A robot with human values: assessing value-sensitive design in an agri-food context

Value Sensitive Design (VSD) aims to take societal values on board in the design of innovative technologies. While a lot has been written on VSD and the added value of using it for technology development, limited literature is available on its application to the agri-food sector. This article describes a VSD case study on an agri-food robotic system and reflects on the insights into the added value of using VSD. This paper concludes that while VSD contributes to broadening the perspective of technical researchers about non-technical requirements, its application in this case is constrained by five factors related to the nature of the VSD approach: i) lack of clarity on dealing with conflicting values; ii) the ideal timing of VSD is unclear; iii) VSD lacks effectiveness when technology is outsourced; iv) VSD does not account for time and context specificness of values; and v) the operationalisation of values in VSD.