Ethics-aware Software Architecture Design

In contemporary society, ethics has permeated various fields, including the ever-expanding realm of software engineering. Software-intensive systems, deeply interwoven into our lives, hold the power to impact individuals and society, often giving rise to ethical issues. Understanding and addressing the ethical issues surrounding systems have thus become imperative. Dealing with these issues necessitates the integration of ethical aspects, encompassing a wide spectrum of human values, into the architecture design of software systems. This integration presents multifaceted challenges, as ethical aspects transcend straightforward rule adherence. The complexities of human values and the contextual nature of ethics complicate their incorporation into software design. This complexity necessitates a meticulous analysis of the intended purpose of systems, the relevant stakeholders, and their ethical concerns and values. Despite ongoing research in ethics and technology, the methods for identifying stakeholders, extracting ethical values, and translating them into design requirements remain elusive. This underlines the need for dedicated efforts to establish comprehensive practices that embed ethical values within software architecture design. This thesis presents several contributions to SE ethics, encompassing various aspects. It establishes a thorough understanding of stakeholders and ethical values in software engineering, offering practical tools like a stakeholder map and a value model. Additionally, it delves into the ethical considerations of software architecture. Furthermore, it introduces a card-based game, aimed at enhancing the integration of ethical aspects into software architecture design. Lastly, the thesis evaluates proposed ethics-driven instruments (i.e., the stakeholder map and the value model) to assess their effectiveness in supporting ethical considerations, through a case study. These contributions collectively advance the discourse and practice of ethical considerations within the software engineering field.