Information science

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://digital.lib.washington.edu/handle/1773/4933

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Edge-Based Anomaly Detection for IoMT: A Lightweight Unsupervised Model and SIEM Integration
(2026-04-20) Grande, Payton Rose; Goda, Bryan
The growth of the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) has increased connectivity across healthcare environments, but it has also reduced visibility into how many medical devices actually behave. Many of these devices run on constrained hardware and provide little to no detailed logging, which makes traditional host-based monitoring difficult in practice. This creates a detection challenge: how to identify abnormal behavior early without adding heavy security tooling or sending large amounts of telemetry to a centralized system.This thesis presents the design and evaluation of an edge-based, unsupervised anomaly detection pipeline for IoMT telemetry, with a specific focus on how detections integrate into real Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) workflows. An Isolation Forest model is trained using baseline telemetry that represents normal device behavior and then deployed in inference-only mode at the edge, where the model scores new events without retraining or updating parameters during operation. Instead of giving raw model scores to analysts, anomaly outputs are normalized into SOC-centric severity levels and formatted as structured alerts for ingestion into Elasticsearch and visualization in Kibana. Evaluation was conducted in two phases. Under controlled injection-based conditions, anomaly scores showed near-perfect separability between normal and abnormal telemetry (ROC AUC = 1.000), indicating that the model can clearly rank strongly defined abnormal deviations. When evaluated on a more realistic dataset where normal and abnormal behavior overlap and anomalies are more subtle, performance decreased (as expected), but was still usable (ROC AUC = 0.783). A threshold sweep was used to explore how detection performance changes as the decision cutoff for an anomaly is adjusted. This analysis showed that the system could be tuned to keep the false positive rate below 1% while still detecting a meaningful portion of anomalous events. Additional analysis confirmed that anomaly scores were normalized consistently, that severity labels were applied predictably, and that alert generation remained stable over longer runs. Runtime feasibility was measured in both a virtualized environment and on Raspberry Pi–class hardware as a representative constrained edge gateway platform. Mean per-event latency increased from approximately 5 ms in the virtualized baseline to roughly 23 ms when running on edge hardware, which reflects the expected increased overhead of operating with tighter resource limits. Inference still completed without memory exhaustion, swapping, or process failure. These results suggest that lightweight unsupervised scoring can operate within realistic resource limits. This system is not designed to explain exactly what happened or who carried out an attack. Its purpose is to flag unusual behavior early so it can be investigated further. More broadly, this work shows how lightweight statistical ranking at the edge can help security teams prioritize abnormal behavior earlier and feed those detections into the centralized monitoring workflows that they already use.
From Sea to Servers: Temporalities of Data Management and the Limits of Availability in Oceanography
(2025-10-02) Tian, Yubing; Finn, Megan; Snyder, Jaime
A persistent challenge across scientific fields is determining what research data to keep, why, how, and for how long. This dissertation examines how research data is managed and shared in oceanography, focusing on the impact of data policies introduced by the United States (U.S.) National Science Foundation (NSF). Since 2011, the NSF has required data management plans (DMPs) as part of grant proposals with the aim of making research data available over time. While DMPs may be a relatively recent requirement, NSF data sharing policies for oceanographers can be traced back to the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE), 1990 - 2002. Oceanographers participating in WOCE were required to make their data available two years after collection. A requirement that at the time, was noted as a departure from traditional research practices. Nevertheless, this time norm for data sharing has endured, as it can be found in early NSF Division of Ocean Sciences (OCE) data policies from the 1990s and remains in OCE data policies today. And yet, oceanographers still report difficulties managing and sharing research data. This study explores what happens to data, researchers, and infrastructures under the requirements mandated in federal data policies. Through interviews and document analysis, this dissertation foregrounds the temporal dimensions of managing and making data available and makes the following three contributions. First, this study shows that data do not all follow 4 the same lifecycle as understood in prescriptive research data lifecycle models. Moreover, while data policy imagines universal availability, in practice, data persists unevenly over time. From DMPs, I identify three forms of planned data afterlives: secluded, splintered, and speculative, to describe how material conditions, disciplinary norms, and institutional arrangements shape what data endure, and how. Second, I explore the ways that researchers struggle to meet policy expectations for data availability. Researchers describe data management as tedious, timeconsuming, and hard to prioritize, even for those who understand its importance. Following Elizabeth Shove's argument that practices have distinct temporal characteristics, I argue that data management and sharing lack an established "practice-time profile". This absence leads to endloaded, last-minute efforts during the project's sunset phases, which can create minor to substantial delays in data sharing. At the same time, some researchers are developing practicetime profiles to better manage their data in preparation for sharing and preservation. Third, I introduce the concept of temporal paradox to describe how data infrastructures built for longterm access are often marked by short-term fragility. Building on Marisa Cohn's "convivial decay," I describe how researchers and data managers preemptively anticipate infrastructural demise, not only in aging systems, but also in relatively new ones. I articulate how this practice of planning for the end, paradoxically, supports the long-term persistence of data. Together, these findings contribute to information science, STS, and infrastructure studies through an empirical account of the temporal dynamics between data practices, infrastructures, and policy in the shortterm availability and long-term stewardship of scientific data.
