Keynote Talk: Serving a Community of Homeless Young People through Value Sensitive Design

For the past four years, we have conducted an unfolding series of service, design, and research projects in a community of homeless young people. Working within the value sensitive design methodology, the overarching aim of this work is twofold: First, to understand how homeless youth adopt digital media and personal digital technologies and generally bring information systems in their lives; and second, to develop design knowledge for improving the welfare of homeless youth through information systems. Our design stance, while explicitly precautionary, is oriented towards intervening through policy, social organization, and information systems. In this talk I will introduce value sensitive design, the project, some key values and value tensions, the direct and indirect stakeholders, and some of the empirical methods that we have been using. I will conclude with some lessons learned and open questions for the application of value sensitive design in this community.