Building with, not for: Case Studies of Community-Driven Employment Innovations

Technology presents a force for positive change; however, technology has perpetuated racism and deepened social inequality and injustice seen in society. There are many reasons for these injustices within our design and development practices alone. Our underlying assumptions about who has access to technology inherently exclude the most negatively impacted. These voices are often missing from the design, development, and evaluation process. Their insight and genius are often missing from the technological narratives that we tell. However, it is unclear what approaches practitioners should take going forward and what steps they might take to integrate these approaches into their existing process. This presentation aims to unpack ways for practitioners to begin combatting the design, development, and deployment of technologies that reinforce and perpetuate racial inequality while designing tools that align with the values and strengths of communities.

In this presentation, I present our process to develop employment tools for and with minoritized job seekers living in Southeastern Michigan. I discuss challenges and missteps when designing for rather than with job seekers, despite taking user-centered design approaches. I discuss what we learned from our missteps, and share a promising approach using a combination of co-design and agile development when designing with job seekers.

 

Learning Materials

By and featuring Dr. Dillahunt

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Speaker Details

Tawanna Dillahunt is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information (UMSI) and holds a courtesy appointment with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. Working at the intersection of human-computer interaction; environmental, economic, and social sustainability; and equity, her research investigates and implements technologies to support the needs of marginalized people. She and her team have designed and developed digital employment tools that address the needs of job seekers with limited digital literacy and education; assessed real-time ridesharing and online grocery delivery applications among lower-income and transportation-scarce groups, and proposed models for novice entrepreneurs to build their technical capacity. Tawanna is an inaugural recipient of the Skip Ellis Early Career Award and was recently named an ACM Distinguished Member. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, an M.S. in Computer Science from the Oregon Health and Science University, and a B.S. in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University. She was also a software engineer at Intel Corporation for seven years.

Series:
Race and Technology: A Research Lecture Series
Date:
Speakers:
Dr. Tawanna Dillahunt
Affiliation:
Associate Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information (UMSI)

Series: Race and Technology: A Research Lecture Series