Co-Evolve Technology and Social Structure

Method Overview

Co-evolve Technology and Social Structure is a method that encourages designers to engage with both the technological and socio-structural implications in their design space. The end goal is to ensure that the technical design is not considered in isolation with their socio-structural impact. Examples of social structures designers can investigate while developing social systems include policy, law, social norms, organizational practices, regulations, and other systems.

Getting Started

Principles: (from the academic book by Friedman and Hendry):

Determine the social structure that will be impacted by the technology being designed.
Identify the values to be investigated
Conduct a two-pronged design approach to pay attention to both the design of the technology and the potential socio-structural impact of the technology being designed on their intended users.

Example Practice:

Knowledge base system: “Developed a knowledge based and code repository groupware system in tandem with organizational policies for incentivizing software employee’s contributions to the system” (Miller et al., 2007).
Privacy in an open-source, location-aware system: “Working with a large technology corporation, developed a legal addendum to an open-source license that preserves user privacy attributes” (Friedman et al., 2006).

Method Designed by

VSD Lab

Characteristics

Easy
Medium
Expert

Citation

Miller, J. K., Friedman, B., Jancke, G., & Gill, B. (2007). Value tensions in design: the value sensitive design, development, and appropriation of a corporation’s groupware system. Proceedings of the 2007 International ACM Conference on Supporting Group Work, 281–290. https://doi.org/10.1145/1316624.1316668 (not publicly; available)

Friedman, B., Smith, I., H. Kahn, P., Consolvo, S., & Selawski, J. (2006). Development of a Privacy Addendum for Open Source Licenses: Value Sensitive Design in Industry. UbiComp 2006: Ubiquitous Computing, 194–211. https://doi.org/10.1007/11853565_12 (not publicly available)

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Co-Evolve Technology and Social Structure

Published by Thomas Carlock on April 10, 2022April 10, 2022