Design Values in Action: Toward a Theory of Value Dilution

Designing for values has been a focus of human-computer interaction research, but what happens when value-laden design artifacts are put into practice? Do they exercise their commitment to stated design values? We present four case studies that suggest a gap between the values that technologies set out to support and their performance toward supporting these values in practice. By critically analyzing these case studies, we theorize the phenomenon of value dilution-technical artifacts moving away from values they committed to embody. We hypothesize two significant methodological gaps contributing to value dilution-the static framing of stakeholders and a lack of engagement with politics of values. We argue that addressing value dilution needs to be a long-term and ongoing task in the design and use of technology as values in design are not only embodied, but also they are dynamic, subject to change in how they are enacted.