Negotiating systemic racial and gender bias as a minoritized adult design researcher

Abstract

Fostering equal design partnerships in adult-child codesign interactions is a well-documented challenge in HCI. It is assumed that adults come into these interactions with power and have to make adjustments to allow childrens' input to be equally valued. However, power is not a unilateral construct - it is in part determined by social and cultural norms that often disadvantage minoritized groups. Striving for equal partnership without centering users' and participants' intersectional identities may lead to unproductive adult-child codesign interactions. We codesigned a game, primarily facilitated by a black woman researcher, with K-5 afterschool programs comprised of students from three different communities - a middle-class, racially diverse community; a low-income, primarily African American community; and a working-class rural, white, community over a period of 20 weeks. We share preliminary insights on how racial and gender biases affect codesign partnerships and describe future research plans to modify our program structure to foster more effective adult-child interactions.