Collaborative Dynamics Among Academia, NGOs, and Indigenous Communities in Latin America: The Impact of Social Change-Oriented Information Science Research
(2025-10-02) Iribe Ramirez, Yvette; Young, Jason C
This dissertation investigates how collaborative information-science projects between Indigenous communities, academic institutions, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) can support decolonial development and Indigenous self-determination. Centered in the Vaupés region of Colombia, the study examines the conditions under which participatory methodologies foster not only co-design, but accountability to people, to place, and to the long histories and futures embedded in Indigenous territorial governance. The research centers on a participatory training program known as the Diplomado en Liderazgo, Comunicación y Cambio Climático, co-developed with Indigenous associations ASATIQ and ASATRIZY, in partnership with Fundación Colombia Multicolor, Wildlife Works, and the Universidad Nacional Abierta y a Distancia (UNAD). Conducted between 2021 and 2022, the diplomado brought together over a hundred leaders from communities across the Querarí, Yapú, and Papurí river regions. Through three intensive sessions, participants engaged in collaborative project development using participatory mapping, community photography (Photostories), serious games (Mayuk and Cachiveras), and thematic dialogues. These tools facilitated cultural documentation, environmental planning, and the expression of community-defined priorities for development.This work is anchored in a three-part analytical framework: settler colonial studies, Participatory Action Research (PAR), and the human rights-based approach (HRBA) to development. Settler colonialism is understood as an enduring structure that shapes the conditions of research and development in Latin America, often through exclusionary and technocratic forms of intervention. PAR, rooted in Latin American praxis and the work of Orlando Fals Borda, grounds the research in relational, iterative collaboration. The HRBA, following Charters & Stavenhagen and informed by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), articulates actionable principles for ethical development: that it must be endogenous, participatory, equitable, self-managed, culturally appropriate, and accountable. Findings from Vaupés demonstrate that participatory information systems can enable collective planning, support cultural continuity, and strengthen Indigenous governance, when they are embedded within relational processes and aligned with community-led visions. Participatory mapping helped articulate past, present, and future relationships to territory. Photostories documented daily life and ecological change while serving as platforms for reflection and advocacy. Games like Mayuk and Cachiveras opened accessible, culturally grounded dialogues about communication, identity, and environmental care. These activities surfaced priorities such as food sovereignty, intergenerational knowledge transmission, forest protection, and educational access. The diplomado's structure, which was rooted in co-facilitation, multilingual practice, and collective certification, allowed for sustained engagement and the institutional recognition of Indigenous leadership. Beyond the outputs of each individual method or their contributions to capacity building and community development, this work goes one step further by developing an evaluative HRBA framework. This tool can be applied to each method of engagement, and to the architecture of collaboration itself. That is, all of the parts that go into the development of the project: dialogue, planning, relationships building, logistics, etc. The goal here is to identify how a participatory activity/method, and all of the parts of the project, align with an HRBA principle, and which Declaration article underpins. This evaluative framework in combination with PAR can help us understand these collaborative dynamics across sectors and between communities by aligning Information Science research with a grounded approach to incorporating human rights within research design. This dual-lens approach helps bridge the gaps between arbitrary measures and metrics of success and what actionable, tangible benefits communities experience during these research and development interventions. It also creates a layer of accountability and reflection for the researchers and institutions that seek to partner with communities. This dissertation does not offer a technical model for replication, rather it offers a charge for researchers. It challenges information science research to confront the social and political consequences of its designs, to move beyond extractive research norms, and to reimagine innovation as a process rooted in humility, relationality, and principled resistance. It affirms that rights-based, participatory approaches are not simply ethical add-ons, but necessary responses to ongoing colonial structures and institutional inequities. In an era of increasing political pressure on academic freedom, evolving metrics of progress, the erosion of human rights protections, and widening digital divides, the work asserts that research must not retreat into neutrality, rather it must resist and transform. This model of engaged scholarship developed here is unfinished by design and it insists that meaningful collaboration must be relational, iterative, and guided by those whose lives, lands, and knowledges have too often been marginalized.
Breaking the Silence: Unveiling Microaggressions and Cultivating Support for Women’s Stigmatized Health Care
(2025-08-01) Ryu, Hyeyoung; Pratt, Wanda
Stigma surrounding sexual and reproductive health often silences women, limiting their access to essential care. Fear of social judgment deters many from seeking treatment for conditions like sexually transmitted infections, or even non-sexually transmitted conditions such as cervical cancer, as discussing these topics remains taboo. In South Korea, despite government efforts to promote sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care and shifts in sociocultural beliefs to decouple female sexuality from marriage, cultural norms continue to discourage unmarried women from seeking SRH care. This has resulted in significantly higher cervical cancer rates among Korean women compared to other populations and put them at high risk for severe health complications, including pelvic inflammatory disease, ectopic pregnancies, and infertility. Through my dissertation research, I aimed to empower and protect women seeking support on these culturally taboo topics while raising community awareness and building strategies to prevent the inadvertent perpetuation of harmful microaggressions. Ultimately, I sought to foster resilience and safety within these communities. In alignment with this goal, my research makes four contributions. First, I uncovered microaggressions as a primary barrier to accessing SRH care for unmarried Korean women, a contributor to health disparities that has received little attention in prior research. I identified how these microaggressions occur, who perpetrates them, and how emotional proximity shapes their harm. To explain these dynamics, I developed a framework illustrating how even well-meaning allies can become covert agents of stigma, reframing how microaggressions are understood in stigmatized healthcare contexts. Second, I introduced culturally sensitive strategies to counteract microaggressions, co-developed with unmarried Korean women. These strategies emphasized reflection, empathy, and education over punishment, aligning with cultural values such as emotional restraint and not burdening others, and offering a constructive alternative to punitive approaches. Third, I designed an anonymous online space using the Asynchronous Remote Communities (ARC) method that fostered mutual support and deep reflection among unmarried Korean women. This space enabled participants to safely discuss stigmatized health topics and reflect on in-group microaggressions, which are rarely addressed in existing research. Based on this study, I offer design insights for creating culturally sensitive and emotionally safe online spaces, emphasizing the importance of rapport-building, sequenced activities, and expanded evaluation criteria. These design choices supported meaningful engagement and led to real-world changes, including increased care-seeking and more open conversations. This work extends ARC beyond data collection to inform the design of empowering digital spaces for stigmatized communities. Finally, I examined the limitations and unintended harms of generative artificial intelligence in producing counterspeech for culturally stigmatized health contexts. Current AI-generated responses often fail to recognize cultural nuance, validate the experiences of those targeted, or challenge the structural context of stigma. In response, I proposed a culturally sensitive framework for improving counterspeech generation that embeds cultural sensitivity, affirms users’ perspectives, and accounts for social and structural factors shaping stigma. Together, these contributions offer new directions for designing inclusive technologies and support systems that reduce stigma, challenge harmful norms, and promote culturally sensitive care. By reimagining how communities and technologies can respond to microaggressions, this work helps create a future where individuals navigating stigmatized health concerns feel seen, supported, and empowered to seek the care they deserve.
