TY - JOUR
T1 - Evaluating value mediation in patients with chronic low-back pain using virtual reality
T2 - contributions for empirical research in Value Sensitive Design
AU - Smits, Merlijn
AU - van Goor, Harry
AU - Kallewaard, Jan Willem
AU - Verbeek, Peter Paul
AU - Ludden, Geke D.S.
N1 - Funding Information: The research leading to these results received funding from the ‘Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling’ (EFRO) under Grant Agreement No PROJ-00840, 2018 for the project R4heal. Funding Information: The authors would like to thank Linda Garms (Radboudumc, Nijmegen, The Netherlands) greatly for her valuable practical support in this study. All authors had full access to the data used in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022/7/1
Y1 - 2022/7/1
N2 - Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is the most well-known method to consider values in design. It consists of three iterative phases of investigation: conceptual, empirical, and technical. Although the approach is promising, the role of empirical research remains unclear. We address two opportunities for extending the role of empirical research in VSD. First, we argue that empirical research enables us to identify values in context. Second, we explain that empirical research enables us to anticipate how technology mediates the values of users. We make our point by means of an empirical study in a real-life controlled experimental context into the value mediation of virtual reality (VR) in patients with chronic low-back pain. Using value-oriented semi-structured interviews with twenty patients, we first analyze what values these patients consider important, and how the values are experienced. The second set of interviews held after all patients used VR four weeks at home, aims to provide insight into value changes as mediated by VR. We end the article by a comparison of our empirical results with previous, often speculative, literature into values in VR. We show that empirical research benefits the VSD process by providing in-depth insight into the effects of context and technology on values and the ability to translate these insights into recommendations for more responsible design and implementation of the technology.
AB - Value Sensitive Design (VSD) is the most well-known method to consider values in design. It consists of three iterative phases of investigation: conceptual, empirical, and technical. Although the approach is promising, the role of empirical research remains unclear. We address two opportunities for extending the role of empirical research in VSD. First, we argue that empirical research enables us to identify values in context. Second, we explain that empirical research enables us to anticipate how technology mediates the values of users. We make our point by means of an empirical study in a real-life controlled experimental context into the value mediation of virtual reality (VR) in patients with chronic low-back pain. Using value-oriented semi-structured interviews with twenty patients, we first analyze what values these patients consider important, and how the values are experienced. The second set of interviews held after all patients used VR four weeks at home, aims to provide insight into value changes as mediated by VR. We end the article by a comparison of our empirical results with previous, often speculative, literature into values in VR. We show that empirical research benefits the VSD process by providing in-depth insight into the effects of context and technology on values and the ability to translate these insights into recommendations for more responsible design and implementation of the technology.
KW - Chronic Pain
KW - Empirical research
KW - Virtual reality
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85129172925&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-022-00671-w
DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s12553-022-00671-w
M3 - Article
C2 - 35505793
SN - 2190-7188
VL - 12
SP - 765
EP - 778
JO - Health and Technology
JF - Health and Technology
IS - 4
ER -