Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design:

Towards More Equitable Participatory Design Engagements

CHRISTINA N. HARRINGTON, Northwestern University, USA

SHEENA ERETE, DePaul University, USA
ANNE MARIE PIPER, Northwestern University, USA

Participatory Design (PD) is envisioned as an approach to democratizing innovation in the design process by
shifting the power dynamics between researcher and participant. Recent scholarship in HCI and design has
analyzed the ways collaborative design engagements, such as PD situated in the design workshop can amplify
voices and empower underserved populations. Yet, we argue that PD as instantiated in the design workshop
is very much an affluent and privileged activity that often neglects the challenges associated with envisioning
equitable design solutions among underserved populations. Based on two series of community-based PD
workshops with underserved populations in the U.S., we highlight key areas of tension and considerations for
a more equitable PD approach: historical context of the research environment, community access, perceptions
of materials and activities, and unintentional harm in collecting full accounts of personal narratives. By
reflecting on these tensions as a call-to-action, we hope to deconstruct the privilege of the PD workshop
within HCI and re-center the focus of design on individuals who are historically underserved. 
CCS Concepts: • Human-centered computing → Participatory design; • Social and professional
topics → Race and ethnicity; Cultural characteristics

KEYWORDS
Design workshops; community-based participatory design; social action research; design equity
ACM Reference format:
Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper. 2019. Deconstructing Community-based
Collaborative Design: Towards More Equitable Participatory Design Engagements. In Proceedings of Computer
Supported Collaborative Work, 3, CSCW, Article 216 (November 2019), 25 pages.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3359318

1 INTRODUCTION
Participatory Design (PD) has become a commonly used methodological approach given its
promise of democratizing the design process, most notably stemming from its origin in political
decision-making and Marxist ideals [8, 9]. Recent studies have focused on leveraging participatory
design methods to engage with marginalized and underserved populations [51, 79, 85, 86] given
the association of empowerment and, in some cases, activism that may result from this
engagement. Underserved populations are considered to be those individuals whose voices have
traditionally been marginalized due to their position in society, with much HCI and design

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee
provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and
the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to
lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org.
2573-0142/2019/November – ART216 $15.00
Copyright held by the owner/author(s). Publication rights licensed to ACM.
https://doi.org/10.1145/3359318

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019. 216
216:2 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

literature referring to “developing” countries where collaborative design may have the potential to
improve societal conditions and environmental infrastructure [e.g. 8, 12, 21]. We focus our
analysis of underserved populations on those who are marginalized in a developed context such as
the U.S., specifically low-income, older, queer, trans, gender-non-confirming, ethnic, disabled,
and/or racialized populations [35].
Scholars who base their design engagements in Science and Technology Studies position
participatory design methods as a form of social action [2, 25, 34, 79], mirroring similar methods in
the social sciences and humanities such as Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) and
Participatory Action Research [97, 98, 103]. Such approaches to design research scholarship have
sought to center and elevate the voices of particular communities by eliciting knowledge sharing
through collaborative research practices while also addressing issues of power and positionality
[13, 26, 38]. Situating the individual as a co-creator and collaborative partner promises to allow
individuals who are directly impacted by a phenomenon or technological intervention to play an
active role in the design process and the ways problems are defined. Given this promise, work
within HCI and CSCW has focused on community-based collaborative design efforts with
underserved communities in various geographic regions, stating the importance of this approach
to addressing societal challenges [2, 32]. Here, we define community as settings where individuals
share a geographic proximity in which they work and live, in addition to sharing access to
resources. As a result of this proximity, these individuals often share similar societal relations,
common environmental challenges, and barriers [14].
Despite the potential of collaborative design engagements to address societal challenges,
current literature has acknowledged the shortcomings of current PD methods [18, 26, 30, 35, 48].
Much of the critique in this area suggests a need to: devise collaborative research agendas [26, 48],
address imaginative freedom among research participants [5], consider political forms and
objectives of collaborative design engagements [33], and define success as it relates to design
activities within marginalized and underserved communities [79]. Beyond this, Irani [52]
challenges implementations of PD, such as the design workshop or other design practices, as their
own form of social structures which emphasize technological creativity, suggesting barriers of
oppression and classist hierarchies to what is considered design thinking [52].
In this paper, we examine the design workshop implemented in community environments as an
instantation of PD methodology and the ways in which it can misalign with the lived experiences
of underserved communities. We define the design workshop as a spatially situated and
temporally bounded coming together of participant groups and researchers to envision new
design futures, which employ particular materials, tools, and goals [64, 83]. We argue that the
design workshop is a socially and culturally constructed practice that brings with it expectations
that may further marginalize and ultimately undermine participation of certain individuals. In
particular, participatory design as manifested through design workshops — in its current praxis —
is a privileged, White, youthful, and upper to middle-class approach to innovation that consists of
activities that implore participants to rely on ideals of imagination, creativity, and novel insight.
Although PD was intentioned as a way to counter power in workplace infastructure and create
balance between the user and the designer [8], we argue that certain methods, such as the design
workshop, or approaches to design thinking (e.g., “blue sky” ideation) have an ethos that can be
exclusionary to communities that have historically faced systemic discrimination. For example,
engaging in design processes that promote “blue-sky” ideas (or ideation without constraints) may
exacerbate inequities by leading to infeasible solutions that ultimately frustrate underserved
individuals. Underserved communities can face a higher prevalence of life-threatening