Reducing Health Research Information Inequities: A Strengths-Based Design Approach with Alaska Native and American Indian Communities
(2025-08-01) Dirks, Lisa Grace; Pratt, Wanda
American Indian and Alaska Native (ANAI) people have experienced a history of unethical and exploitative health research practices, such as being exposed to procedures without informed consent and having research results disseminated without community input or approval. Oversights like these increase the need for transparency, community representation, and accountability in research at all stages from project conceptualization to results dissemination. Moreover, ANAI have been under-represented in large national health research initiatives—such as NIH’s All of Us research program—and have only recently started being consulted in meaningful ways about how best to implement health research or disseminate actionable findings relevant to local community context. For many researchers, the primary method of disseminating research results is to submit manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals or conference presentations, which essentially limits their audience to academic scholars. Limiting dialogue between community stakeholders and researchers, many of whom may be unacquainted with community perceptions of health or community systems of sharing information, decreases the likelihood that research will be implemented at a community level. This lack of engaged communication can negatively impact community health outcomes. New methods and technologies for respectful and culturally responsive health research results dissemination communication are needed to help researchers engage diverse participants and to improve service to these communities. Reliable health research information supports wellness, but if that information is not presented in ways that are understood and contextualized, it has less community benefit and can also perpetuate widespread misinformation about health and well-being. Though there has been extensive progress with ANAI community engagement in health research, only limited research has explored collaboration specifically with the results dissemination process. Moreover, limited user-centered design research has been conducted with and for ANAI communities. For this dissertation, I developed an Indigenous Community-Centered Design (ICCD) approach to co-design and evaluate an ANAI stakeholder collaboration tool for health research results dissemination and communication. The ICCD approach incorporates community-engaged and Indigenous research approaches with community-centered and participatory design methods. In the first part of my research, in study 1, I used user-centered design approaches to establish a value-informed conceptual framework to support future design activities. Next, in study 2, I integrated strengths-based approaches with participatory design and speculative design methods to co-design a low-fidelity prototype for collaborative results dissemination and communication. In my final study, I conducted a pilot study of the low-fidelity prototype, evaluating it for feasibility and acceptability in ANAI communities. The ICCD approach provides an example of integrating Indigenous community-engaged research approaches with user-centered design, drawing on community strengths. This research supports improved research communication and has the potential to enhance ANAI trust in health research, increasing the impact of health research overall.
Approaches to Epistemic Risk in Generative and General-Purpose AI
(2025-08-01) Wolfe, Robert; Howe, Bill; Hiniker, Alexis
Generative and general-purpose AI systems stand poised to reshape longstanding information infrastructures and professions, ranging from search to social media to online journalism. Yet questions surrounding subtle biases, misinforming output, and system reliability and transparency – epistemic risks related to the way knowledge is encoded and disseminated – have followed these technologies since their inception. Without strategies for understanding and managing the risks they pose, general-purpose models may degrade the reliability of the information ecosystem, as well as introduce hazards for the individuals and institutions deploying them. This dissertation introduces methods to understand epistemic risks in generative and general-purpose AI and approaches to responsibly deploy these systems in the presence of inevitable epistemic risk. Concretely, this dissertation develops three approaches to epistemic risk in generative and general-purpose AI. First, I introduce computational approaches to identifying both the manifestations of epistemic risks like bias and misrepresentation and their underlying causes, such as the scale of a model’s pretraining dataset and the unanticipated biases present in high-quality media data such as online newspaper articles. Second, I introduce novel design frameworks that account for epistemic risk in generative models, taking into account the need for information integrity among organizations engaged in data-driven knowledge work, as well as among users in interpersonal communication online. Finally, I introduce transparency-maximizing approaches to mitigate the heightened epistemic risk of using generative models served over black-box APIs, including an approach that customizes small open models on consumer-grade GPUs, as well as a context-sensitive approach to the adoption of open and proprietary models that accounts for the needs of organizations engaged in human-centered data science work. Taken together, these approaches point toward a future for generative and general-purpose AI that values reliability and information integrity.
"Begging to be heard": The Professional Exclusion and Marginalization of Neurodivergent Librarians
(2025-05-12) Moeller, Christine; Annabi, Hala
While libraries are increasingly implementing practices and services designed to serve neurodivergent patrons, such efforts have not yet extended to neurodivergent library employees. Libraries consistently claim access and equity as foundational professional values, as outlined in the American Library Association's Core Values of Librarianship, but these values also need to be upheld through actions within library workplaces instead of solely through resources and services provided for patrons (American Library Association, 2006b). Librarianship may be a profession that is appealing to neurodivergent workers, potentially due to an alignment between the strengths of neurodivergence and the goals and needs of librarianship (Attar, 2021). Yet the lived experiences and workplace needs of neurodivergent librarians remain under-researched and there are no guidelines or established practices in libraries for fostering neuroinclusive workplaces. Not only have the experiences of neurodivergent librarians been overlooked, but library literature has predominantly adopted a pathologized approach to neurodiversity that reinforces harmful, ableist narratives about neurodiversity and neurodivergent people. My work addresses that gap by investigating the employment experience of neurodivergent librarians in public and academic libraries and identifying barriers to and enablers of access. inclusion, and empowerment. To do so, I have highlighted the voices of neurodivergent librarians and their journey of negotiating identity and deploying embodied knowledge to navigate the barriers and enablers they encounter in their workplace and in the library profession.Historically, research has been conducted on neurodivergent people from a medicalized perspective, focusing on the diagnosis and characteristics of individuals, and often proposing some kind of intervention for the individual person to change them or their behavior in some manner. This study intentionally works in opposition to that perspective, adopting a neurodiversity and critical disability theory approach to conducting research with and by neurodivergent people themselves, and in alignment with their priorities. Critical disability theory, also referred to as critical disability studies (CDS), and its sub-field neurodiversity studies, serves as the critical lens through which this study examines neurodiversity employment in libraries. Critical disability theory draws attention to the societal norms, assumptions, structures, and practices that presume a normate bodymind to the exclusion of other ways of being. To conduct an in-depth examination of neurodiversity employment in the profession of librarianship, I employed a single embedded case study design to investigate the phenomenon of neurodiversity employment in librarianship. To explore the depth and breadth of the experiences of neurodivergent librarians, neurodivergent supervisors, and their colleagues, and to investigate the context of librarianship, this study used a qualitative approach to data collection and analysis, employing content analysis of interview data and document analysis of library standards and competencies. This study makes use of multiple sources of evidence, including interviews with neurodivergent librarians, neurodivergent supervisors, and neurotypical librarians, along with a document analysis of professional standards and competencies. Evidence was obtained from multiple sources not solely for the purpose of data triangulation, but primarily to gain insight into multiple perspectives within the library workplace. Through interviews with neurodivergent librarians and supervisors, interviews with neurotypical librarians and supervisors, and document analysis of guiding professional documents, my analysis found that neurodivergent librarians encounter a variety of barriers in their library workplaces, from the physical environment to the lack of transparent communication. Yet this study also revealed that neurodivergent librarians employ their own learned expertise in navigating such challenges to improve their workplace experience, while neurodivergent supervisors are actively enacting that knowledge in ways that facilitate organizational change. Yet findings from this study also indicate that the labor and effort taken up by neurodivergent librarians to respond to their lack of workplace access comes with a cost that is added to the burden associated with the strong service-orientation of library work. In other words, the work of making library workplaces accessible and inclusive often falls to the individual because library work environments are designed and maintained in ways that exclude neurodivergent librarians. My work, then, expands library and neurodiversity employment literature by drawing attention to the multi-dimensional aspects of neurodivergent people's identities and by analyzing the impact of professional norms and expectations on the workplace experiences of neurodivergent librarians. Through the development of my approach to 'centering neurodivergence,' I also contribute a new research paradigm for future research on neurodiversity that upends normative assumptions and practices to honor neurodivergent ways of being researchers and doing research. Furthermore, this dissertation highlights the need to create library organizations that aren't only serving patrons but are also enacting critical access and collective care within the workplace, thus honoring the core values of librarianship and increasing the capacity of libraries to recruit, onboard, retain, and advance neurodivergent librarians. As library workers are increasingly asked to defend the existence of libraries and the work of librarianship, addressing care injustice is vital so library work remains sustainable without further cost to neurodivergent librarians, and to everyone else in this field.
