Value-Sensitive Design for Humanitarian Action: Integrating Ethical Analysis for Information and Communication Technology Innovations

Abstract

Humanitarian contexts are complex, rapidly-changing and characterized by uncertainty. Populations affected by crisis are exposed to a wide range of risks. As a result, many challenges arise for humanitarian organizations as they seek to improve their practices and develop new tools. An emergent literature has addressed ethical dimensions of innovating during crises, including the development and roll out of new information and communication technologies (ICTs). Ethical issues associated with humanitarian technologies include ensuring accuracy, protecting privacy and security, responding to inequalities, respecting individuals and communities, protecting relationships, and meeting expectations. However, there remains uncertainty about how ethical concerns are best addressed in the development and implementation of ICT innovation. To that end, this chapter proposes that value sensitive design, an approach to technology innovation that explicitly incorporates values into the design process, presents a conceptual framework with which to integrate an ethics lens into humanitarian ICT innovation. We present a value sensitive design framework that can be applied to the design and application of emerging humanitarian ICTs: the Value Sensitive Humanitarian Innovation (VSHI) framework. It can be used by ICT developers, members of communities affected by crises humanitarian practitioners and policy-makers, including those with either technical or non-technical backgrounds, to support humanitarian innovation that is attentive to ethical considerations across the innovation cycle.