[ 8]. Borning, A., Friedman, B., Davis, J., and Lin, P. “Informing Public Deliberation: Value Sensitive Design of Indicators for a Large-scale Urban Simulation.” Proceedings of ECSCW 2005 (2005): 449–468.

potential participant. We soon learned that this “at most two invites” policy contradicted tacit understandings within the UN-ICTR culture. As one participant explained: “If you really want me to participate, you need to tug on my arm, so I know that you are truly interested in what I have to say.” The actions determined by the two-invites policy were perceived in the UN-ICTR culture as polite politic—interest that was likely feigned. We realized we were losing tribunal personnel who wanted to participate by following a policy created in the American context to protect participants working in an international culture. Upon returning to our home university, we discussed with the IRB the implications of overly prescriptive recruitment policies when working internationally. Swayed by our experience, the IRB has allowed more adaptable policies for our future work in Rwanda.

cally. Some team members strongly favored releasing the videos as soon as possible, without Kinyarwandan subtitles, prioritizing access to the international legal community for important, time-critical work. Other team members were just as much in favor of waiting to release videos until a Kinyarwandan translation was available, interpreting “supporting access” in a robust sense to include the broader Rwandan populace. We delayed making a decision until a follow-up trip to Rwanda enabled us to engage diverse Rwandan communities in the decision-making process. The response from the Rwandans we spoke with was surprisingly unified: It was better to post in English sooner rather than wait for translation into Kinyarwanda. At the same time, many underscored the importance of eventual translation to enable Rwandans in rural areas greater access to the material. Key to this discussion: While the project team had articulated guiding principles, the team had not adequately defined those principles or put in place a process for setting priorities when tensions inevitably would arise.

underspecified Priorities: Project team Principles

In contrast to the two situations here that concerned interactions with policies from outside the project team, our last example highlights a policy tension that arose from within. Alerted by prior work to the usefulness of articulating explicitly supported project values [ 8], early on the project team established a list of eight “Guiding Principles,” one of which was the principle of access. While presumably in agreement, the team discovered in the thick of making design decisions that members had different understandings about what constitutes meaningful access and for whom.

In particular, the team debated whether to release the video interviews in the languages in which they had been conducted ( primarily English) or to wait until translations and subtitles in the native language for Rwanda (Kinyarwanda) could be obtained, which could take up to two years. At stake was who would be able to access the video interviews and when—not only technically but also linguisti-

the Evolution of Society: the Evolution of Policy In the midst of designing a particular system, it can be difficult to hold on to the reality that policy conditions will shift. As our experiences working on “Tribunal Voices” highlight, govern-

interactions

• The ambitious “Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal” project includes a collection of 49 video interviews with tribunal person- nel. The videos are viewable at htp:// www.tribunalvoices.org/videos.html. All are subtitled in Kinyarwanda.