CAREER: Towards HCI Theory for Technical and Gender Identity

PI的长期目标是创建理论来指导人机交互设计实践，以确保产生反映所有用户价值观的平等主义设计。 特别是，她的目标是为HCI创建女权主义理论，她希望这将缩小女性参与计算的差距。 以前，PI已经表明，当从女权主义理论的角度来看时，为女性设计的方法是值得怀疑的。 女性主义学者认为，计算机领域女性的缺乏进一步阻碍了女性追求与编程相关的职业，女性也被排除在外，因为男性创造的技术更好地满足了男性的需求。 PI认为，问题不仅在于谁被排除在外，而且在于设计过程固有地疏远了女性。 她的方法是通过弥合学习科学，人机交互以及性别科学和技术研究的以前不相关的方面来解决这个问题，这些方面将与多年人种学研究的结果相结合，以深入了解女孩如何共同构建他们的性别和技术身份，技术如何与一种性别或另一种性别相关联，以及这是如何影响女孩的职业选择的。这些结果将作为与女孩一起参与设计的基础，以创造符合其性别认同的技术。 在这样做的过程中，PI希望了解女孩的需求，使她能够为性别敏感的设计制定最佳做法，确保公平获得技术。 通过连接以前不相关的文献，该项目将重新构建计算机科学中的性别平等问题，从一个管道问题到一个需要改进人机交互设计和评估实践的问题。 多年的人种学研究，将在学校和课后课程进行，将提供一个纵向了解年轻女性如何共同构建自己的性别和技术身份，什么吸引他们的技术职业，以及技术工件获得象征性性别的过程。 实验性设计将允许理论被应用于理解什么吸引女孩在技术设计过程中。 虽然该项目本身不是一个教育干预，通过建立在经验和理论的贡献，这项研究将探讨如何设计实践本身可以用来增加女性参与computing.Broader影响：这项研究将直接影响妇女的培训计算，以及导致在设计过程中的变化，更包容的妇女。该项目将建立关于性别和技术特性的基础理论，为参与式设计提供信息，这反过来又将有助于确定软件开发过程所需的变化，从而产生更多的技术，增强年轻妇女使用技术的能力。 因此，合格的计算机科学家的人才库最终将扩大，包括更多的妇女，这在长期内将增加劳动力，从而使美国在商业上更具全球竞争力，更有能力追求科学的国家安全努力。 此外，该项目还将直接惠及参与人种学研究的年轻妇女群体，通过教授她们软件设计、人机交互、编程技能和计算思维基础，增加她们的技术实践经验。 通过参与式设计，该项目还将使初中和高中教师接触无处不在的计算技术，提供教师发展。

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.