Interactions

Listen, learn, respond, act

Posted: Thu, June 25, 2020 - 11:32:41

For those of us who occupy the closed worlds of privilege, it is time to listen. I write as a cisgender woman who has lived my life as White, academically educated, and economically secure, thanks to the initiative of my atheist Jewish grandparents who escaped the pogroms of the late 19th century and settled in New York City’s Lower East…

A call to action for the ACM

Posted: Mon, June 22, 2020 - 5:49:56

On June 8, 2020, several Black scholars, academic researchers, graduate students, practitioners, and other members and affiliates of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) gathered to write a letter to express concern for the ACM’s response to this current political moment. The letter, shown below, detailed the importance of solidarity needed from such a major association that is an academic…

A challenging response

Posted: Wed, June 17, 2020 - 2:32:05

Being an ally means being uncomfortable. —R.A.C.E. team, addressing institutional racism within initiatives for SIGCHI’s diversity and inclusion I write this to support the courageous R.A.C.E. Diversity and Inclusion team members who documented their experiences in their recent blog post addressing material impacts of institutional racism. Their crucial yet risky labor to hold leaders accountable cast my recent accessibility experiences…

We need to talk about digital contact tracing

Posted: Mon, June 15, 2020 - 4:34:49

Recently, Apple and Google discussed developing and distributing a digital contact-tracing system that will inform people when they’ve been exposed to someone who’s contracted Covid-19, and communicate to people that they’ve been exposed to you if you later test positive yourself. Apple has since deployed a beta of iOS 13 with the first parts of this system exposed to developers…

Comics as Covid-19 response: Visualizing the experience of videoconferencing with aging relatives

Posted: Fri, June 12, 2020 - 10:40:33

In the period between March and May 2020, we have been working on simultaneous projects employing qualitative methods to create comics in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. We have been motivated and inspired by disability and feminist scholarship, taking on board evidence-based warnings about the dangers of well-meaning but counterproductive “empathy building” exercises in design and health interventions [1]. Interested…

Addressing institutional racism within initiatives for SIGCHI’s diversity and inclusion

Posted: Thu, June 11, 2020 - 11:00:32

Realizing that All Can be Equal (or R.A.C.E) was the name that we gave ourselves when we volunteered in November 2018 to be ACM SIGCHI Innovators for Diversity and Inclusion (D&I). Our D&I team was composed of seven individuals, primarily junior scholars, who all identify as racial minorities and who had all personally experienced the ways in which academia could…

How can designers fight the coronavirus?

Posted: Wed, June 10, 2020 - 9:41:53

Most of us had never imagined that countries would have to declare lockdowns to protect their citizens from the coronavirus outbreak. In its wake, government authorities, health departments, doctors, nurses, security services, police, scientists, food suppliers, medical suppliers, nonprofit organizations, and industry leaders across the world are uniting and working tirelessly. And the rest of humanity is wholeheartedly thankful. At…

What Is the future of data sharing for research?

Posted: Mon, June 08, 2020 - 9:30:55

Digital data collection for health research usually follows well-established methods. In many of the labs that work with mobile sensing, research subjects are provided with consent forms, task instructions, and sensor devices or apps. Once the research subjects agree to participate, the expectation is that they will comply with the procedures and allow their lives to be digitally tracked. After…

A solution without a problem? Seeking questions to ask and problems to solve within open, civic data

Posted: Mon, June 01, 2020 - 10:16:42

The city of Amsterdam is using artificial intelligence (AI) to help sort through and triage their version of 311 calls. Chicago is using AI to help analyze and decrease rat infestations and to prevent them in the future. There is value in applying AI to urban challenges, but that value must come with explicit protections to privacy and citizen safety.…

Is remote the new normal? Reflections on Covid-19, technology, and humankind

Posted: Thu, May 28, 2020 - 1:46:39

Covid-19 forced governments to urge full or partial lockdown measures to slow the progression of the pandemic. By the end of March, more than 100 countries had “locked down” billions of people. During that time, Yvonne Rogers wrote a series of blog posts on the topic of “remote,” structured around the themes of living, working, numbers, and tracking (the full…