The Lived Experiences of Adults who Acquired Motor, Mobility, and/or Communication Disabilities: Identity Changes and Creative Pursuits
(2025-01-23) Beneteau, Erin; Pratt, Wanda
Adults who acquire complex motor, mobility, and/or communication disabilities (MMCD), such as spinal injuries or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), often rely on assistive technologies (AT) for daily living. Many of these individuals experience profound changes in their lives as a result of acquiring their disability. Adults with complex MMCD who use AT often experience a decrease in opportunities for active engagement and participation, which can ultimately result in poor mental and physical health. As a result, overall quality of life can be perceived to be diminished. While research has shown that access to creative pursuits has positive impacts on typically aging older adults and adults with chronic health conditions, little is known about how active engagement in creative pursuits impacts adults with acquired MMCD who use AT outside of directed therapeutic programs. Creativity is a fundamental human need, however, accessing creative pursuits can be challenging for adults who acquire MMCD and use AT. In this dissertation, I explore how access to creativity impacts the perceived quality of life of adults who acquire MMCD and use AT. First, I examine the experiences of adults who acquire MMCD mid-career, and demonstrate that adults who acquire MMCD and use AT want to continue to be mentally engaged even after leaving their careers. However, adults who acquire MMCD and use AT, particularly those with progressive health conditions, require activities that are flexible without set time pressures. I also show that options for alternatives to work that are accessible to adults with MMCD who use AT are not well-known. I then explore the experiences of seven adults who acquired MMCD and use AT who have engaged in accessible creative pursuits outside of directed therapeutic programs. I demonstrate that engaging in creativity can lead to the formation of a positive creative identity which has a positive impact on perceptions of quality of life. I also show that the discoverability of accessible creative pursuits is challenging, and the lack of discoverability and access to creative pursuits can negatively impact the reclamation of a positive creative identity. In this dissertation, I provide two methodological contributions. First, I synthesize literature and my own experiences to establish a framework of qualitative research best practices when working with participants who use AAC. Second, I create the Aligned Co-Design method, an accessible co-design method in which adults with MMCD who use AT can engage in co-design research equitably. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the role accessibility has in quality of life. I propose that accessibility should be explicitly recognized as a fundamental human need. Access to creative pursuits can have profound positive impacts on an individual’s perceptions of identity, health, social connections, and overall quality of life.
Supporting the Design, Selection, and Evaluation of Accessible Interaction Techniques for Virtual Reality
(2024-10-16) Franz, Rachel; Wobbrock, Jacob O.
Virtual Reality (VR) is rapidly gaining popularity as a consumer technology, yet accessibility has not been prioritized. VR enables users to interact with immersive virtual worlds, but effective interaction requires the ability to perceive and navigate the environment. Fortunately, over the past thirty years, hundreds of scene-viewing and locomotion techniques that facilitate viewing and navigating in VR environments have been developed that could potentially be accessible to individuals with various physical impairments. However, it remains unclear which techniques are optimal for specific impairments, and the process of designing accessible techniques is largely unexplored. The goal of my dissertation is to provide researchers and designers with guidance on selecting or designing accessible scene-viewing and locomotion techniques to enhance VR accessibility for individuals with upper-body impairments.To achieve this goal, I developed a taxonomy and design framework to help designers select existing scene-viewing techniques that require minimal head movement as well as create new scene-viewing techniques based on user and virtual environment (VE) characteristics. Additionally, I created an extensible testbed as a step towards standardizing the evaluation of VR interaction techniques. Using this testbed, I evaluated six locomotion techniques with participants both with and without upper-body impairments and found that Teleport was the most accessible technique. I also found that people with and without impairments performed similarly with Sliding Looking. By analyzing low-level headset and controller data collected during the study, I examined differences in how individuals with and without impairments moved and interacted with the controllers to gain insight into how locomotion technique design impacted performance for both groups. I found that headset metrics differentiated groups across all six techniques and that movement-, button-, and target-related metrics could explain performance differences between groups. Finally, I developed a user model capable of predicting the most suitable locomotion techniques for individual users based on their abilities. The model could predict a user’s fastest locomotion technique with 85% and accuracy and predicted times were within 16% of actual times it took participants to use the fastest technique. The thesis this work will demonstrate is: The accessibility of virtual reality (VR) can be improved by the selection, design, and evaluation of scene-viewing and locomotion techniques using design frameworks, testbed evaluations, and movement analysis and modeling.