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:3

circumstances (e.g., economic despair, violence, health disparities) and may look to design
involvement as a resource for more pragmatic solutions and action. Additionally, oftentimes the
implementation of PD methods devalues and reduces the lived experiences of those who may not
have undergone higher levels of education or been exposed to “creativity” as defined by scholarly
applications of design thinking. What constitutes a creative or innovative insight is inherently
value laden and can draw further distinctions between participants and researchers as PD may not
acknowledge those realities [36]. Further, the configuration and temporary nature of the design
workshop as it has been conceived [60, 83] can leave participants without an actual resolve to
deeply important issues and may, at worse, be intrusive or harmful to certain communities.
We suggest that such tensions are not due to the lack of imagination or innovation among
these populations. On the contrary, there is a unique level of imagination, creativity, and
speculation that emerges from those who are underserved in the U.S. [101]. Many of these
communities are comprised of some of the most resilient individuals in the U.S. — surviving
histories of racially targeted violence, discriminatory policies, and traumatizing experiences
designed to be a form of social, cultural, and actual genocide. As such, one of the primary tensions
in the application of PD with these communities lies in the fact that oftentimes the historical
context of these realities is not thoroughly understood, nor does it align with the implementation
of PD in HCI or CSCW.
This paper contributes to and extends the existing critical analysis of PD, particularly design
workshops, as a methodological praxis by addressing the following research questions:
 What are the unique challenges of using community-based, collaborative design
workshops to engage with communities that are underserved in a developed context?
 In what ways does the history of inequity and oppression within these communities shape
their particpation and acceptance of this form of research engagement?
Leveraging nearly two decades of experience conducting community-based design research
with underserved populations in the U.S., we illustrate how the values and experiences of these
individuals can collide with current manefestations of the design workshop. Specifically, we
present two case studies of community-based participatory design workshops with Black and
LatinX participants from underserved communities in a midwest city in the U.S., each of which
focused on critical social issues (i.e., health, civic engagement). Based on these case studies, we
articulate four areas of challenge and tension, experienced when conducting participatory design
workshops: skepticism and reluctance due to complex history of research injustice, gaining access
among presumptions of gatekeeping, adverse sociocultural interpretations of materials and
activities, and risks associated with obtaining full personal narratives. We argue that even with
considerations and adaptations from recent scholarly activity in HCI and design [13, 26, 79, 85],
the design workshop as an implementation of PD carries with it certain privileges, potentially
resulting in unintentional harm to underserved populations.
This paper makes three main contributions to CSCW. First, we provide insight into the impacts
of historical injustices on collaborative design research engagements such as the design workshop,
extending the extensive body of critical analysis surrounding participatory design for
marginalized and underserved populations [5, 79, 85, 89, 104]. Second, this paper pushes forward a
postcolonial analysis of design [54] as a way to examine the various constructs of engagement that
are associated with participatory design and collaborative innovation methods, specifically for
populations that are underserved in a developed context. Third, we draw from our own analysis
and related literature to offer practical recommendations for developing research agendas and

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:4 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

collaborative design engagements alongside community members that are better attuned to their
values and experiences [26].

2 RELATED LITERATURE
Participatory Design as a method has been examined and critiqued since its inception. Researchers
have begun a long-evolving discourse about the ways in which PD engages and supports
individuals who are marginalized, moving towards more fair and just design [71]. Among this
discourse, researchers in HCI and CSCW have examined PD in both the execution of design
activities as implementation of method and the ways design outcomes are considered. Here, we
review the existing body of literature across HCI and CSCW regarding historically underserved
communities, community-based PD, and PD for underserved communities.

2.1 Historically Underserved Communities in HCI and CSCW Research

A growing body of literature in HCI and CSCW is concerned with what it means to design
technologies for and with communities that are considered underserved. Across this work, it is
essential to understand what various scholars mean by ‘underserved’ and what societal
oppressions they consider in analysis. Although the constructs of an individual or group being
underserved does not have one uniform definition in the CSCW and HCI literature, there are
numerous examples of research and design aimed at understanding and engaging underserved
communities, which consider various factors in this designation. For example, prior work has
focused on individuals experiencing disproportionate rates of health disparities [92], while others
have examined low-income, homeless, and economically disadvantaged communities [23, 31, 32,
82, 89, 93]. Other work aims to understand and design for individuals who sit at the margins of
society based on age [20, 66], gender representation [47, 87], or disability [7, 39, 91]. Research that
focuses on these populations and their local settings has raised issues of inclusivity and the ethics
of design-based research methodology [99]. Similarly, a move towards a more intersectional
analysis is also underway within HCI [104].
Much of this literature points to “poor”, low-income, or resource-constrained individuals in
environments that are undemocratic and “culturally distant” [79]. However, scholars in the
humanities suggest that it is pertinent to directly identify racism or racial discrimination as a root
cause for social inequities, and that this is an equally relevant component of consideration of what
it means to be underserved in the U.S. [3]. Understanding issues of class, economic status, and race
are critical to positioning community-based PD as a democratic response for social action, as these
factors are often entangled, impacting participation and outcomes.

2.2 Community-Based Participatory Design as a Social Action Response

From its origin, PD as a form of collaborative design is intended to support a democratic approach
to responding to societal phenomena where power imbalances may impact system design [10].
Similar to research methods such as Participatory Action Research [103], this method has
traditionally sought to elevate voices of underserved populations by directly centering narratives
that are not experienced by researchers in the academy, providing insight into values, beliefs, and
needs. In its current instantiation, PD has become a way to encourage social action by collectively
imagining design solutions that respond to community needs. PD as a social action response is
seen as the creation of interactive systems, as well as design experiences themselves, meant to
empower and support collective action [25], serving as an opportunity to introduce participants to

