Values-first SE

Abstract

The realization that software has a far reaching impact on politics, society and the environment is not new. However, only recently software impact has been explicitly described as 'systemic' and framed around complex social problems such as sustainability. We argue that 'wicked' social problems are consequences of the interplay between complex economical, technical and political interactions and their underlying value choices. Such choices are guided by specific sets of human values that have been found in all cultures by extensive evidence-based research. The aim of this paper is to give more visibility to the interrelationship between values and SE choices. To this end, we first introduce the concept of Values-First SE and reflect on its implications for software development. Our contribution to SE is embedding the principles of values research in the SE decision making process and extracting lessons learned from practice.

Human values in software development artefacts: A case study on issue discussions in three Android applications

“…[5]. Thirdly, this model has been used in different fields such as computer science [33], data mining [34], and software engineering [9]. These values in Schwartz's theory are not meant to limit the analysts in discovering values but to illustrate the landscape of values.…”

“…However, Winter et al's work was focused on characterising the values of software practitioners instead of the presence of values related to apps from users' perspectives. Ferrario et al [9] proposed Values-first SE to address the broader Schwartz's values in the entire development phases. This framework maps requirements to Schwartz's values model to build a prototype.…”

“…The factors influencing users' decision to install and use mobile applications are similar to those formulated by social scientists as human for human values. For this reason, we believe previous work on human values in software chose to use existing human value models from social sciences instead [9][10][11][12][13][14]. Unlike previous work, this study attempted to better understand human values in software by analysing a software development artefact as a place where human values can be discovered.…”

Drivers of Participation in Digital Citizen Science: Case Studies on Järviwiki and Safecast

“…Schwartz's Human Values Theory has been studied in domains like psychology (Maio 2016) and social (Bilsky et al 2011) and political sciences (Feldman 2003). More recently, however, computing-related research areas such as human-computer interaction (HCI) (Preece 2016; Preece and Shneiderman 2009), value-sensitive design (Friedman and Hendry 2019), values-first software engineering (Ferrario et al 2016), and social computing (Chen et al 2014) have used this theory in their studies.…”

“…Organizers should be aware of the values and motivations linked with their initiative and its impacts on recruitment campaigns and participation. Approaches like value-sensitive design (Friedman and Hendry 2019) and values-first software engineering (Ferrario et al 2016) have developed tools like envisioning cards ), values q-sort, starmaps, and others (Values in Computing 2019) to support the creation of digital technology that accounts for the values of designers and participants.…”