Building the Beloved Community: Designing Technologies for Neighborhood Safety
(2024-10-16) Chordia, Ishita; Hiniker, Alexis; Yip, Jason
Neighborhood safety technologies (NSTs) are digital technologies used for the purpose of increasing safety within the context of a neighborhood. NSTs such as Nextdoor, Citizen, and Amazon Neighbors are some of the most downloaded social and news platforms in the United States and are used in hundreds of thousands of neighborhoods nationwide. Designers of these technologies aim to improve user safety through the development of novel features like real-time alerts, interactive maps, personalized feeds, and the ability to report, consume, and discuss criminal incidents and other safety-related information online. This dissertation investigates how NSTs shape the individuals and communities they aim to serve. All research for this dissertation occurred in Atlanta, Georgia and focuses on the impact of NSTs on Jackson Grove (anonymized), a historically Black neighborhood in the city of Atlanta.Through a case study of the Citizen app, I find that NSTs employ a host of deceptive design patterns that negatively impact individual and collective welfare. NSTs negatively impact individual welfare by contributing to a dysfunctional fear of crime, which undermines a person’s quality of life without making them safer in practice, and NSTs negatively impact collective welfare by strengthening race- and class-based stereotypes. To investigate the potential for design to improve individual welfare, I conduct a mixed-methods study to support users in developing a more functional fear of crime, that is, fear which motivates precaution without negatively impacting quality of life. I identify five concrete design strategies to support users in developing a more accurate and contextualized understanding of risk. At the same time, this research surfaces that such strategies may have hidden costs to the larger communities within which they are adopted. Finally, to investigate the potential for design to improve collective welfare, I conduct a case study of a neighborhood street outreach program. I find that the existing conceptualization of safety as protection contributes to harm and that by adopting an alternative conceptualization of safety that centers basic needs and relationships, designers can better serve users and their communities. My research makes four contributions. The first is an empirical understanding of how NSTs employ deceptive design patterns, harming both individual and collective welfare. Second, I identify concrete design interventions that can support users in developing a functional fear of crime. These interventions contribute to a conceptual understanding of how to design NSTs that support user welfare. Third, I surface the implicit logic underlying the design of existing safety technologies and offer an alternative conceptualization rooted in Transformative Justice principles. Finally, I observe that designers can play a meaningful and intentional role in shaping user behavior by introducing nonviolent design patterns, an alternative to deceptive design patterns, which align the users’ choice architecture with the principles of Transformative Justice. By leveraging nonviolent design patterns, designers can help build a world where it’s easier to love one another, easier to build a Beloved Community.
My Story Has a Hopeful Future: Using Digital Journaling to Empower Youth Living with a Chronic Illness
(2024-10-16) Boulter, Julia Constance; Pratt, Wanda; Pollack, Ari H
Adolescents and young adults living with chronic illness experience more complications and challenges when transitioning to adult-oriented care. Despite various interventions to support medication management, goal setting, and collaboration with care teams, AYAs continue to struggle, affecting their health and life outcomes. In this dissertation, I investigated how designing to capture and integrate youths' stories into journey tools can support reflection and empower youth in their chronic illness journeys. I did this work in the context of youth who have undergone kidney transplantation as a focused example of a chronic illness journey.I first examined the experiences of youth transplant patients and their caregivers as they recalibrated to normalcy post-transplant. As a result, I identified five dimensions of their experiences. These dimensions represented the fluctuating nature of patients' and caregivers' experiences post-transplant. Informed by the rich understanding of their experiences, I contributed a conceptual framework that ties together multiple facets of patients’ lives and represents the different needs and tensions that may arise throughout various parts of the transplant journey. I then probed further into youth transplant patients’ experiences to better understand their transplant journeys. Consequently, I characterized and discovered story categories that youth transplant patients and their caregivers discussed for each of the five dimensions of the framework. Additionally, I explored another essential element of youth’s chronic illness journeys, medication management, and provided insights into medication management visuals to help support youth throughout their journey. From this work, I contributed new design insights for capturing youth kidney transplant stories and medication management to inform the design of chronic illness journey tools. Lastly, I explored the impact of My Kidney TREK, a tool designed to capture youth kidney transplant patients' journeys in a real-world setting. Informed by design insights from my previous work, this tool provides youth with a comprehensive view of their kidney transplant journeys. I found that My Kidney TREK positively impacted patients' and caregivers' reflections on their transplant journey, demonstrating the value of incorporating stories within a chronic illness journey tool. Additionally, I discussed the design of the My Kidney TREK and provided recommendations to improve future chronic illness journey tools. Regardless of their health challenges, youth with a chronic illness still have hopes for their futures and aspire to thrive throughout their journey. Capturing and reflecting on their chronic illness stories provides a more holistic picture of their journeys, highlighting barriers that interfere with harmonizing their healthcare and life needs. Ultimately, my work shows how using digital journaling promotes self-efficacy as youth transition towards independence and empowers them to take more control of their lives. This research offers a promising avenue for improving the healthcare journey for youth with a chronic illness.
The Future of AI Can Be Kind: Strategies for Embedded Ethics in AI Education
(2024-09-09) Register, Yim; Spiro, Emma S
The field of Data Science has seen rapid growth over the past two decades, with a high demandfor people with skills in data analytics, programming, statistics, and ability to visualize, predict from, and otherwise make sense of data. Alongside the rise of various artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) applications, we have also witnessed egregious algorithmic biases and harms – from discriminatory outputs of models to reinforcing normative ideals about beauty, gender, race, class, etc. These harms range from high profile cases such as the racial bias embedded in the COMPAS recidivism algorithm, to more insidious cases of algorithmic harm that compound over time with re-traumatizing effects (such as the mental health impacts of recommender systems, social media content organization and the struggle for visibility, and discriminatory content moderation of marginalized individuals [400, 401]). There are various strategies to combat and repair algorithmic harms, ranging from algorithmic audits and fairness metrics to AI Ethics Standards put forth by major institutions and tech companies. However, there is evidence to suggest that current Data Science curricula do not adequately prepare future practitioners to effectively respond to issues of algorithmic harm, especially the day-to- day issues that practitioners are likely to face. Through a review of AI Ethics standards and the literature, I devise a set of 9 characterizations of effective AI ethics education: specific, prescriptivist, action-centered, relatable, empathetic, contextual, expansive, preventative, and integrated. The empirical work of this dissertation reveals the value of embedding ethical critique into technical machine learning instruction – demonstrating how teaching AI concepts using cases of algorithmic harm can boost both technical comprehension and ethical considerations [397, 398]. I demonstrate the value of relying on real-world cases and experiences that students already have (such as with hiring/admissions decisions, social media algorithms, or generative AI tools) to boost their learning of both technical and social impact topics. I explore this relationship between personal relatability and experiential learning, demonstrating how to harness students’ lived experiences to relate to cases of algorithmic harm and opportunities for repair. My preliminary work also reveals significant in-group favoritism, suggesting students find AI errors more urgent when they personally relate to them. While this may prove beneficial for engaging underrepresented students in the classroom, it must be paired with empathy-building techniques for students who relate less to cases of algorithmic harm, as well as trauma-informed pedagogical practice. My results also revealed an over-reliance on “life-or-death reasoning” when it came to ethical decision-making, along with organizational and financial pressures that might impede AI professionals from delaying harmful software. This dissertation contributes several strategies to effectively prepare Data Scientists to consider both technical and social aspects of their work, along with empirical results suggesting the benefits of embedded ethics throughout all areas of AI education.