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:5

design as a way to respond to social issues in collaboration with community partners [49].
Situating PD in the context of a particular community frames design engagements according to
local needs, responding to issues that are defined by the individuals of that community.
The design workshop, which may also be situated within particular community, is a particular
site of social practice that aims to embody the ideals of participatory design. The structure of the
design workshop as physical space is often conducive for collaborative design engagements
because it serves as a meeting point for researchers and community residents to share and
conceptualize ideas [60, 64, 83]. Design workshops mitigate the interplay of researcher and
informant to help identify relationship between individuals, materials, and topic area [16, 46],
simultaneously serving as research instrument, field site, and research account [83]. Community
residents are reimagined as co-designers and partners that are positioned as having equal say in
the exploration and brainstorming of a design challenge [34]. We find that even in the absence of
technology, such engagements may evoke activism and advocacy, and enhance community ties.
Prior community-based PD efforts, including instances of the design workshop, have implemented
a form of action research that looks at civic engagement and community safety [2, 31], collectivist
approaches to health inequities [75], and addressing economic disadvantages [24, 31], to name a
few. In each of these instances we see designers create opportunity for community members to
contribute thoughts and ideas towards changing current situations, a major advantage of PD in a
community context [34]. While the objective is to enable communities to contribute to all stages of
research (design, execution, and analysis), challenges may emerge for communities that look at
design and creativity ‘differently’ from those in charge of the research. A primary concern among
HCI researchers is the adaptation of PD and the design workshop to reflect the context in which a
design engagement is situated. Although recent work within HCI and CSCW acknowledges the
need to adjust design methods when working with underserved communities [35], the ways in
which designers can best support communities who historically have not been in positions of
power are nuanced and complicated, often facing unforeseen tensions. There is a need to place a
critical lens on how researchers shape collaborative design engagements with underserved
communities.

2.3 Reconstructing Participatory Design for Underserved Populations

Existing critiques of participatory design have identified a number of challenges in both
implementation and the framing of design-based research with underserved populations, resulting
in researchers acknowledging the need to approach PD with a focus on ethics and inclusivity.
Scholars have identified that traditional PD efforts place strain on the research engagement
between researcher and community resident, negating the intention to democratize design and
oftentimes exacerbating inequities [76]. Efforts to position the impact of these challenges such as
the Design Tension Framework highlight that PD is not merely a method of problem-solving but
of balancing goals with considerations to inherent conflicts [94]. From this framework we find
that tensions within the practice of design present areas of focus for critical analysis and reflection
[94], with such analyses being advantageous for progressing the reconstruction of PD for
underserved populations.
Examining engagement in collaborative design among various underserved communities has
brought reflections on power and privilege to this discourse, with scholars identifying the need for
critical analysis of what the researcher represents in design research, and the ways their privilege
may impact design engagements [42, 43, 61, 85]. Issues of access and relationship-building have
led to the call for more collaborative research agendas with community partners [26], suggesting

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:6 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

that in order to have a truly just experience for both researcher and community participant, the
design engagement should be defined by both parties from its inception. This analysis of justice
within collaborative design engagements among underserved populations includes both activity
and outcomes, where many HCI scholars argue for a sociocultural perspective that would consider
more than just structure of method [13, 79]. That is, in order to evaluate if a design engagement is
truly participatory, we must examine the contribution of the citizens involved and the
complexities that surround their ability to voice real issues and thus suggest real artifacts as
solutions. Successes and outcomes of PD have also been critiqued as researchers question both
how we define a PD result and how such results should be measured [13]. Existing literature
posits that it is not enough just to be flexible in this operationalization, but to carry an alternative
to concepts of traditional creativity such that design engagements support “imaginative freedom”
among those who see creativity from a different lens [5]. Continued reflexivity among this method
has also considered mutual gain and how well PD serves the goals of the underserved [11, 41].
Despite the breadth of PD work that has engaged underserved populations in the
conceptualization of solutions to societal issues [12, 28, 34, 51, 63, 85, 105], we find that few
instances of this scholarship foreground the tensions that may be present in doing such work,
particularly those that stem from race and ethnicity (see [62] as an exception). Instead, researchers
often analyze methods of PD based on their own definitions of participation and expectations for
material interaction [27, 58, 69, 78, 80]. Although during design engagements they may grapple
with the impact of researcher presence, how PD outcomes are defined by the community, and the
historical context of relationships between researchers and communities, these details are rarely
centered in analysis or final publications. In addition, much of this literature provides little
contextualization or backstory of how the community of interest was engaged in the
conceptualization of participation or material interaction. While scholars like Gautam [43] and
Gaudio [42] acknowledge the potential harm that exists in researchers engaging vulnerable
populations in PD, they do so in reference to design in a developing context, where democratic
participation is severely impacted by an unstable political landscape of the country. Thus, aside
from work in developing contexts (e.g., [17, 51]), the larger literature on PD lacks detailed analyses
and reporting of many of these considerations and adaptations related to engaging underserved
populations.

3 UNDERSTANDING THE HISTORY OF INJUSTICE IN THE U.S.

To contextualize the importance of exploring challenges of conducting participatory design with
underserved populations in the U.S., we describe the history of injustice and oppression of those
who are marginalized along race and ethnicity. In this paper, we focus specifically on underserved
populations within the U.S. as opposed to those in emerging regions around the world as is often
the case in HCI4D/ICT4D research (i.e., information communication technologies for
development). Though we acknowledge the significance and relevance of the vast body of ICT4D
and HCI4D literature [17, 69, 73, 77], lived experiences of those who are surviving in “developed”
contexts, or established economic Western nation-states, often differ from those in “developing”
contexts; while both experience systems of oppression and disparities, the challenges participants
face differ. For example, in the U.S., there is a popular notion that everyone has equal opportunity
to thrive (i.e., equal access to education, healthcare, and employment) and that those who do not
make it are “just not trying hard enough” [96]. This notion ignores the systems of oppression that
the country was designed upon to keep certain populations from being successful, including
discrimination practices that people of color still endure on a daily basis [45]. The confounding of

