Using Value-Sensitive Design Methods to Shape Cross-Species Interface Design

This research report captures the use of a Value-Sensitive Design workshop as a stakeholder heuristic to inform an interdisciplinary, cross-institutional, and multispecies interface design project. The report begins with a brief outline of how Friedman's and Hendry's Value Sensitive Design approach prompted reformulate a UX design team's approach to revitalize a campus-based burrowing owl relocation site as a space for interface imagination. Supported by a seed grant, a Canadian design team hosted workshops to help student designers identify and locate a broad range of interface stakeholders—institutions, individuals, owls, humans, and even burrows. Through speculative and empathetic means, the 20 UX designers created narratives, sketches, wireframes, and interactive prototypes to assist the burrowing owl conservation effort, to enlist volunteers and financial support for these spaces, and to re-imagine an undeveloped campus site as a living laboratory. Finally, the report shares the findings of the study and discusses how using a Value-Sensitive Design framework can expand the repertoire of interface choices to include the widest array of stakeholders in an entangled ecology. The report ends with recommendations for UX research further exploring how Value Sensitive Design can help reformulate the definition of success in complex interface design projects.