Human values at WebSci conference
A workshop at WebSci 2021, June 21st – 22nd, 2021
Workshop/tutorial title
Human Value in design and measurement
Workshop summary
The majority of digital services today use consumption as a model of success. The impact of such is that the design and measurement of these services use attention and engagement as a means to increase consumption. The human values framework challenges this idea to instead question, what if we optimised for human values?
The human values framework is a longstanding piece of research that identified 14 human values through empirical research, created a framework for designers to think about the impact of their designs, and reframed success to consider what is good for people. This workshop will highlight the importance of taking a value led approach to design and measurement of services, engage a discussion and debate about optimisation, and take participants on a journal to not only discover their own values, but offer tools to use within their own work.
Workshop description, motivation and goals
This workshop will help researchers and developers as they design services for users, whether commercial or for research purposes, and as such will support inclusion as a core theme of the overall conference.
At the BBC we believe that embedding human values into the heart of designing and measuring digital services will result in a more inclusive, democratic and fulfilling digital experience. The human values framework consists of 14 empirically researched, scientifically evidenced human values (Kerlin, 2019). The intention of the workshop is to disseminate findings from our empirical research, engage attendees in a healthy debate about designing and measuring for human values vs the current attention and engagement model, and explore with attendees how they could integrate human values into existing work practices.
Bringing human values to the web science community would allow people to reflect on their own values and consider digital services that reflect and enable their values, or compromise and exploit them. By enabling attendees to think about human values, we believe we can contribute important information towards the theme for WebSci 2021. At its core, our work is enabling the world to consider new current approaches to design and measurement of services, which we believe can contribute to making the internet more inclusive and aligned with our human best interests. The workshop will enable the work to be received by the web science community.
Reference: Kerlin, L. (2019). Human values: understanding psychological needs in a digital age. White Paper WHP 371, March 2020.
Workshop schedule and activities
This will be a session with interactive exercises
The interactive exercises will look like the following:
Activity one: discovery of personal values through use of a miro board. Attendees will be split into groups of 3-4 where they will have the chance to play a game designed to highlight the values that are most personally important.
Activity two: attendees will join breakout groups to discuss current challenges of the attention and engagement model, share stories and contemplate how to embed a value-led approach within their work.
Target audience and audience size
30 people working within any discipline that has a digital offering.
The primary language(s) of the workshop/tutorial
English