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:7

these oppressions has a significant impact on social and economic development of populations
that are being considered as underserved in the United States. Similarly, it is important to
acknowledge that those of African descent who have lived in the diaspora for centuries have
vastly different experiences living in “developed” regions and have endured different types of
trauma than Africans that live on the continent. University of Michigan public health expert
Geronimus, for example, found that Black women who live in the U.S. experience social and
emotional anguish that leads to higher mortality and mobility, or “weathering,” as a result of their
daily experiences of living and surviving in a White society [44]. We are not stating that one
experience is more severe than the other, but rather that these experiences are equally important
and deserve to be explored as a contribution to HCI literature.
To examine community-based participatory design in “developed” contexts, it is essential to
understand the systemic barriers that have led to certain populations being underserved in the
U.S., and the ways we must integrate this understanding into design engagements. Inequality in
the U.S. has become stark across dimensions of income, employment, healthcare access, and social
justice [3]. Oftentimes, those who are marginalized and underserved (e.g. lower-income, people of
color) experience lower wages, higher rates of unemployment, lower qualities of healthcare, and
disenfranchisement in a political context, dating back several centuries [3]. The various social ills
that have contributed to these disparities in the U.S. are systemic in nature, having roots in the
infrastructure of the very governing organizations and institutional policies that are meant to
guide fairness and equal opportunity across communities. Understanding the complex history of
inequality in the U.S. means understanding that many of these disparities and gaps in wealth,
wages, employment and access did not occur by happenstance, but were by design as a way to
promote a white, educated, and affluent majority [1]. Gentrification, or the forced class- and race-
based displacement of people, is one manifestation of this systemic inequity (see [19] for an
analysis). Traditionally, underserved communities experience less access to resources, and
heightened power imbalances between individual citizens and local governing organizations or
institutions [1]. This imbalance, in turn, leaves individuals in these communities in a position
where it is harder to obtain wealth or other measures of upward mobility that has been promised
when realizing the “American dream” as compared to those from the dominant population (i.e.
White).
In Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S. and where our work is situated, policies that
support segregation and discrimination have resulted in a lack of employment opportunities
and/or lower paying jobs, resulting in a higher concentration of poverty and lower quality of life
among Black and LatinX communities, particularly those in the historic South and Westside of
Chicago [74, 90, 100]. One reason that Chicago, like most U.S. cities, faces such societal issues is
because of racially-charged laws such as redlining, which intentionally created an unequal city
infrastructure that has direct negative impacts on low-income, people of color. Redlining was a
federal initiative enacted by private industries that systematized unfair mortgage lending practices
by refusing loans to minorities desiring to purchase homes in predominately White
neighborhoods as well as rejecting loans to Whites desiring to move into neighborhoods where
even some minorities live [50, 84]. Forcing segregation in most major cities, redlining practices
determined real estate property values (i.e., valuing property in minority communities as low) and
limited retail stores and other investment opportunities from moving into minority areas. Thus,
homes in minority communities were and continue to be evaluated as worth considerably less
than homes in predominately White communities.
Like other forms of discrimination, redlining has played a critical role in creating economic and
wealth disparities that have lingered for nearly a century, with “3 out of 4 neighborhoods
PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:8 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

‘redlined’ on government maps 80 years ago continuing to struggle economically” [57, 70]. The
process of redlining was instrumental in propelling housing segregation and ensuring wealth
inequity, ultimately dividing the city by race and disproportionately allocating resources to certain
communities and neglecting others. The effect of which is still felt in the dissemination,
availability, and quality of businesses and city resources and services. Though redlining has been
deemed illegal, the resulting race-based housing segregation that still persists has led to systemic
barriers (e.g., inadequate health services, over-policing, underfunded public education) that
contribute to social and economic inequities in minority communities [102].
It is important to understand these historical inequities as they not only inform the ways in
which underserved populations seek to disrupt systemic barriers, but also provide context to
current technological tensions such as cultural dissonance and a digital divide in technology
proficiency and ownership. These tensions inform the ways technology solutions may be
perceived among those who are systematically underserved. Understanding historical inequities
also helps to contextualize the privilege and cultural distancing of many PD methods. As these
disparities have a long-standing history in both the city of Chicago and other urban cities in the
U.S., they inherently shape the ways local residents perceive current resources and conceptualize
future solutions.

4 CASE STUDIES
The following case studies detail our experience in conducting community-based participatory
research through design workshops with historically underserved populations in the U.S. to
address issues of health and civic engagement, respectively. In leveraging design workshops, we
sought to embed design engagements directly into communities that historically experience
inequities and systemic oppression. Integral to the theoretical underpinning of PD [8, 72], these
instances of the design workshop challenged the structure of the designer as domain expert, and
instead centered the community resident as expert based on their lived experiences.
Based on Rosner and Le Dantec [26, 83], the design workshops were intentionally exploratory
in the way activities were structured, adapting to the needs and engagement of community
residents. Each of these studies were designed to engage residents in discussions concerning their
need for technology to address daily challenges that are seen within their communities, health
disparities and civic engagement respectively. Drawing from CBPR and Participatory Action
Research methodology, these examples attempt to focus community residents as an active partner
in defining and structuring research engagements, consequently drawing out complexities of
collaborative design engagement in these communities. Each research study was approved by a
university Institutional Review Board prior to fieldwork and all participants consented to
participation in the design workshops.
Scholarly discourse in feminist and intersectional HCI highlights the importance of reflexivity
of researchers [15, 88]. In that vein, two of the authors are Black American women, both from
lower-income working class backgrounds, now considered middle-class due to education and
employment. Another author is a white American woman from a middle-class socioeconomic
background. We are acutely interested in designing with the underserved because of our first-
hand experiences with inequity and desire to enact change. Yet, our desire to leverage design to
support change is precisely what brought about our critical reflection of PD methods for these
populations. We also acknowledge that our disciplinary backgrounds – design, computing, and
cognitive science– informs our mindset and research approach.

