Browsing by Subject "Participatory Design"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Oral History with Susanne Bødker
    (Charles Babbage Institute, 2021-12) Bødker, Susanne
    This interview is part of a series on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) conducted by the Charles Babbage Institute for ACM SIGCHI (Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction). HCI Pioneer Susanne Bødker discusses early education and interests, and her undergraduate studies at University of Aarhus. She goes on to relate her experience for 10 months at Xerox PARC where she joined the Adele Goldberg’s Smalltalk Group, an opportunity made possible by Kristen Nygaard’s connections. The core of the interview focuses on her graduate education (studying under Morten Kyng, who she continued to collaborate with for many years) and long and impressive career. It especially emphasizes the combination of her theoretical and empirical work, and the importance of participatory design, and activity theory to her research and work. She discusses the NJMF, Utopia Project, and labor experience with technology as well as leadership she provided to the Center for Participatory Information Technology and CHMI.
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    SponsorLens: Designing a Human-Centered Computational System to Support Peer Mentorship in Substance Use Disorder Recovery
    (2022-11) Schmitt, Zach
    Substance use disorders (SUDs), such as alcohol and drug abuse, are widespread and hazardous to public health. Over the last two decades, nearly one million Americans have died from a drug overdose. In 2020 alone, over ninety thousand died from a drug overdose in the United States. This marks a 31\% increase in overdose deaths from 2019 to 2020. Due to this dramatic increase in overdose deaths, the need for effective treatment is great. However, SUDs have been historically difficult to treat, given their chronic cycles of treatment and relapse. To improve treatment outcomes, new and supplemental approaches are needed. This dissertation aims to position participants as co-designers and subject matter experts in designing technologies that complement, rather than disrupt, the current values, practices, and challenges of individuals in recovery from SUDs. To contribute a rich qualitative understanding of the values, practices, and challenges of individuals in recovery from SUDs, I conducted a series of participatory design workshops with sixteen women living in a sober living environment. While several challenges and practices were highlighted in these workshops, participants independently and unanimously chose to focus their designs on technology to support their relationship with their peer mentor (i.e., sponsor). I then expanded this study to investigate how social computing may support or hinder dyadic mentorship within SUD recovery. I conducted twenty-seven semi-structured interviews with fifteen mentors (i.e., sponsors) and twelve mentees (i.e., sponsees). This study informed the creation of specific design implications to increase mentor (i.e., sponsor) capacity, facilitate mentorship (i.e., sponsorship) initiation, and grow a broader support community for mentees (i.e., sponsees). Finally, to contribute a deeper empirical understanding of social computing interventions for peer mentorship in SUD recovery, I designed and developed a high-fidelity prototype called SponsorLens. SponsorLens functioned as a synchronous communication and scheduling system to increase mentor (\i.e., sponsor) capacity and the frequency of contact between mentors (i.e., sponsors) and mentees (i.e., sponsees). To investigate the feasibility of SponsorLens, I conducted a four-week field deployment study with four dyadic mentorship pairs in recovery from SUDs.
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    User Resistance in HIV Technology Design: Toward a Critical Participatory Rhetoric for Technical and Professional Communication
    (2021-05) Green, McKinley
    This dissertation investigates the digital risk communication practices of 14 young people living with HIV, part of a community-driven initiative to involve youth as participants in developing a digital tool to support HIV risk reduction. While many health practitioners and technical communication scholars involve end-users as participants in design settings, and researchers have pointed to digital health technologies as opportunities to reach vulnerable populations and mitigate health disparities, this study found that youth often resisted digital infrastructures to encourage risk reduction. Participants rarely listed their serostatus on dating applications, interacted with HIV-focused social media pages, or incorporated digital platforms into their healthcare management. This study extends on participatory theories in technical communication and technology design by focusing on these moments of resistance, when individuals refuse technology-based initiatives or subvert systems designed to include them. Drawing from histories of resistance in queer theory and HIV activism, this study argues that these unruly and resistant user experiences complicate dominant narratives about sexual health and envision alternative epistemologies of HIV risk. Developing participatory infrastructures that center on these ulterior health practices can enable more equitable healthcare arrangements that reflect the situated risk communication expertise of people living with HIV.