Application Interface Design for Social Learning and Perspective taking:
(P)rinciples, (C)omponents and (A)ssumptions are numbered below e.g. C01 is component 1
Prerequisites: Registering Values and Prospects…
P01 To express or manage human values, a shared definition is fundamental.
C01 A Value Dialog:
For the identification, definition (classification, characterisation), analysis, discussion, development and maintenance of a register of human values, giving equal weight to the views of each individual.
As a crowd sourced process, the design understanding is that some people will not care about, or know how to express, abstract, long term, general, universal or societal values. There will be picklists, readymade profiles and people to help. All contributors and contributions are welcome and all are encouraged to learn and to adjust their profiles as they do.
To be useful, it is important to know each individual’s needs (food, water, shelter) and wants (a baby, car, partner, house, holiday, job, gun), but these are not societal human values. User guides and (where requested) volunteers will be available, to assist the capture of wants and needs as (private) Personal Prospects. They could also be translated into societal values such as freedoms (‘from want’, ‘of movement’, ‘of association’), or rights (‘to bear arms’, ’to life’, ’self-determination’).
P02 This application will give the views of each person equal prominence(weight).
Being ’As representative as is practical’ is both a principle and a way to nurture engagement.
P03 Supporting Social learning.
An optional Discourse can be attached to any significant object or field in the Value-Prospecting (VP) application, and used to capture personal and societal significance and meaning, in addition to logically reasoned argument and relevant facts…
e.g., personal experiences, perceptions, associations and feelings as well as argument maps and various impact and other technical analyses.
For a simple example of a social learning approach, the picklists in C1 (the Value Dialog), will be displayed in order of significance to the public. The user will see directly what the public think are the most important values. If they navigate to the Discourse (C3) for that Value, they may also better understand how other people think and feel about it.
For a more nuanced example of the social learning approach being trialed, the Discourse elements are ordered and the users encouraged to navigate (initially) on the basis of those elements that are compelling to the majority of the public (other perspectives are selectable). This will likely represent emotional and habitual responses and biases alongside rational judgement. The intent is to represent and address these varied factors, in proportion to their human impacts.
P04 Supporting an evolving taxonomy/ontology.
In a sense (or value) making system supporting large and diverse communities over extended periods, we must expect to support classification system choices, and dynamic ontologies (intended to evolve over time with public understanding and usage). Volunteer moderator roles (teachers/librarians/classification assistants) will be required to interact and help establish a common language and usage for these categorisation terms.
P05 To manage the impacts of activity, a description of activity is fundamental.
C02 A Prospect Dialog:
For the registration, definition, discussion and development of existing and new ideas for collective action, enterprise, innovation, adaptation…
Prospects are also intended to be hubs for special interest and support groups to come together, without prejudice. e.g., Celebrating traditions (like community whaling) and executing initiatives (like whale conservation).
People are invited to indicate their level of interest, support, enthusiasm, commitment to or alignment with Prospects. Registering interest in a number of ways including ‘How would you rank this activity/prospect?’, ‘How much time do you or would you expend on this activity? How much do you or would you pay to support it?
Registering a prospect is a pre-requisite for Evaluation (C4). Prospects can include ‘Business-as-usual’ scenarios such as existing lifestyles, current activities, working practices, principles or social conventions as well as e.g. ‘New water treatment plant’, ‘increasing public transport’, ‘introducing district heating schemes’.
The public are invited to define any action or activity for which they would like to better understand the impacts… e.g., ‘green’ claims for consumer goods like soaps or nappies, heat pumps, transport choices (bus, train, plane) etc.
P06 Separating the Value and Prospect domains as independent processes
One important measure of enthusiasm in the Prospect dialog is intended to represent our ‘gut feelings’, using instinctive ‘fast thinking’ (like the word association game). The Values register in contrast, is intended to represent, slower, more considered and empathetic thinking, disassociated from personal gain (e.g., ‘putting ourselves in others shoes’, describing ‘how we would like our elderly parents and young children to be treated’).
Contributors will be encouraged to register both Prospects and Values at different times: Committing to both allows us to later focus on the relationship between them, facilitating a form of ‘mental agility’; Opening a pathway to adapt if we learn that our prefered prospects and actual actions are not viewed as aligned with our social values, or that they could result in unexpected and unintended outcomes.
We might expect many (e.g., engineers, religious thinkers) to advocate in dialogs most suited to their expertise and interests, and where they are most appreciated. Like everyone else, advocates will derive reputation and self-esteem from their commitments, both to Values and to Prospects. This ‘dual commitment’, aids in self-reflection through the availability of Discourse (external analysis, instinctive narrative) and Impact assessments (by peers, the public, expert groups,…). Opening us to consider contrary evidence and the need for further dialog. Mitigating our human tendency to identify personally and focus exclusively on just one prospect, perspective or ideal.
