Award Abstract # 1253465

ABSTRACT

The PI's long-term goal is to create theory to inform HCI design practices, to ensure the production of egalitarian designs that reflect all users' values. In particular, she aims to create feminist theory for HCI , which she hopes will close the gap in women's participation in computing. Previously, the PI has shown how approaches to designing for women are questionable when viewed in light of feminist theory. Feminist scholars argue that the lack of women in computing further discourages women from pursuing programming-related careers, and that women are also excluded because technologies created by men better address male needs. The PI believes the problem lies not only in who is excluded but in that the design processes inherently alienate women. Her approach is to address the problem by bridging previously unrelated aspects of the learning sciences, human-computer interaction, and the science and technology studies of gender, which will be combined with findings from a multi-year ethnographic study to acquire a deep understanding of how girls co-construct their gender and technical identities, how technologies come to be associated with one gender or the other, and how this affects girls' career choices. These results will be used as the basis for participatory design with the girls to create technologies in keeping with their gender identity. In doing so the PI expects to learn about girls' needs, enabling her to develop best practices for gender-sensitive design ensuring equitable access to technology. By bridging previously unconnected literatures, the project will reframe the problem of gender-equity in computer science from a pipeline issue to one requiring improved design and evaluation practices in HCI. The multi-year ethnographic study, to be conducted both in school and at after school programs, will provide a longitudinal understanding of how young women co-construct their gender and technical identities, what appeals to them about technical careers, and the process by which technology artifacts acquire symbolic gender. Participatory design will allow theory to be applied to understand what appeals to girls in the technology design process. While the project is not itself an education intervention, by building on both the empirical and theoretical contributions this research will explore how design practices themselves can be used to increase female participation in computing.

Broader Impacts: This research will directly impact women's training in computing, as well as lead to changes in the design process to be more inclusive for women. The project will create grounded theory on gender and technical identity that will inform participatory design, which in turn will allow the identification of needed changes to the software development process so that it results in more technologies that empower young women to use technology. As a consequence, the pool of qualified computer scientists will ultimately expand to include more women, which in the long turn will increase workforce thereby making the United States more globally competitive in business and more able to pursue scientific national security efforts. Furthermore, the project will directly benefit the group of young women involved in the ethnographic study, increasing their practical experiences with technology by teaching them software design, HCI, programming skills, and a foundation in computational thinking. Through participatory design the project will also expose middle and high school teachers to ubiquitous computing technologies, providing teacher development.

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