Building a "-Sensitive Design" Methodology from Political Philosophies or Ideologies

2026-03-18

AI Summary

This study addresses the lack of a normative foundation in existing Value Sensitive Design (VSD) approaches when translating abstract values into concrete design requirements. To remedy this gap, the paper proposes a meta-framework—“-Sensitive Design” (-SD)—that systematically integrates normative values from political philosophy, such as Kittay’s critique of liberalism, into the technology design process. By synthesizing conceptual analysis, empirical investigation, and technical implementation, the framework unifies and extends prior paradigms like Capability Sensitive Design, demonstrating its applicability through the development of “Dependency-Sensitive Design” (DSD). This work significantly expands the theoretical boundaries of VSD, offering a more normatively robust and politically informed pathway for embedding values into technological systems.

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: Morality & Value-based AI
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Multiagent Systems: Mechanism Design

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Social and technical mechanisms of refusal for web technologies and applications
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Value-based approaches such as Value Sensitive Design (VSD) enable technology designers to engage with and integrate human values in technology through a tripartite methodology of conceptual, empirical, and technical investigations. However, VSD contains pitfalls in both translating values to requirements and a lack of normative grounding, leading to adaptations such as Jacobs' Capability Sensitive Design (CSD). Inspired by CSD and extensions of the design approach, we propose the concept of creating -Sensitive Design (-SD); a meta-framework to embed various political or ideological values as norms in a design research process. We exemplify this through \emph{Dependency}-Sensitive Design (DSD), combining ideas from Kittay's critiques of classical liberal theory within a practical VSD framework. Finally, we push for further work combining philosophy and design in areas beyond CSD and DSD.

Problem

• Value Sensitive Design
• normative grounding
• political values
• ideological values
• design methodology

Innovation

• Value Sensitive Design
• Capability Sensitive Design
• Dependency-Sensitive Design
• political philosophy
• normative grounding