What is prioritizing and categorizing identified values?
During the value specification, many different kinds of values will be identified, since many different kinds of stakeholders are involved. Once these values have been identified, a hierarchical analysis of values is required since some values might be more important than others. These so-called critical values have to be addressed by the eHealth technology in any case. The development team has to decide what these critical values are, possibly in collaboration with stakeholders. This can be done by methods like focus groups with the development team and/or other stakeholders, and/or via techniques like Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) [1] that can assist in complex decision making. Software can be used to rank values from the involved stakeholders into a value map.
What is the aim of prioritizing and categorizing identified values?
Often, conflicting values arise, for example when the values from an insurance company differ rigorously from those of an end-user. In those cases, the development team has to decide on how to cope with these conflicting values, for example by discussing this with involved key stakeholders. The importance of the stakeholders as was identified in the contextual inquiry should be kept in mind: the values from the most important stakeholders might be more relevant in in most – but not all – cases. All of the prioritized values are visualized in a value map.
References
[1] Saaty, T. L. (1988). What is the analytic hierarchy process? In: Mathematical models for decision support (pp. 109-121). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.