Quiz Entry - updated: 2026.09.25
What is Value-Sensitive Design (VSD), and what are its three investigations?
A methodology by Batya Friedman and Peter Kahn, built on the principle that technology is never value-neutral; it combines conceptual, empirical and technical investigations.
Every design decision can promote or hinder values such as privacy, fairness or autonomy. VSD makes this deliberate:
| Investigation | Question | Examples of activities |
|---|---|---|
| Conceptual | Which values, and whose? Which should weigh more? | Identify stakeholders, their benefits and harms, key values, value conflicts |
| Empirical | How do affected people experience and prioritise the values? | Qualitative and quantitative studies; prioritise values; resolve conflicts through trade-offs |
| Technical | Does the technology support or hinder the values? | Translate values into design requirements; build and test prototypes; evaluate the system in use |
The three are iterative and feed back into each other.