Abstract: Technologists are often motivated to do good in the world, laying out grand visions for how to optimize systems, automate tedious tasks, and expand what is possible. However, these innovations can create or exacerbate inequities and forgo the needs of marginalized people in favor of novelty. Technology designers need frameworks and approaches that help them consider the impacts on marginalized people and the harms that can occur when systems are poorly designed, built, and evaluated. As a Human-Computer Interaction researcher designing health equity interventions, I uncover how existing design paradigms fail when designing for marginalized people and offer an alternative approach to systems-building for health equity that centers community engagement.

In this talk, Dr. Liang will share findings from his experience as a community-based participatory researcher invested in the sociotechnical dimensions of designing health equity interventions. He will present two studies that draw on his research to design sex education resources for and with transgender and queer youth. The first covers a qualitative design-needs assessment study that involves a series of focus groups, asynchronous remote communities, and co-design sessions with transgender and queer youth in the greater Seattle area. Following the need to expand the diversity of involvement, Dr. Liang will then present lessons from the development of and ongoing engagements with a community advisory board. He will then situate these two studies through the lens of four tensions in doing human-computer interaction research with marginalized people – exploitation, membership, disclosure, and allyship – constructed through surveys and interviews with human-computer interaction researchers. Finally, he will articulate a vision for future development of health equity technologies that puts community-based participatory methods and values at the fore.

 Bio: Calvin Liang (he/they) is a PhD Candidate in Human Centered Design and Engineering at the University of Washington. He is a Human-Computer Interaction researcher who specializes in social computing, health equity, and research with marginalized people. Their research focuses on designing systems for health equity through community-based participatory research as well as qualitative and design-based methods. Previously, he earned a Master's degree in Human Factors Engineering from Tufts University. In addition to publishing in ACM venues such as Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), Interaction Design and Children (IDC), and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), he has shared his research with UX practitioners at the Critical UX Event, technologists at the Microsoft Research Summit, health informatics researchers at the National LGBTQ Health Conference, and industry partners with the Social Media Collective at Microsoft Research. Calvin draws from these experiences to bridge health and computing by deriving specific values, methods, and epistemologies from each to inform a holistic approach to systems-building for health equity.