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:9

4.1 Envisioning Health Among Low-Income African-American Older Adults

The first case study comes from a community-based participatory research effort aimed at
understanding health needs, priorities, and potential solutions among a residential community of
low-income, African-American, older adults in Chicago. Although the health-related findings from
these design workshops were reported in [48], here we reanalyze our data from the workshops as
well as assumptions and practices underlying our approach as part of our critical analysis of
participatory design methods.
4.1.1 Workshop Instantiation
Objectives and Goals. The overall goals of these workshops were to elicit a better understanding
of (1) health and potential tools to support health maintenance, and (2) the use of design
workshops as a catalyst for community health discussions. Workshops were funded by the U.S.
National Science Foundation and an internal university research grant. Over the course of five
weeks, participants engaged in five PD workshops to define health, document challenges and
barriers, and envision resources to support their health and wellbeing. Each workshop session
lasted approximately two hours and were proceeded by critical reflections on the design method
both in how well it allowed individuals to express concerns about health and how well the activity
met expectations and needs. This led to an iterative process of refinement in which methods were
altered weekly based on community resident feedback.
Structure and Implementation. To allow this research effort to be co-facilitated by
community residents, we leveraged participatory and social action research methods [49, 67, 81]
that allowed residents to drive the context and direction of discussions. We worked in partnership
with the Resident Service Coordinator of the senior center to develop a collaborative research
agenda for participatory design workshops. Community residents collaged about health,
documented health in their local environment through a Photovoice activity, defined design
challenges by formulating “How might we…” statements, brainstormed and ideated potential
solutions to defined design challenges, and finally mocked up their ideas through paper
prototypes. We found that community residents expressed health needs and concerns that
indicated a desire for better community infrastructure, cleaner and safer neighborhoods, and living
environments that were better maintained by local governance. Workshop conversations
indicated a need for more community-focused design solutions, such as petitions for improved
living conditions and resources for more convenient access to medical supplies and fresh foods.
Residents also indicated a need for a better way of communicating with medical personnel.
Collaboratively defining the structure of these workshops revealed a sense of empowerment
among community residents [48]. Participants expressed a sense of ownership in not only their
health maintenance and decision-making, but also in their ability to change health outlooks in
their community. Debrief interviews were conducted to assess the overall experiences of
community residents as research participants and understand actionable takeaways that felt
mutual to researcher goals and community needs. By leveraging design activities that allowed
community residents themselves to define and shape the context of workshop discussions, we
observed what we viewed as a shift in power dynamics which elevated the collective voice of the
community over our own design aspirations.
Participants. Participants in these design workshops were community residents recruited
from a predominantly Black neighborhood in Chicago. Participants were compensated per
workshop. Thirteen older adults were enrolled from a residential senior center comprised of three
independent living facilities that also sponsored recreational and wellness activities on a monthly
basis. Of the 13 participants (ages 65-79, M=71), 10 were women, 11 were either unemployed or
PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:10 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

retired, and 10 reporting finishing high school or having some college education. All participants
identified as earning less than $20,000USD annually putting them at or below the poverty line,
with only seven participants reporting going online once a month and most indicating little
technology proficiency.
Post Workshop Engagement. Following these workshops, researchers felt it necessary to
find a meaningful way to disseminate results to community residents. The research team
developed a one-page synopsis of what took place during the workshops, sentiments that were
expressed throughout, and health-related community resources. The lead researcher has since
begun working with the Resident Service Coordinator and community residents to identify future
research topic areas.
4.1.2 Critical Reflection
History of Research Injustice. Each of the workshops brought about unique participant
engagements with both materials and activities as well as with the research itself. One of the
initial tensions experienced was that of community residents and their acceptance of research staff
and the underlying intent behind the research agenda as it was presented. This tension arose
largely due to the history of the academic institution that we were affiliated with. Community
residents shared that there was a long-standing complicated history of poor research relationships
between the Black community residents and the university hospital. Historically, Black people
faced discriminatory practices in interacting with this university as students undergoing unfair
admissions and housing policies. As community residents who remembered experiencing racial
discrimination from the Northwestern University, several participants indicated that there was a
history of Blacks often “being used in research studies despite not having access to equal medical
treatment as patients or the hospital itself” – P204. Due to this history, many people were skeptical
about engaging with researchers and sharing health information that they perceived as intimate.
As many of the community residents were old enough to have experienced and remember this
complex history, they felt it pertinent to share that these research injustices have left poor
concepts of the university and the work being done there. “You know I’m old enough to remember
when Northwestern would use us for studies but we couldn’t get medical help. I remember. And this
was after Tuskegee, knowing what they did. So, I have right to have my doubts” – P102. This
community resident felt that the historical precedence of mistreatment of Blacks in medical
research studies such as the Tuskegee study (where Black men were deceitfully told they were
being treated for syphilis) [40] laid foundation for communities of color not trusting medical
institutions. There was additional skepticism surrounding survey instruments and intentions of
data, with individuals voicing their disdain for some of the more quantitative demographic
questions about health or income status as they were unsure what the university would do with
this data. “I don’t trust it. I don’t trust what they’re going to do with it [data]. The way these questions
are worded… they come and do these surveys and we never know what they do with it. Never hear
any more about it” – P206. There is difficulty in seeing new research efforts as standalone among
populations that have experienced research injustice – current research efforts are both framed
and interpreted through past actions of other researchers and instances of institutional trauma.
Gaining Access. One of the more commonly known challenges in conducting community-
based design research is that of developing trust and ‘healthy’ relationships between researcher
and community residents [26]. While this is especially challenging for researchers who may not
identify with the communities they are working with, there are still challenges experienced by
researchers who do have similar identity whether in age, ethnicity, or socioeconomic status. Upon
agreeing to participate in these workshops, participants explained that they wanted to support

