Shaowen Bardzell
Indiana University
Utopias of Participation: Working Towards Emancipatory Forms of Computing

From its earliest incarnation in labor movements in Scandinavia in the 1970s, Participatory Design has had an emancipatory politics inscribed in it. As PD is appropriated in other contexts, this emancipatory politics can continue to be foregrounded or, as Bannon & Ehn (2013) worry, it can be diluted into corporate practices of "user- centered design." One way to advance the emancipatory politics in PD is to continue PD's early embrace of utopian thinking. Yet utopianism today has a poor reputation, openly rejected by many activists. In this talk, I will revisit some of the criticisms of utopianism, in particular, the dismissal of utopianism in Dunne & Raby's work on Critical Design. Next, I will explore an alternative framing of utopianism-derived from feminism and science fiction studies-that could productively inform PD, both epistemologically and methodologically, in its most openly political design goals. I will present some of the ways I have tied to engage with these ideas through design research projects ranging in scale from critical-participatory studies involving local makers to designing for and about the identities and aspirations of entire urban populations.

Shaowen Bardzell is an Associate Professor in the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University and the Affiliated Faculty of the Kinsey Institute. Known for her work in feminist HCI, Bardzell's research centers on a network of concepts of interest to both feminists and HCI, including scientifically rigorous and socially just research methodologies, human sexuality, embodiment, marginality, collective creativity, and everyday aesthetics. Recent work has focused on exploring the intersections between HCI's rising interest in social change and feminist social science, critical design, material interactions, and the application of critical and cultural theories for developing concept-driven design strategies. Her work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the Intel Science and Technology Center on Social Computing program. Bardzell is on the editorial board of the journal Interacting with Computers and Journal of Peer Production. She is the co-author of Humanistic HCI in the Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics (Morgan & Claypool Publishers, forthcoming), and a co-editor of Critical Theory and Interaction Design (MIT Press, forthcoming). She directs the Cultural Research In Technology (CRIT) Group at Indiana University.