A stake in the issue of homelessness: identifying values of interest for design in online communities

Abstract

Social media has the potential to impact how traditionally marginalized and geographically disparate communities, such as the homeless, connect with each other and social services online. However, little is known about how best to support these interactions through designing new information and communication technologies or by enhancing existing ones. Considering the values of stakeholders in an online community before embarking on design is one increasingly utilized step in designing for, by, and with traditionally disenfranchised communities. Current values-based design methods emphasize face-to-face interactions, but online interactions also provide spaces to elicit and consider values. This paper synthesizes the results of three studies into a suite of methods for eliciting shared values and conflicting values in online communities. This paper also contributes a survey-based tool containing value portraits as a first step towards implementing these methods. These methods for identifying values of interest to design contribute to a growing body of tools that support values researchers and designers in explicating values prior to, during, and in the evaluation of the design of ICTs.