Is There a Need to Address Human Values in Domain Modelling?

Consideration of human values during software development can improve technology acceptance and minimize its negative societal implications. However, important human values often get ignored during requirements analysis and specification. Modelling is a fundamental requirements engineering (RE) activity. As a pilot study, we consider domain modelling, an RE modelling technique which often forms the basis of system design and hence significantly impacts the whole software development process. This position paper presents initial evidence that human values are indeed reflected in domain models. Consequently, paying inadequate attention to human values during domain modelling may result in negative financial or reputational implications for software organizations. We posit that human values-enriched domain modelling guidelines may help in identifying what stakeholders really want to avoid system rejection and negative social implications and call upon the RE community to integrate human values-enriched guidelines into RE modelling techniques.