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:11

research efforts of the lead researcher as a young Black woman pursuing higher education. While
this desire rooted in self-identification with ethnicity did allow the researcher some level of access
to this community, it is also important to note the barriers that countered this access and impacted
engagement in design workshop activities. Of immediate observation among our research was
community residents’ perception that academic researchers, regardless of similarity in race, may
not understand everyday challenges associated with living in their neighborhood due to education
and class, and that their objective in research was self-served and not vested in community
advancement. In attempt to establish rapport with community residents, part of the research team
spent several months volunteering at the community center doing food distribution or attending
community meetings prior to initiating research engagement. During initial visits to the center,
residents would share stories of participating in research studies from other local universities in
which they would experience research abandonment—that is, they experienced a complete lack of
communication from an academic research team following data collection and completion of a
study. Our vested interest in the mission and activities of this center meant that not only were
researchers engaging with the center outside of research objectives, but that research
engagements were structured ethically to work towards collaborative design efforts that were
meaningful to the community and that did not leave residents feeling abandoned. Invisible labor
stemming from ethics and responsibility emerged here: researchers who identified with the Black
community residents of this center did not want to perpetuate negative research experiences that
would harm these individuals in any way, largely due to a feeling of familial relation to the
community as a whole. The research team found it important to not only establish relationships,
but to demonstrate commitments [26] by remaining ‘there’ in order to engage in collaborative
design ethically.
Interactions with Materials and Activities. In planning workshops and design activities, the
research team in collaboration with the Resident Service Coordinator were very intentional in
considering the fluidity of materials such that community residents could easily express their
ideas without the challenges of not being familiar with a particular technology or design
technique. As such, the research team elected to implement activities that were similar in nature
to those which community residents engaged in during recreational programs at the center (i.e.
arts and crafts, gardening, group games). Despite the efforts to envision activities with the
Community Activity Coordinator, there was friction in the reception of materials and activities.
There was a generally positive response to materials provided for the collaging session, in part
because researchers were intentional about including local magazines and ads that represented the
community. During the sessions of brainstorming, however, participants expressed that the
ideation materials provided (markers, colored pencils, sketching paper) were infantilizing and
belittling. Many participants questioned if the research team felt that they were not capable of
expressing their ideas and thoughts at the level of someone who might be formally and
institutionally educated. In one instance, a community resident commented how the activity of
ideation and brainstorming with colored pencils felt like an “elementary school assignment” and did
not make sense to the larger goal of solving community issues. “The crayons, markers and stuff…
it’s like an elementary school activity. For fifth graders or little kids coloring in coloring books. It
might make sense to you but it don’t make sense to us” P201. That is, their sociocultural associations
with certain materials and activities led to an interpretation that their participation and their ideas
were not being taken ‘seriously’ by researchers.
Similar to the misalignment with the sociocultural expectations of materials, we observed
tensions around activity structure, particularly brainstorming. Much of the larger group indicated
that by brainstorming in such an ‘out-of-the-box’ way they were not moving towards solutions
PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:12 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

that would actually be helpful. As resources such as money and access were active constraints to
the ways they could address their health challenges, it was difficult – if not impossible – for
participants to defer judgement during brainstorming and generate ideas without these bounds.
That is, brainstorming ‘blue sky’ ideas is a luxury practice that marginalizes those who have
endured life with systemic disadvantage and resource scarcity. For example, community residents
expressed the need for tools to progress improvements of living environments as a way to support
health within the community, ultimately mocking up a resident petition to be issued to housing
authority committees. Considering a non-technological artifact such as a petition supports the
concept of innovative freedom in the way we think of outcomes from design workshops and
participatory design engagements. Given the history of injustice, our participants were more
concerned with devising solutions that were ‘real’ and sustainable from within the community
rather than relying on researchers or local governance to carryout. Participants commented that in
the past institutional resources have failed to follow-through, despite community requests.
Barriers to Obtaining Narratives. The challenge of disclosing full accounts also emerged
throughout the workshop series. Participants indicated that there were certain things they might
not feel comfortable disclosing (e.g. previous drug use), for either fear of judgment or potential
repercussion from housing management. The primary focus of health conversations held during
this workshop series focused on community health and environmental barriers to health, and
many of the concerns shared were related to the housing facility in which the residents lived in.
Participants expressed that they did not want to complain about their living conditions (i.e. mold
in carpet, issues with a lack of center resources) too much for fear of not being able to renew lease
terms or other forms of negative repercussions. That is, this group initially saw the research team
as aligning with other outside organizational workers (e.g. representatives from Medicare or
Medicaid) or even building management as opposed to the community residents themselves. In
this way, there is a general sense of risk in disclosure of personal narratives, perceptions, or
attitudes felt by community residents that may be tied to power dynamics in ways that have not
been considered. As research staff may have been considered authority in the same ways as those
who help facilitate local and national government services, there was a natural reluctance to
provide full narratives.
There is a potential impact of harm that may exist in community residents engaging in the
design workshop itself when the research site is based in residents’ living environment and
neighborhood facilities. Despite the intended benefit of design workshops being a collaborative
way to uncover individual and community needs, these individuals may have more to lose in
disclosing certain information. Pushing for personal narratives may be harmful not only to
resident relationships with local resources, but also to their perceptions of the ways research staff
disrupt community relations.
The tensions expressed here were only a subset of what was discovered during design
workshop engagement. Many of these tensions are directly associated with the identity of the
community itself and the particular sociomaterial configuration, structure, and implementation of
these particular design workshops. We found that by encouraging community residents to provide
feedback and definition of the design activities and flow of workshop sessions, residents felt
empowered, yet still expressed a need for guidance and instructional leadership. By examining
both the health-related content of discussion and the engagement with the workshop, we were
able to establish a situated understanding of the challenges associated with collaborative design
engagements within this community.

