only part of a larger system—or set of
systems. Much effort also needs to be
expended on determining what is desirable within a place, an institution,
or a society. Values such as personal
privacy, health, ownership, fair play,
and security are obvious candidates
for analysis, but so too are public, institutional, and civic identities. The
values treasured by the individual are
not always in harmony with those of
institutions or the society; nor, on the
other hand, are they always inimical to
one another. Here specialists in HCI
can learn a great deal from disciplines,
such as sociology and anthropology,
that focus on organizations and cultures. The bottom line is that the field
of HCI needs to take into account the
broader context within which human
values are expressed.
Some HCI researchers are indeed
beginning to emphasize human values
as central to research and design,
3, 5, 6, 13
while others have been attempting to
define a “third paradigm” 9 that draws
on ideas of embodiment4 such as,
taking into account the interactions
and conversations that happen in our
physical and social worlds that provide
meaning. These alternative approaches stress that a deep understanding of
our interactions with technology cannot be divorced from their contexts.
The meaning of technology is created
within specific situations, and not
just by individuals but often by many
stakeholders.
Yet making judgments about new
computer technologies, and how they
will affect us and the social fabric of
which we are a part, is not straightforward. Research methods must capture
how the use of technologies may unfold over time and in different situations. Consider that computers can
help connect us to others, but by the
same token it is important that they
sometimes allow us to be isolated.
Likewise, computers can support our
industriousness but at other times we
may want to “switch off.”
Moreover, such choices are not always ours alone to make; it is not simply users and their own particular aspirations that are involved. For example,
workplaces reserve the right to summon their staff to be industrious. In
other words, sometimes communications are meant to be heard even when
in a world
where people’s
movements and
transactions can
be tracked—where
individuals trigger
nondeliberate
events just by
being in a certain
place, physical
or virtual, at a
certain time—
the notion of
interaction
itself is being
fundamentally
altered.
the audience does not especially want
to listen. As Peters notes in Speaking
into the Air, 12 communications can be
about communion as well as about
information exchange. So design
tradeoffs need to be considered not
just in terms of our local interaction
with a technology but also in terms of
weighing the various moral, personal,
and institutional consequences.
a new approach for hci
We propose, then, that a broader approach is needed for tackling the new
kinds of questions that the transformations are raising. But what are the
practical implications of such an avenue? What does it mean for the field
of HCI?
Folding human values into the research and design cycle. Our first suggestion, described more fully in the
Seville workshop’s Being Human
report, is to extend the ways in which
user-centered research and design are
conducted by explicitly addressing human values.
A simplified but helpful model of
current practice is that projects typically follow an iterative cycle, comprised of four fundamental stages,
in which HCI specialists sequentially
study, design, build, and evaluate technology with users. The goal, for example, may be to design a particular
computing technology in order to improve upon a given experience. Initial
research involves finding out about
people’s current practices, for which
ethnographic studies, logging of user
interactions, and surveys are commonly employed. Based on the information gathered, the specialists begin
to focus on the why, what, and how of
designing something better. To aid in
the process, usability and user-experi-ence goals are identified and conceptual models developed. Prototypes are
built, evaluated, and iterated on until
it is determined whether the new technology can meet the user goals and
whether the new user experience is
judged by the target group to be valuable and enjoyable.
The Being Human report proposes
that a new agenda for HCI should
enhance this model by adding another stage—an initial stage, called
understand—which aims to pinpoint
the human values that the technology
