Revisiting the UsersAward programme from a value sensitive design perspective

Abstract

The goal of the UsersAward (UA) programme is to develop and maintain a strategy for enhancing the quality of workplace software through on-going user-driven quality assessment. Key activities are development of sets of quality criteria, as the USER Certified 2002 and 2006 instruments, and performing large domain specific user satisfaction surveys building on these quality criteria. In 2005 we performed a first analysis of the values that inform the criteria and procedure making up the 2002 instrument, using the Value Sensitive Design methodology. This paper is a follow-up of that study. We report on new types of stakeholders having engaged with the UA programme and reflect on how the conceptual considerations and explicit values of the programme have shifted as a consequence.