Enriching the Registers; A Discourse component (C3)…
The data collated by the two registration dialogs (C1 and C2) could be stored internally as a database table (sometimes called or relation) i.e., as rows defining and classifying Values and Prospects. However, all data and interface objects (Values, Prospects, Impacts) as well as the Dialog and Value Prospecting processes themselves are potentially the subject of a ‘Social Discourse’ component capable of collecting together many diverse data elements types: –
C03 Social Discourse capture/management
A Discourse component manages the collation and navigation of a more loosely structured, extendable group of related contributions providing context; associations, concerns, experiences, analysis and discussion. A Discourse collection can be linked to any significant element or process in the Value-Prospecting application.
Presenting, prioritising and helping to navigate diverse elements such as Moderated forums, Essays, formal Argumentation, Financial and Environmental analysis etc.
The discourse will allow external links, but linked content may need tagging with metadata to support searches from within the Value-Prospecting (VP) app. To help subsequent readers, all Discourse objects in the collection will be tagged for relevance/importance and veracity. In principle the most influential components of a discourse will be displayed more prominently in the Discourse navigator (for ‘Lucidity’).
P07 Lucidity: Representation-in-proportion-to-perceived-importance;
Making the most important elements most prominent is a general principle of the proposed application; Respecting and representing all minority viewpoints without obscuring majority viewpoints (by ‘burying them in detail’) …. Upholding the principle of absolute inclusivity, but maintaining a sense of proportion, especially in visual representations.
P08 Lucidity: Rollup/Drilldown (Zoom);
Where practical, data will be categorised (e.g., in a hierarchy) allowing subcategories to be aggregated and displayed (‘rolled up’) in a simplified summary.
Each domain can potentially capture unlimited amounts of detail including technical contributions from subject experts and qualified professionals alongside experiential witness statements and records of public concerns.
We must assume that no one person will have the time and skills necessary to assimilate all the content. Participants can navigate using high-level summaries, absorbing context and proportionality. Saving enough time to drill down, investigate, learn about and contribute in areas of special interest, experience or expertise.
P09 Prospects are displayed with close links to human impact assessments
The intention is to streamline a natural convergence or alignment (of Prospects and Values), within and between individuals and groups. One way to facilitate this alignment is to provide a close link between Prospects and a more formal (societal) impact assessment (from a variety of perspectives). Contributors are able to compare and contrast their support for activities and the value impacts other people associate with them.
A01 Users will be prepared to give a small proportion of their time, supporting others/the process.
By design, this application is free-at-the-point-of-use and intended to be ‘of value to people whatever their values’. However, they will be exposed, in passing, to displays showing their impact on others. Although their identity will be protected, their values, activities and arguments may be scrutinised and responded to by others. There is an expectation that the system itself may ask frequent users to give a small proportion of their time to help others, to moderate, teach, perform QC or other housekeeping e.g., categorising and assessing impacts.
A02 Sample sizes can be surprisingly small and remain representative.
In a similar way to opinion polls, Value and Prospect registers, Discourses and Impact evaluations do not need a large proportion of the public to respond, in order to be reasonably and sufficiently representative.
This characteristic (relatively small sample size) of large social systems, makes it practical to seek assistance from qualified but relatively disinterested volunteers e.g., Selecting people from a country or location entirely unaffected by a prospect to conduct impact assessments. It means that only a small proportion of each participant’s online time is required for administrative support work.
A03.1 It is meaningful to estimate the Societal Human Value impact of a Prospect.
A03.2 Could it also be meaningful to estimate the societal (i.e. extrinsic) value of an individual?
If it were ever sufficiently accurate and verifiable then the amount of human value generated by an individual (over a year say) could be an alternative (reputational?) measure of our value to society.
Discussion: Characterising the total value impact of an individual as Intrinsic plus Extrinsic value, distinguishes between the Intrinsic and subjective value of our own lives to ourselves, and the (Extrinsic) and in principle measurable impact that we have on the values of others.
When managing large numbers of people or e.g. future citizens, we generally assume the intrinsic value of all poverty free lives as being equal. This approach aligns with the drive for ‘fairness’ and the strongly held (‘self evident’) idea that people are created equal.
P10 The Value-Prospecting processes will by design align with the principles of conflict resolution.
More actively, we may also provide volunteer Conciliation and Arbitration moderators, where e.g., Bullying, Abuse, Trolling or Flaming behaviors are perceived as opportunities for learning.
Enriching the Registers; An Evaluation/Impact assessment component (C4)
C04 Evaluation (Human Value Impact Assessment)
In this process, everyone who is logged in will be able to identify/register, classify, qualify, discuss and where practical quantify Prospect outcomes in terms of Values in the register. There is no requirement for the same individuals to be assigned to all steps in the assessment. There may be roles for volunteer specialists (Value actuaries?).