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:13

4.2 Amplifying the Voices of African-American and LatinX Communities in Civic

Technology
The second case is a part of a larger research agenda to explore how technologies can better
support underserved communities to address local issues. We describe a series of design
workshops amidst Black and LatinX communities alongside city partners (e.g. police, local city
council members). Prior results of this agenda focused on investigating the intersection of
technology, government agencies and these communities [36]. We focus our analysis here on the
tensions that emerged from this research endeavor through critical reflection of community-based
PD as a method.
4.2.1 Workshop Instantiation
Objectives and Goals. The goal of our second case study of design workshops was to understand
the barriers lower income African-American and LatinX communities faced when engaging in the
design and deployment of city technologies. These technologies, oftentimes referred to as “smart”
technologies, impact data collection and access as well as the allocation of city services. In an
effort to expand inclusion and participation in civic discussions with city technology leaders, we
partnered with local non-profit organizations that have an established presence in these
communities. The workshop began with researchers engaging with community leaders for several
months, building trust, and collaboratively creating a research agenda that included research
questions, our approach, outcomes, and expected deliverables for researchers and community.
Structure and Implementation. Our primary concern was establishing a way to engage
residents in discussion about inclusion and participation in Chicago’s civic tech and smart city
development. We consulted with project partners from local Chicago government and decided to
conduct two participatory design workshops in two different underserved neighborhoods. Each
workshop lasted approximately 3 hours and included three activities: an icebreaker, an asset
mapping activity, and a brainstorming activity. Participants were divided into groups of 4-8
people, where there was a lead facilitator (the lead researcher), a group facilitator (roughly half
were community leaders), and a notetaker from the research team. All facilitators were trained
prior to the session and received a detailed agenda, script, and FAQs to guide their interactions
with participants.
During the icebreaker activity, participants got to know each other and began to engage in
civic tech discourse by selecting photographic images from magazines or places in the
neighborhood (e.g., a local community garden, parks, hospitals, grocery stores, library, community
centers, a locally-owned restaurant, beach). Group members placed their chosen photo on a large
poster-size map of their community, sharing why they selected the image and their prior
experiences with community governance where they engage government officials such as local
city council officials and/or senior law enforcement officials as well as how any civic engagement
challenges might be addressed.
To learn more about their lived experiences and daily realities, we asked participants during
our second activity to engage in asset mapping, where each group used sticky notes, photos of
local places, and markers to annotate a poster-sized map with their community's assets, general
challenges, and any technology gaps. Taking an asset rather than deficit approach was vital to
demonstrating respect and building rapport with participants. Participants identified assets (park
facilities and great public transportation); challenges (lack of grocery stores, gentrification, and gun
violence); and tech challenges (overuse of monitoring technology, lack of tech education, and little to
no access to public wifi).

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:14 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

Similar to the first care study, the final activity engaged community residents in generating
innovative solutions to the civic tech and technology challenges they identified. After merging the
topics, participants ranked the challenges by importance and brainstormed solutions using various
materials, including paper, sticky notes, and markers; participants used the asset-maps that they
created as well. Our community partners tended to end the workshop by giving a brief
presentation on the city’s initiatives around civic tech, taking particular time to describe resources
that were available such as ways to qualify for affordable internet programs and that there are
WIFI hotspot lending programs at local libraries.
Participants. There was a total of 55 participants: 14 at the first design workshop, and 41 at
the second. Our community partners led participant recruitment by sharing information via digital
and print advertisements as well as word of mouth. There were more attendees at the second
workshop due to having multiple community partners that formed a large research team. Of the
55 participants, 37 completed demographic surveys. Among the 37 participants (ages 26-56+), 20
identified as women. Household incomes ranged from less than $10,000 to over $150,000, and the
average was $60-69,000 (9 people declined to answer). Twenty-five participants self-identified as
Black, 3 as white, and 1 as Latino (8 did not respond). Education levels varied with 2 participants
reporting having high school diplomas or equivalent, and 34 reporting some level of college
education We collected 24 hours of audio and video recordings, sticky notes, annotated maps, the
worksheets participants created, photographs of the sessions, and field notes compiled by the
notetakers.
Post Workshop Engagement. After the workshops, there were three main outcomes. First,
we shared the information back to the communities through a flyer, a white paper, and a
presentation that summarizes the results and provides information about resources that can
address community concerns and support the existing community-based efforts regarding
participation in civic tech decision-making. Second, we used our findings to advocate for more
equitable community involvement, connecting community residents (who expressed a desire for
continued participation) with government officials and encouraged them to attend city meetings
that impact government decisions. Lastly, the lead researcher (second author of this paper)
leveraged the research findings to advocate for the creation of an annual grant that supports small,
community-led non-profits to support sustainable solutions to addressing local civic tech concerns
and currently sits on the board of the grant committee.
4.2.2 Critical Reflection
History of Research Injustice. During workshops, there were several instances where residents
shared concerns about the historical injustices that their communities have faced. Many also
expressed how their opinions of technology solutions are unlikely to yield useful results that
would benefit their communities given the history of policies and laws that propagate inequity,
whether intentionally or unintentionally. This was evident in how one resident responded to the
explanation of research objectives and consent prior to the beginning of the first workshop. This
resident, who identified as a LatinX man, shared his concerns about the lack of impact that
researchers have had on their communities in the past, stating that most researchers do not share
their results with the community, much like in the health workshops. When the research team
offered to share the type of information that we provide back to the communities as well as the
academic outcomes (e.g., papers), he asked the team to email him copies of those documents so he
could see them. His skepticism of working with researchers was from his experience of
researchers, typically from large academic institutions, conducting research and abandoning
research sites. Similar sentiments were shared by a Black woman who shared her thoughts about

