Applying Value Sensitive Design to Location-Based Services: Designing for Shared Spaces and Local Conditions

TL;DR

This paper introduces Location-Aware Value Sensitive Design (LA-VSD), a tailored framework for designing location-based services that effectively address value tensions in shared physical spaces and local contexts.

Contribution

It presents LA-VSD, a domain-specific adaptation of VSD, with heuristics for stakeholder identification, contextual value capture, and value-aligned interactions in LBS.

Findings

LA-VSD improves context-awareness in LBS design.

Case study demonstrates practical application in e-scooter sharing.

Design process leads to more ethical and user-aligned services.

Abstract

Location-Based Services (LBS) such as ride-sharing, accommodation, food delivery, and location-driven social media platforms entangle digital systems with physical spaces, thereby generating impacts that extend beyond users to others who share the same environments. Existing design approaches struggle to address the dual challenge of value tensions that arise in shared physical spaces and the locality-specific contexts in which LBS operate. To respond, we introduce Location-Aware Value Sensitive Design (LA-VSD), a domain-specific adaptation of VSD tailored to the distinctive characteristics of LBS. LA-VSD guides designers through three heuristics to help (1) identify and prioritise stakeholders through local space-sharing scenarios, (2) adapt empirical methods to capture values and tensions in context, and (3) support value-aligned interactions across both digital and physical layers of the service. Through a case study of e-scooter sharing in Melbourne, Australia, we demonstrate how LA-VSD enables more grounded, context-aware, and actionable design of LBS.