Impact assesments mean that Prospects/Activities that are particularly impactful on individuals will be reported to them, ranked by significance. Conversely the Prospects and Activities of every individual will be reported on, highlighting alternatives with potential for higher human value outcomes.
The Transformative nature of the value prospecting dialogs depends on this focussed capability to identify and connect stakeholders safely
The relatively small sample size required for reasonably sufficient accuracy opens up the possibility that the system can randomly assign volunteers with different relevant perspectives (Professional Subject Expert, Qualified/Disinterested, Trusted Commentator) to contribute to Evaluations. This is in addition to there being an open invitation to all (aka self-selection).
The relatively small sample size required also opens up the possibility that populations unable to represent themselves or who may be subject to constraints or controls on self expression can be identified and if necessary partially or wholly represented ‘in absentia’. Special ‘whistle blowing’ provisions may be required e.g. to measure unusual variances between tracable and untraceable contributions, and to offer support to groups and content providers who may be at risk by manipulation or misrepresentation.
P12.1 The Human Value Impact assessment process is intended to be general and extendible.
Ideally and by design the assessment method should be flexible and compatible enough to approximate the various flavours of Impact Assessment used by e.g., the USA, the EU, UN, WHO and World Bank. These established schemes often have a scope emphasis such as Environmental, Social, Health, Human Rights, Climate Change, Cultural Heritage, Biodiversity etc. Within the proposed process, many of the indices used in these targeted assessments (childhood mortality, education, inequality, rates of extinction) could be interpreted either as direct human values, or as proxies for the human values of future generations.
P12.2 Where and when practicable, the VP application will represent the impact on future generations
In this design, we have committed in principle to represent the human values of the active population. Giving equal significance of the total values of each person but allowing them to distribute their total influence between their values as they see fit (prioritising some over others). Giving each person a value profile.
However many or most of our actions have impacts on ‘outsiders’ such as future human populations and other living/feeling things who cannot represent themselves directly.
(P12.2 Discourse.Pro) Where an environmental impact assessment involves ‘ecosystem services’ (which enable more life), then the value of these services could be expressed in human value terms. Consider that an improvement in ecosystem services (less pollution, more water, higher food yields)…results in 100 million more people getting the opportunity of a (poverty free) lifetime, then we could legitimately allocate, on their behalf, 100 percent of 100 million people’s representation in favour of this prospect.
(P12.2 Discourse.Con) This approach could be divisive and alienating e.g., amongst those of us who identify with consumerist culture. The problem is not apparent, when sheltered behind the proxy language of ecoservice management and environmentalism. However, individual consumerist activity would need to produce a lot of hidden social benefits, before it could outweigh the human value alternative of additional poverty free lives.
P12.3 Where and when practicable, the VP application will represent the impacts on other living things.
It is assumed that all living things have their own intrinsic value, in addition to their value to humans who feel love and affection for them and the utilitarian value they may have to humans as e.g. genetic reservoirs.
A04 It is assumed that individuals and groups will try to degrade the democratic representation of the system…
It is assumed that manipulative and ‘gaming’ behaviours by individuals (e.g., Selling their representation to others for personal gain), can be detected, traced and previous and future occurrences mitigated for.
P13 A process and system which AFARP is incapable of democratic representational bias.
AFARP = As Far As Reasonably Practicable
We need to be sure that the representation of peoples values and the prospects and initiatives they imply is correct. i.e. does not over/under represent or misrepresent any individual or group. NB since AFARP changes with time, the prototype validation process would need to be constantly upgraded. e.g., regarding people who cannot access their profile or who are subject to coercion/control by e.g., other people or by a state.
C05 Opening an Account; Logging in, Verification, Identity and Personal Profile information
There is an almost universal requirement for web apps to be able to validate the identity of their users and to be able to verify that their instructions or other digital activities can be reliably attributed.
In systems which wish to legitimately claim to be representative it is important that no individual has more than one vote, and ideally that no person or group has exerted unseen and undue influence over any other person or group.
It is also nearly universal to provide for anonymous contributions (e.g., whistle blowing). We want as many people as possible to be able to use the system but recognise that some will be hesitant to expose identifying details (for instance in countries where their views would get them arrested and persecuted).
For a proof-of-concept application/prototype, the identity/verification, and related trust and reputational systems need only be sufficiently good. We may be able to verify in proportion to influence or how radical a person’s contribution is. We could provide account privileges reflecting the degree of identity verification a participant is prepared to undergo (and the results of that verification). Many of us can be adequately vouched for by friends and family, colleagues and acquaintances, any might be prepared to submit to be validated in this way (the way we are in our physical communities).
I would hope to be able to use established, open source or free commercial techniques for Verification in the prototype and proof-of-concept stages, but would really welcome advice / expertise.
