Socio-technical HCI for Ethical Value Exchange

Ensuring ethical value exchange is moving to the forefront of the global challenges that HCI will have to address in the coming years. In this position paper, we argue that applying a context-sensitive, sociotechnical approach to HCI can help meet the challenge. The background is that the life of marginalized people in contemporary society is challenging and uncertain. The marginalized can face health and cognitive issues as well as a lack of stability of social structures such as family, work and social inclusion. Three questions are of concern when innovating together with people ‘at the margins’: how can we describe users without attempting to stereotype badly, what sociotechnical HCI methods fit the local societal context, and how to make the design sustainable in face of current planetary challenges (e.g., climate change)? We adapt the sociotechnical HCI approach called human work interaction design (HWID) to meet the challenges of designing for ethical value exchange. We present three cases of service design, and suggest how to add a fourth similar case using the HWID approach during a field trip and workshop at the INTERACT 2017 conference in Mumbai. We conclude that applying a context sensitive sociotechnical HCI framework implies that both the backend and frontend of service design and product innovations should be executed and valorized from within the local context.