding culture and values is
mandatory when designing applications for a wide
and complex context like iDTV. For G3, this
understanding favors “the identification of important
points during the design stage” preventing re-work,
additional costs with modifications and even the
ICEIS2012-14thInternationalConferenceonEnterpriseInformationSystems
32
project’s failure. For G4, the artifacts “contribute to
structure and organize ideas”; they “support a better
view and understanding of the project”, and they
“contribute to the development of the application
taking into account the points that are truly
important in the users’ context”.
When asked about the positive aspects of both
artifacts, G1 answered they “provide a wide
perception (what is needed and why), and a basis for
reasoning about the project”. G2 cited the artifacts
contribute to “structure, organize and better
understand the ideas for the project”. G4 pointed out
that the artifacts are “simple and easy to understand”
and that they “direct the project toward the
consideration of values”. And G6 answered that the
artifacts contribute to “manage and develop the
project, respecting the values of each stakeholder
and finding new requirements to the project”. On the
other hand, when asked about the negative aspects,
G4 asserted that the artifacts “need additional
information for supporting their usage”. G7 cited
the high quantity of terms and aspects to be
considered. And G2 suggested that the “areas of
culture in CARF could be more explained” and that
the artifacts have “too many variables, making it
difficult to keep the simplicity and to think of only a
few stakeholders and their values”.
These aspects suggest that the artifacts must be
as simple as possible in order to not overload
designers with complex terms and unnecessary
steps. However, as the authors we cited previously
have argued, dealing with values and culture in
technology design is a great challenge we are facing
in the present. In part, it is due to the topic’s inherent
complexity, and that becomes even more difficult
due to the lack of training and familiarity with social
subjects students in technological areas have.
Therefore, some initial difficulty in learning how to
use the artifacts is expected.
Indeed, our main concern when creating the
artifacts was to find a balance between making them
self-explanatory and informative, while keeping
them as simple and easy to use as possible. For
instance, during the case study we identified that it
would be useful to include a column named “Value”
in the CARF in order to make explicit the
relationship among the requirements, the areas of
culture and the stakeholders’ values. Additionally,
the values included in the VIF artifact (see Figure 3)
have been used in different contexts (Pereira and
Baranauskas; Pereira et al., 2011) and seems to be a
good starting point for the discussion on values in
applications intended to promote social interaction.
In the evaluation questionnaire, groups were asked
whether the values contributed to the activity. Two
groups (28%) answered they were indifferent, while
5 groups (72%) answered they contributed or
contributed strongly to the activity.
For the CARF artifact, groups were asked
whether the description of each area of culture, and
the questions related to it, contributed to the
clarification of requirements related to stakeholders’
cultural aspects that could impact on their values.
The 7 groups (100%) answered positively (the
artifact contributed), and highlighted that the CARF
“is comprehensive, and the questions make it self-
explanatory” [G1]; “give a direction in the
requirements identification activity” [G3], and “it is
a well-synthesized structure to support seeing and
understanding culture during the development stage;
they make you reason on all the aspects that can
influence in the project development” [G4].
Regarding all the artifacts used in the case study,
the 7 groups (100%) answered they would use the
artifacts to support their activities in other contexts,
mainly when designing a new product to be used by
a wide audience. The SID and CARF were cited by
the 7 groups (100%); while 6 groups cited the VIF
(86%) and 5 groups cited the EF (72%).
In sum, although further exposition of the
artifacts to other students and professional designers
in different contexts is still needed, the results
obtained from the case study as well as the answers
to the evaluation questionnaire indicate both VIF
and CARF as promising artifacts for supporting
designers in the complex scenario of designing
value-oriented and culturally aware solutions.
6 CONCLUSIONS
Designing technologies that understand and respect
human values is an ethical responsibility, a need and
a challenge for all those who are direct or indirectly
involved with design. However, although clearly
recognized as important, there are few initiatives in
literature relating culture and values to technology
design. There is also a lack of approaches, methods
and artifacts for supporting designers in dealing with
values and cultural aspects in practical contexts. In
this paper we shed light on this scenario proposing
the VIF and CARF artifacts and suggesting other
existing artifacts (e.g., SID, VF, EF) that may
support designers in practical settings.
The artifacts were used by 34 prospective
designers in a case study related to the design of
applications for the Brazilian Interactive Digital
Television. The results obtained from this case study
KeepingValuesinMind-ArtifactsforaValue-orientedandCulturallyInformedDesign
33
indicate the benefits of using the artifacts for
supporting designers in keeping values in mind
during the design activities and in identifying
requirements related to the cultural aspects of
stakeholders that may impact on their values. The
case study also suggested some points that could be
improved in the artifacts and that may be subject of
further studies.
Finally, although the artifacts have shown
interesting results, they alone are not enough to
guarantee an effective consideration of values and
culture in interactive systems design. Indeed, as the
experiment presented in this paper has shown, other
artifacts, methods and tools are needed in order to
allow the articulation and involvement of values and
other cultural aspects during the different stages of a
system design. We are naming value-oriented and
culturally informed approach (VCIA) such set of
artifacts and methods we are investigating in
ongoing and further research.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This research is partially funded by CNPq through
the EcoWeb Project (#560044/2010-0) and FAPESP
(#2009/11888-7). The authors specially thank the
participants of the case study who voluntarily
collaborated and authorized the use of the
documentation of their projects in this paper.
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