For the past week I have been attending the Values in Design workshop at Santa Clara University in California. The organizers and guest faculty presented on a number of design projects and design methods which are interesting and noteworthy.
- Helen Nissenbaum presented on Track Me Not, which is a Firefox browser extension which allows users to hide their search queries. Essentially the system works by sending information generated from common searches, instead of the user’s actual searches to the search engine companies. Limitations of the system are that it is in English only and functions for the US versions of the engines only.
- Tracy Fullerton and Mary Flanagan presented on game design. As an interesting methodological contribution, they showed us the Values@Play Grow-A-Game cards for use in teaching reflective and value conscious game design
- Shay David did a demo of Kaltura which is an online environment for open source video editing, interaction and collaboration
Presentations by Paul Dourish, Geof Bowker, Susan Leigh Star, Fred Turner and many others were also excellent parts of the event.