Based on Past Experience: Highlighting Potential Human Value Issues in Domain Modelling

In this technologically evolving era, important human values such as freedom and social responsibility are frequently overlooked in software systems, which can have significant negative social consequences as can be seen by recent examples involving Facebook or Delta Airlines. Therefore, it is important to help software developers incorporate human values considerations throughout the software development process. In this paper, we focus on domain modelling with class diagrams, an important technique for requirements engineering and early design activities. We propose a domain-specific language called HVT (Human Value Trigger) that enables the collection of human value issues including how to mitigate them. Practitioners may utilize this language to contribute more such examples to grow a catalogue of these past experiences over time. As a motivating example, we analyze the domain model of WhatsApp through the lens of Schwartz's taxonomy of human values to compile a list of issues concerning human values (i.e., model elements that may affect various human values). Furthermore as proof-of-concept, a prototype implementation addresses the need for human values to be integrated in domain models with the help of these collected past experiences by providing suggestions based on the model element type, name, and semantics based on synonyms. An analysis of eight synonym services is performed to find the optimal synonym service or combination of synonym services to use with the implementation.