Reimagining Access and Inclusion: Early Literacy Services for Autistic Children and Their Families in Public Libraries
(2024-02-12) Romeijn-Stout, Milly L; Annabi, Hala; Martin, Michelle
Providing programs for diverse populations and strengthening communities in need has been a longtime focus of public libraries (Garmer, 2014). Early literacy services are one way that libraries support their communities, with a particular focus on children’s programs (Grimes et al., 2013). Library storytime programs promote early literacy skills in participating children and encourage parents to participate in their children’s literacy development by providing them the skills to do so (Albright et al., 2009; ALA 2006). Currently, autistic children are not adequately supported in early literacy development in comparison to neurotypical peers (Westerveld et al., 2016), with a lack of support at two years old impacting reading at five years old (Davidson & Ellis, 2014). Despite a commitment to serve children of all abilities, library services continue to be inaccessible to autistic children and their families, leaving a sizeable service gap for this community, especially concerning early literacy (Matoushek et al., 2017; Paynter et al., 2020; Prendergast, 2017; Schriar et al., 2016). There are systemic barriers in libraries that make library early literacy services inaccessible for autistic children and their families, resulting in lower access to library services for these families (e.g. Prendergast, 2016; Broman, 2017; Simpson et al., 2020; Kaeding, Velasquez, & Price, 2017; Copeland, 2011). These include both systemic barriers that impact access in the library context for autistic children and their families, as well as systemic barriers that affect library staff services to autistic children and their families. The purpose of this study was twofold: The first objective was to develop a conceptual framework identifying the barriers and enablers present for autistic children and their families in public libraries related to early literacy learning experiences; the second objective was to identify components of training and resources youth-serving librarians need to provide autism-inclusive early literacy services. To do this I utilized a critical lens informed by Critical Disability Theory (CDT) and the neurodiversity paradigm. This lens allowed me to identify systemic environmental and social barriers that keep autistic children and their families from needed early literacy experiences and materials in public libraries. My work is framed within a social constructivist epistemology, aligning with Critical Disability Studies (CDS) which utilizes CDT to focus on the lived experiences of social actors, especially within research and the context of providing counter-narratives to traditionally ableist institutions (Broderick & Ne’eman, 2008; Schwant, 1994). I utilized an instrumental embedded single-case study to understand public early literacy services to autistic children in Washington State through multiple perspectives and extend theoretical findings to practical applications (Patton, 2015; Yin, 2018). Through interviews, focus groups, and Participatory Design (PD) sessions, this study found that autistic children and their families face systemic social and structural barriers in public libraries that limit access to early literacy services and programs. Most prevalent among these barriers are social systemic barriers, which refer to systemic barriers that are informed by social ableism. Social ableism is discrimination, stigmatization, and prejudice that results in social oppression towards the disabled community (Bogart & Dunn, 2019; Billawalla & Wolbring, 2014). These are barriers such as families’ fear of judgment by library staff or fellow library patrons, predominantly fueled by community and cultural expectations of patron behavior and libraries as “quiet” spaces. Additionally, youth-serving library staff experience systemic barriers that impact their ability to utilize autism-inclusive practices to serve these families, including a lack of resources and available training to support autistic children’s early literacy needs and address social barriers. Enabling practices identified by families with autistic children included creating a community of inclusion through welcoming environments, inclusive patron expectations, and autism-inclusive early literacy program design. Ultimately, this study found that youth-serving library staff require training and resources that utilize a critical lens to address social barriers. Training needs to provide information about autism from autistic advocates themselves, and include research-based information and key practices for autism-inclusive early literacy services and programs. The findings of this study inform theory and practice in the Library and Information Sciences (LIS) field in multiple ways. The first contribution is the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of systemic barriers and enablers in libraries on the early literacy learning experiences of autistic children and their families. Other crucial contributions include a critical reframing of autism in libraries, and key theoretical concepts regarding early literacy services in public libraries for autistic children and their families. Contributions to practice include informing key practices for serving autistic children and their families’ early literacy needs, and an early literacy-services training and supportive resources for youth-serving librarians. This study lays the foundation for future work examining and dismantling systemic barriers in public libraries for neurodivergent and underserved communities.
