June 13, 2022
Anti-Value Sensitive Design - Educational format
This exercise is for students who are already familiar with the methodology of Value Sensitive Design by having had multiple lessons on the theory. The format offered here is a fun and practical application to help students see the real consequences of the ideas they have been learning about, by intentionally reversing the goals to see how outcomes are affected. It is a pedagogical approach to provide students a humorous and inventive way of seeing the importance of Value-Sensitive Design, by instead implementing its opposite. Anti-Value Sensitive Design (AVSD) is identical to VSD except that the values chosen will be negative: replacing fairness with unfairness, and so on. In VSD methodology, the key is understanding that values must be part of technological design and must be consciously distinguished early in the design process. In this exercise, students will make a pitch to an “Evil Boss” highlighting “anti-values” and see how designs are impacted.