Bear & Co: Simulating Value Conflicts in IoT Development at CHI 2019 Glasgow May 4-9

by Inda Memić

At this year’s CHI conference* Irina Shklovski and Annelie Berner will be presenting a demonstration of one of the initial VIRT-EU tools: Bear & Co: Simulating Value Conflicts in IoT Development. Bear & Co is a fictional dive into the world of being part of an IoT start-up through various ethical challenges. It questions employee values and explores how those values can be tested in different IoT design and implementation scenarios with unexpected problems and no easy answers.

Paper abstract
Bear & Co. is a fictitious immersion into the world of being part of an IOT start-up. We invite visitors to join the company, and facilitate their journey through various ethical conundrums, as they become part of the company. First, they must state their values – what they will bring to the company and care most about. Then, we test those values through different scenarios, and problems that are unexpected and that do not have easy answers. Finally, we debrief our visitors and invite them to peruse explanations for various ethical approaches presented as maps and diagrams, where they can interrogate their own decisions against three different philosophical viewpoints.

*The ACM CHI Conference on HumanFactorss in Computing Systems is a leading international conference of Human- Computer Interaction where researchers and practitioners gather from across disciplines to discuss the newest in interactive technology. The theme for CHI 2019 is ‘Weaving the Threads of CHI’ that intends to connect people from different sectors, cultures, communities and backgrounds. Read more here.