Social software is a growing reality worldwide, while the analysis and evaluation of this kind of system still is a quite unexplored challenge. The complex scenario of social software has been marked by the diversity of users, their limitations, preferences, cultural aspects such as values, beliefs, customs and so on. This paper sheds light on this scenario proposing a culturally aware artifact to support designers in the task of analyzing and evaluating social software, taking values and other cultural issues into account in an explicit way. The artifact, named VF4SS, was used by a group of designers to evaluate five different prototypes of systems for supporting cross-cultural collaboration. The results obtained from this activity demonstrate that the artifact can bring effective contributions to the evaluation as well as to the design of social software. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.102 LNBIP 374387Chinese Academy of Engineering,et al.,Inst. Syst. Technol. Inf. Control Commun. (INSTICC),K.C. Wong Education Foundation,National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC),University of ReadingPublisher:Springer VerlagPereira, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C., Silva, S.R.P., A Discussion on Social Software: Concept, Building Blocks and Challenges (2010) International Journal for Infonomics, 3 (4), pp. 382-391Boyd, D., The Significance of Social Software (2007) BlogTalks Reloaded: Social Software Research & Cases, pp. 15-30. , NorderstedtSchuler, D., Namioka, A., (1993) Participatory Design: Principles and Practices, , Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., HillsdaleFriedman, B., Value-Sensitive Design (1996) Interactions, pp. 16-23Pereira, R., Baranauskas, M.C.C., Silva, S.R.P., Softwares Sociais: Uma Visao Orientada a Valores (2010) IX Brazilian Symposium on Human Factors in Computer Systems (IHC 2010), pp. 149-158. , ACM Press, Belo HorizonteBaranauskas, M.C.C., Socially Aware Computing (2009) ICECE 2009 - VI International Conference on Engineering and Computer Education, Buenos Aires, pp. 1-4Hart, J., Ridley, C., Taher, F., Sas, C., Dix, A., Exploring the Facebook Experience: A New Approach to Usability (2008) NordiCHI 2008, pp. 471-474. , ACM Press, LundThompson, A.-J., Kemp, E.A., Web 2.0: Extending the framework for heuristic evaluation (2009) ACM CHINZ 2009, pp. 29-36. , ACM Press, AucklandSilva, P.A., Dix, A., Usability - Not as we know it! (2007) 21st BCS Conference on Human- Computer Interaction, Lanchester, pp. 103-106Hendler, J., Shadbolt, N., Hall, W., Berners-Lee, T., Weitzner, D., Web science: An interdisciplinary approach to understanding the web (2008) Communications of the ACM, 51, pp. 60-69Harrison, S., Tatar, D., Sengers, P., The three paradigms of HCI (2007) Alt CHI - Proceedings of CHI 2007, pp. 1-21. , ACM Press, San JoseHall, E.T., (1959) The Silent Language, , Anchoor Books, New YorkLiu, K., (2000) Semiotics in Information Systems Engineering, , Cambridge University Press, New YorkSchwartz, S.H., Basic human values: Their content and structure across countries (2005) Values and Behaviors in Organizations, pp. 21-55. , Vozes, Rio de JaneiroKolkman, M., (1993) Problem Articulation Methodology, , PhD thesis, University of Twente, EnschedeSellen, A., Rogers, Y., Harper, R., Rodden, T., Reflecting Human Values in the Digital Age (2009) Communications of the ACM, 52, pp. 58-66