Time: 4pm Tuesday, April 24th
Place: 202 South Hall
BATYA FRIEDMAN
Associate Professor, School of Library and Information Science
Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of Washington
Value-Sensitive Design:
Cookies, Web browsers and Informed Consent Online
Many of us when we design and implement computer technologies focus on making the technology work -- reliably, efficiently, and correctly. Rarely do we focus on human values. Perhaps we believe in value-neutral technology. Perhaps we believe that issues of value belong only to social scientists, philosophers, or policy makers. Neither belief is correct. In their work, computer system designers necessarily impart social and moral values. Yet how? What values? Whose values? For if human values are controversial, then on what basis do some values override others in the design of, say, algorithms, network security, and databases? In this session, I will discuss a collection of human values -- freedom from bias, autonomy, trust, informed consent, accountability, accessibility, access, and moral personhood -- that have been central to my research and design work. In particular, I will focus on a recent project involving cookies, Web browsers, and informed consent online. My goal is to offer design criteria and methodologies that help to account for human values in the system design process.
Biography
Batya Friedman is Associate Professor in the School of Library and Information Science and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. She received both her B. A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Her research program has commitments to the areas of Value-Sensitive Design, social-cognitive and cultural aspects of information systems, and human-computer interaction. Her publications have appeared in such journals as ACM Transactions on Information, Journal of Systems Software, Communications of the ACM, and Computers in Human Behavior. In 1997 she edited Human Values and the Design of Computer Technology (Cambridge University Press). She is currently funded by the National Science Foundation for a project titled Network Browser Security and Human Values: Theory and Practice and has just completed a project titled Informed Consent Online: Criteria, Metrics and the Design of Web-Based Programming Languages. She is also co-Director of The Mina Institute.