Day 6 - Ethics & Stakeholder Analysis
Skills: 11, 12
Pre-reading: https://neu-pdi.github.io/cs2100-public-resources/lecture-notes/l7-ethics
Intro (15 mins)
In this class, we will teach you to follow Value-Sensitive Design. Specifically, this means for problems that affect people (which, most software does! We rarely build things that do not impact the world, and thus people, in some way), we follow these steps:
- Identify the stakeholders (i.e., those affected by software)
- Identify the values relevant to problem
- Fill out a stakeholder-value matrix (i.e., for each stakeholder & value, how do they feel?)
- Identify and analyze conflicts in the matrix (i.e., if two stakeholders feel differently about, e.g., how privacy should be handled in the system, what do you do?)
Sometimes, we will give you certain stakeholders to analyze, or certain values that we want you to focus on. Other times, it will be up to you identify one or the other.
Class Exercise (40 mins)
Case Study: Algorithmic hiring
Consider this scenario: “Shamazon” (a fictitious company) is looking to hire software engineers, and you have been tasked with designing a tool to filter the submitted resumes and select the ideal candidates for hire.
- Who are the stakeholders?
- What are the values?
- What is in the stakeholder-value matrix?
- What are the conflicts in the matrix? And how can we mitigate them?
- Where are bias and unfairness entering the product? And how can we mitigate them?