Know-about, know-that, know-how: A model for moving between theory and design practice
(2024-02-12) Ballard, Stephanie; Friedman, Batya
Everything is designed. From the fork you hold in your hand, to the car you drive, to the public transportation you use, to the mechanisms for justice within a society, to the process of designing itself. Embedded in these designs are the assumptions that underlie the design methods and toolkits used in the design process. In practice, design happens through the application of methods (processes that result in design outcomes), toolkits (materials that support the implementation of methods), and heuristics (the skillful application of methods and toolkits) (Friedman & Hendry, 2019; Hendry, Friedman & Ballard, 2021; Nelson & Stolterman, 2012). Methods and toolkits originate within particular worldviews (Ansari, 2019) and carry with them the assumptions of those worldviews. For example, journey maps, a design method that originated and is used in industry, assume linear time and often ignore the material aspects of the experience at hand. Conversely, traditional methods for making coconut milk developed in Papua New Guinea, outside the dominant Western interpretations of time, allow for spending time together but take longer to enact (Wajcman, 2015). But there are always different ways of doing things, different worldviews, and different assumptions to bring to bear in a design situation. Designers can bring those different assumptions into a design situation by adapting design methods to account for new theoretical constructs. But in what ways does theory inform design methods and toolkits? How can this relationship be modeled? Can a model of the relationship between theory and design methods and toolkits be used to help translate specific theoretical constructs into established design methods and toolkits? If so, then could this model and the associated skills be taught to novice designers as they adapt design methods? In this dissertation, to gain traction on these questions, I begin by developing a bi-directional model of knowledge types – know-about, know-that, know-how – in design to describe how theory informs design practice and vice versa. While the model of knowledge types in design is bi-directional, to contain the scope of this dissertation I focus the remaining work on only one direction: from theory to practice. To demonstrate how the model of knowledge types in design could be used to guide the adaptation of design methods, I apply it to eight theoretical constructs (four about materiality and four about temporality) to translate theory-to-practice commitments for each construct and then use those commitments to adapt one established method, journey maps, and one established toolkit, Envisioning Cards. Then, I report on a brief educational case study, demonstrating how novice designers can use the model to adapt established design methods. Then, drawing on the above, I offer heuristics to guide others as they adapt design methods and toolkits. Finally, I reflect on the work of adapting design methods and toolkits as a design process and the flexibility of design methods and toolkits as a lever for incorporating theoretical constructs into design practice. This dissertation makes the following contributions: 1) a bi-directional model of knowledge types in design to describe how theory can inform design practice and vice versa; 2) one adapted design method; 3) one adapted design toolkit; 4) an educational case study exploring the use of the model of knowledge types in design as a tool for teaching method adaptation; and 5) heuristics that novice designers, design researchers, and practitioners can use to adapt other design methods and toolkits.
Integrating Inclusive Design and Computing Education
(2024-02-12) Oleson, Alannah; Ko, Amy J
To realize more equitable technology futures, it is not enough to simply adapt technology to be more inclusive after it is created. We will also need to equip technology creators with the skills they need to critically reflect upon bias and exclusion during the technology design process. The question of how to best to impart actionable inclusive design skills to today's computing students---tomorrow's technology creators---remains open. Computing interfaces are an illustrative site of inquiry for demonstrating the concrete impacts of design bias. Interfaces constrain interactions with technology, and by extension, who gets to benefit from technological access and who is excluded. Because technology carries perceptions of objectivity, it can be difficult for students to grasp how subjective design decisions might impact usability. I argue that enabling students to critically reflect upon the ways their design decisions impact users is a key aspect of developing inclusive computing interface design competence. My work makes four contributions through a series of qualitative and mixed-method studies. First, I contribute a dual-type model of design activity present in computing education contexts, highlighting the need for further investigation into design decision-making skills that help computing students understand the societal impacts of technology. Next, I contribute a set of student learning challenges that arise in introductory interface design courses which may prevent computing students from developing the skills they need to design inclusive technology. Then, I contribute a pedagogical technique that uses a novel strategy called assumption elicitation to help computing students learn to recognize and respond to computing interface design bias, as well as a case study evaluation of its efficacy and considerations for its use in post-secondary design learning contexts. Finally, through an Action Research study of this technique’s integration into post-secondary computing courses, I contribute pedagogical content knowledge for teaching inclusive interface design in computing courses, including descriptions of how instructors leveraged the technique to inspire critical reflection, hopefulness, and inclusive design agency in students. These contributions provide foundations for future work in the nascent subdiscipline of critical human-computer interaction (HCI) education research.
An Integrated Model of Tasks and Uncertainties for Designing Task-aware Search Assistants
(2023-09-27) Sarkar, Shawon; Shah, Chirag
Search behaviors are usually motivated by some task that prompts users into the search process. Complex tasks often initiate long, evolving, interactive search processes with shifting goals and cognitive focus at different search stages. Users' search strategies are influenced by their search motivation, encountered problems, and cognitive focus or state of knowledge at these search stages. However, existing search systems are primarily designed to optimize one request at a time, ignoring the underlying overarching task, shifting task phases and sub-tasks with users' cognitive focus, or even the holistic nature of a task-based search session. Although a set of descriptive and theoretical models of the search process can be found in the literature that characterizes tasks, there is a gap in research focused on exploiting dynamic task characteristics in search personalization processes. More importantly, there is a lack of support for users to complete their tasks in an adaptive, dynamic way. To address this issue, this dissertation adopts a multi-disciplinary, human-centered approach and applies a mixed-methods design-based approach to meet three broad objectives: First, develop a conceptual framework for understanding how different types of tasks trigger specific information needs that can lead to different methods and strategies for seeking different forms of information and information sources and, in the due process, identify any barriers they perceive and potential help they choose to overcome those limitations; Second, apply new computational models to construct unified task representations using underlying search behavioral signals that can be transferable and functional to any task circumstances; and Third make existing search and retrieval systems more responsible and efficient to meet the changing state of users' cognitive focus during the search process by using knowledge gained about users' tasks and problems. Specifically, this dissertation aims to develop a task-information need-strategy-problem-based task representation that can be leveraged in search and retrieval models to provide task-based supports in different information formats, thus empowering users to make informed decisions about different aspects of their lives by providing information more relevant to their current task state. The result of this study is a step towards developing task-aware intelligent systems capable of supporting users at each stage of their complex task-completion process.
Off Into the Sunset: Designing for the Inevitable End of Projects
(2023-09-27) Pitt, Caroline R; Davis, Katie; Yip, Jason C
Ending projects – in whatever form that takes – is a known area of difficulty for research that involves designing and implementing technologies with community partners. The ending process is particularly salient to underserved and marginalized communities and populations. This dissertation explores the project ecosystem and power dynamics in which researchers and participants exist when collaborating on technology design projects involving youth and their communities. From this exploration, I look to identify types of and strategies for ending, to build a framework for advancing design justice in the ending process.The first set of empirical studies in this dissertation address the power dynamics and roles within community-based technology design projects and multigenerational co-design teams. From this work we learn how we can encourage youth and their communities to take ownership of learning technologies through participatory design and involvement in the technology implementation process. Subsequent studies focus on the long-term impacts of such projects and how the community and researchers can begin to transition these technologies to community ownership, while understanding the resource constraints of both the researchers and communities, particularly the youth members. The final study — a cross case analysis of two long-term projects — extends this work on power dynamics and impacts, using the understanding of systems and infrastructure to frame our understanding of the equitable ending process and what different endings might look like. Together, these studies provide grounding for a framework to create a more just and equitable ending process, specifically creating guidelines for designing the end of the research cycle in an ethical and practical manner. This dissertation provides a number of empirical insights on the development and changes within relationships and power dynamics throughout the course of community-based educational technology design projects involving youth; the challenges, obstacles, and opportunities at the conclusion of the life cycle of the aforementioned projects; and the different ways ending a project occurs. The work also has theoretical implications, drawing on value sensitive design, research-practice partnerships, and other theories around community relationships to form an understanding of project ending as a space for design. Finally, this work contributes a theoretically-grounded methodological framework for designing projects involving long-term technology development with youth and their communities that plan for and incorporate the ending of the project, derived from the findings in the previous contributions. Through this work I explore the dimensions and considerations in ending a project that involves a long-term partnership with a community, developing ways to discuss, navigate, and plan for the closing process and facilitating less extractive and more mutually beneficial community research partnerships.