Startup Screens, Matchmaking, Value Prospecting, Researching and Reflecting
The startup screen is the same for everyone, summarising the things that matter most, to most people.
P14 Support social learning (broader perspectives, context and proportionality)
Navigation will default to ‘drilling down’ from the most general global long term public view towards a particular, local, near time view (a bit like Google Earth’ startup). The default displays will show areas of interest adjacent to and in proportion to the total ‘whole world’ visual context.
C06 Startup Displays / Viewer access: The most important things: –
The Startup screen has two main navigation windows, the first one shows the most important human Values expressed by all the users (‘the public’), the other shows the most effective Prospects for expressing those Values using impact assessments (initially by ‘Professional Subject Expert’ groups).
The two display windows can be linked, so that selecting a single Value will display the Prospects which express it most effectively and vice versa. The user can explore any Value, Prospect or Evaluation in complete detail by ‘double clicking’ on it to open a detail screen – including a Discourse navigation screen if this has been created.
The application is intended as a useful public reference work; searchable, filterable using Scope classifications like types of Activity, Prospect or Impact, Location, Time scales and Free text. As a trivial example, the user could select a product-prospect relating to ‘Using a certain brand of soap’, or ‘Eating Laboratory grown meat’. The value screen would update to summarise the total ‘human value’ impacts of these prospects. The process automatically listing alternative comparable prospects options, ranked by the estimated total human value.
C07 Support Social Learning; A flexible ‘Compare and Contrast’ function
A flexible ‘Compare and Contrast’ reporting function is a general requirement. Used to report on the main points of difference e.g., In the values of different groups and individuals, or the different Impact assessments of different prospects or assessments made by different groups.
C08 Logging in allows the user to contribute by Editing and Writing, and to be represented.
Logged in participants can generate a personal profile, using it to see personalised reports (‘How can I help?’, ‘What should I do?’), rather than the more general ‘What do most people think is most important?’.
Logging in enables contributors to –
Select from predefined Values (or add new ones) to efficiently represent their views.
Indicate their support/enthusiasm for Prospects, participate in building up the discourse dialogs.
Obtain new prospect evaluations or recommendations to support decisions they need to make.
Suggest and advocate for their own initiatives. Learn and socialise with like-minded individuals.
Review and contribute to Value and Prospect development. Respond to and help with others evaluations.
The User Interface: ‘Matchmaking’ illustrated
At its most utilitarian level the system is intended to be compellingly useful (a ‘go-to’ utility). Some may use the app to contact and relate (vent, consult, console) by discussing their cares, concerns or politics. Some may concern themselves with ‘moving onshore windmills offshore’, or ‘Intergenerational Resource Justice’ or ‘The existential survival of sentient life’. However, many people globally will also express urgent personal needs, matters of personal survival. The interface should be able to answer the question “What should I do for the best?” for all its contributors, whatever their life stage or status; Matchmaking each individual to opportunities within the communities to which they belong.
Case 1) An unemployed painter and decorator should be able to find jobs(prospects) in their local area…
By default these will be reported ranked by ‘human value’. In the human value system it may be that ‘resolving condensation and mould’ for a poor family ranks higher than ‘painting the front of the house to increase the sale value’, even if the latter pays better money. The decorator is given the information to choose, and may acquire reputational recognition for that decision.
Case 2) A ‘volunteer’ may be looking for ‘Something I could for my community during the next 3 hours?’.
A bit like Facebook and Google, when matching adverts to its users (or dating agencies matching profiles)… the intention is to be able to use profiles, registered cares and activity reports to suggest prospects like…’Go and do some gardening at Mrs Johnstons at the end of your street. Take some eggs.’…The volunteer personally values gardening and enjoys cake, Mrs Johnstone likes company and needs some mobility assistance after a fall, she loves baking and her garden…
Corrections, clarifications, additional Principles, Components and Assumptions?
(please let me know, I’ll add a revision)..
P15 The User Interface General Requirements; Using Node Link Visualisations (a bit like VOSViewer):
I’d like to think that a similar form of Node/Link (or ‘bubble diagram’) could be used throughout the application to represent Values, Prospects, Impacts and Arguments. Utilising bubble and link size, colour, grouping etc. to represent the importance of the elements and relationships. Zooming in and out a bit like using Google earth, to navigate a whole conceptual ‘value’ landscape whilst maintaining a sense of proportion and context. Quite likely I will be using an optional projection onto a Log/Log space to allow detail to be examined within the context of a very large dataset.
I can see that the impressive VOSViewer for bibliometrics comes very close to allowing value prospecting so I’ll include a link on the site with some experimental data to illustrate the form of graphical interaction I’m thinking of
APPENDIX END
Change Log (latest at top)
10 Jan 2024 Minor Clarifications some amplicfication, minor renumbering of principles