Towards Understanding and Defending Against Algorithmically Curated Misinformation
(2023-09-27) Juneja, Prerna; Mitra, Tanushree
Search engines and online social media platforms have become important sources of information for users worldwide. Despite their popularity and ubiquitousness, online platforms are not always trustworthy sources of information. The platforms are driven by black box algorithms that optimize for engagement over the credibility of information. There are increasing concerns that online platforms amplify inaccurate information, making it easily accessible via search results and recommendations. In this thesis, I explore the role of online algorithms in promoting misinformation and design defenses against online misinformation by incorporating human-centered insights from stakeholders such as fact-checking organizations and news agencies. My research recognizes the multifaceted nature of online misinformation and explores the algorithmic, policy, fact-checking, and design aspects of the problem through three distinct research threads. In the first thread of my research, I investigate and audit online platforms such as YouTube and Amazon to understand the role of algorithms driving these platforms in surfacing and amplifying misinformative content to users. Through the audits, I found that performing certain real-world actions on misinformative content (e.g. watching a conspiratorial video on YouTube, or adding a misinformative book to the cart on Amazon) could lead users into problematic echo chambers of misinformation. Additionally, I identified vulnerable user populations who could be targets for specific misinformative topics on online platforms. In the second research thread, I explore ways to support the fact-checking process to combat online misinformation. For this work, I interviewed 14 fact-checking organizations and news agencies across four continents to understand their current fact-checking processes, challenges, and needs. This research establishes fact-checking process as a socio-technical phenomenon, revealing the collaborative efforts of various stakeholder groups and technological infrastructure in facilitating effective fact-checking endeavors. It also highlights the technical, policy, and informational barriers to fact-checking and emphasizes the need for systematic changes in civic, informational, and technological contexts to improve the overall quality of fact-checking. In the final thread of my dissertation research, I collaborated with Pesacheck, Africa's largest indigenous fact-checking organization, to design and develop YouCred---a fact-checking system that enables monitoring of algorithmically driven online platforms for misinformation. To create YouCred, I incorporated insights from previous research threads as well as the expertise and feedback of Pesacheck's fact-checkers throughout the development and design stages. YouCred specifically facilitates misinformation discovery and credibility assessments on the YouTube platform. It automatically generates search queries related to important events and topics of interest to fact-checkers and also offers an intuitive interface for annotating videos for misinformation. Through a nine-month evaluation period at Pesacheck, YouCred demonstrates its practical value and usefulness for fact-checkers, underscoring the importance of ongoing collaboration between fact-checking organizations and technology developers in combating online misinformation.
Computational Support for Longitudinal Well-Being
(2023-09-27) Xu, Xuhai; Dey, Anind; Mankoff, Jennifer
As artificial-intelligent-powered devices have become more embedded in our lives, they offer an unprecedented ability to passively sense our daily behavior at a high resolution. These everyday devices are already equipped with machine learning techniques to monitor our basic health behaviors, such as physical activity and heart rate, and provide suggestions accordingly. However, they are still far from understanding our high-level, longitudinal behaviors, such as mental well-being. Early research about longitudinal behavior modeling and intervention is still facing a set of deployability challenges before being ready for real-world deployment. For behavior modeling, these challenges include interpretability (revealing human-readable insights about behavior), personalization (adapting models to every individual), and generalizability (ensuring models work robustly on new users and contexts). Furthermore, the results and insights of behavior models need to be connected with intervention techniques to influence users’ behavior and improve their well-being. With mental well-being as the main application, my research is targeted at these deployability challenges by (1) collecting and releasing the first multi-year passive sensing datasets, (2) developing new behavior modeling techniques that are interpretable, personalized, and generalizable, and (3) designing and deploying a novel intervention technique based on behavior models’ insights to improve user well-being. Combining these efforts, I propose the vision of “computational longitudinal well-being”, where interactive systems based on everyday devices can precisely and robustly understand, model, and influence long-term human behavior for better health and well-being.
Exploring Material Imaginaries: Action and Possibility in Everyday Artifacts
(2023-08-14) Logler, Nicholas; Friedman, Batya
Materials are made. So much so, and at such a scale, that researchers estimate that in 2020 the entire mass of human made things surpassed that of all living biomass (Elhacham et al. 2020). A world in which our materials are transformed into finished things, used and then discarded, pushes human and natural systems to the limit. A world in which materials remain in the foreground, visible and available, transforms inert and finished waste into sites of imagination and opportunity. In my dissertation, I investigate how we define and navigate the dynamic field of possibilities around materials. In Part I, I present a theoretical account of materials and imaginaries; explore how metaphor shapes our imaginations and technical practices; and propose a framework for generating new visions for materials. In Part II, I report on a design workshop I conducted with middle school students where they explored consumer electronics through the lens of material imaginaries–disassembling printers, identifying parts, exploring new ways of using the parts, and designing new resources. In Part III, I draw on the findings from Parts I and II to propose four design criteria researchers can use to further interrogate material imaginaries. My work offers five contributions: (1) A conceptual account of material imaginaries; (2) a workshop format for investigating material imaginaries in general; (3) findings from my fieldwork with young people and printers; (4) design work envisioning how interventions can reshape imaginaries; and (5) design criteria to evaluate and generate material practices. Taken together, my dissertation offers theoretical and practical tools for reimagining our relationship with materials.

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