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:15

researchers during the second workshop: “So, my feeling always is, you know I look around the
room and DePaul is present. And for them it’s a research project. That don’t sit good in my heart. And
I’m sorry, because… Like I told you, I’m a lifelong Chicagoan. I’ve seen University of Chicago fucking
did it, DePaul doing it, but this workshop… what do you do with that!? And so, I’m the kind of person
that believes change is only going to come from within the community. The cavalry ain’t coming in to
save us, we gonna have to save ourselves.” This comment is an example of the skepticism and doubt
expressed by the community regarding the researchers’ presence. Her comment exemplifies an
opinion that we encountered in both case studies that the researchers do not care for the long-
term wellbeing of the community and that they need to be self-sufficient and resilient without
help from outsiders given their history.
Gaining Access. At the start of both design workshops, the lead researcher (second author on
this paper) attempted to build rapport with community residents in the typical ways (e.g., greeting
participants prior to getting started, formal introductions with the host organization, power
transfer by explaining that they are the experts and that the team is here to learn from them).
Similar to prior studies [26], participants from both workshops asked questions about the lead
researcher’s background, where they grew up, how long they lived in Chicago, and in what
neighborhood do they reside. Much of this questioning stemmed from typical rapport building
that all researchers may face, where participants attempt to understand the researcher’s level of
commitment to the community. Though this gatekeeping may be typical, the response to the
emotional labor tied to the community’s wellbeing may be a result of being a minority, who has
been granted access to working with these communities. As personal relationships were built in
these communities over time, a sense of obligation was felt by both researcher and community
resident. That is – many community residents began to ask the lead researcher for personal favors
or commitments outside of the research itself. This emotional labor emerged as a range of personal
requests (e.g., expectations that the lead researcher will be available for campus tours, giving talks
at a church, working at an understaffed food pantry) and personal emotional labor (e.g., constantly
questioning the validity and impact of the research beyond academic publications). This also
seemed to extend to the extensive work conducted beyond the workshop to develop and fund
community initiatives to explore civic technology. Such emotional labor results in a desire to
participate in initiatives that can make real immediate change in a system resistant to change, and
a feeling of responsibility to familiar communities.
Interactions with Materials and Activities. Though participants did not openly complain
about the workshop materials (i.e., markers, sticky notes, paper, maps) in this case, there was some
confusion about the basic concepts of design with residents feeling these activities felt foreign or
lacked usefulness despite given instructions. For instance, during the mapping exercise in the
second design workshop, one participant shared that she did not understand the concept of
mapping and there was shared laughter about the notion of using colored sticky notes.
Researchers observed this confusion noting: Susan asks around the table, “What is mapping?” John
seems surprised by her question. There are jokes about pink and coral post-its. Laughter around the
table. The reaction from John, a White male teacher, demonstrates his familiarity with the concept
of mapping, while Susan, a Black small business owner was not only unfamiliar but also found
humor (along with others at the table) about the materials and concept of mapping.
Similarly, due to the nature of the activities, it was challenging to keep some community
residents interested due to the disconnect between what individuals viewed as feasible, sustainable
solutions and the design process – which requires an acceptance of ambiguity and faith that the
process will yield effective solutions. During the instructions and “share out” portions of the
workshop, we observed community residents listening intently but quickly becoming bored and
PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:16 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

engaging in side activities. Similar to the first set of design workshops, there was an evident
disconnect between how researchers envisioned these design engagements and what community
residents felt to be somewhat elementary activities that may not address their serious challenges.
When asked to imagine technical solutions, residents were resistant, stating that they “were not
techie”. These engagements mirror the previous case study in the ways that community residents
thought about solutions to social issues, often with non-technical approaches.
Barriers to Obtaining Narratives. Despite the fact that our workshops were facilitated by
both the research team and community residents, there were several instances where it was clear
that the responses shared were limited in depth and detail of personal narratives. This was evident
in the audio recordings, which captured residents sharing more detailed, personal experiences
while talking one-on-one to each other rather than talking to the entire table. There was strong
hesitation to broadly share personal stories, even amongst a table of other residents and/or the
research team. Much of the hesitation to engage deeply stems from the historical distrust of
research in general that has resulted in trauma to these communities. Our fieldnotes capture a
discussion amongst residents about research surveys as an example of participants’ thoughts on
research:
Susan says she works with [a community survey organization] where they get surveys. She says
[to the table], “Surveys say your side of story or their side of story but not all. Some people don’t
even take surveys. Its neutral and hence everyone is open about data being collected but
interpretation is different.”
John adds that if a survey that is intended for community [but is not owned by the community] is
an experiment and it doesn’t communicate well with many people in research field. Leslie says
there should be well known faces from the community [who engage as the research team so
people can respond] ‘I know Susan. I know Donna.’ but when a stranger knocks your door you
say ‘No.’” Donna adds “It always felt like an attack on my business [when researchers come]. It is
[like they want] to get some stuff (data) and experiment.”
Though Susan was on the survey research team, she still was skeptical about research in
general. This discussion reflects the skepticism of research and how there is a natural hesitation to
become fully invested in a research project by providing data without having an active voice in
the outcomes and dissemination of results. The nature of the discussion also exemplifies the
hesitation of participants to share full personal narratives. In discussing city and neighborhood
conditions, participants were reticent to acknowledge the root of community challenges that may
implicate individuals they know personally. Doing so would have tremendous impact on
interpersonal relationships as well as individual safety. Being mindful of these consequences while
also wanting to capture full narratives is clearly a tension in this design engagement.

5 TOWARDS EQUITY IN COLLABORATIVE DESIGN ENGAGEMENTS

Our case studies of community-based design workshops with underserved populations reveal
tensions both in the theory and praxis of participatory design. PD is idealized as a democratic
approach to creativity and design thinking, despite the complexities of this method and its
position as a privileged activity, which inherently creates an imbalance in power and equality.
More novel to the conversation of collaborative design in HCI is the lens of Postcolonialism when
examining participatory design engagements, as often these engagements are largely shaped by
power dynamics and cultural difference between researcher and participant [54, 56, 65]. The
concept of postcolonialism is concerned with the impact of colonization in various contexts, and is
PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:17

informed by grassroots and participatory development [68]. Despite critiques of the abstract
nature of this theory, postcolonialism has been adopted in design to suggest that, at some point,
design and collaborative engagements within design became institutionalized efforts, with these
engagements being defined by those who have access to formal education and training [54, 65].
Applying a postcolonial lens to PD stresses the importance of considering histories of injustice,
uneven economic relations, local knowledge as it pertains to design implementation, and the
difficulties of design across cultures [56], which may occur when positioning academic researchers
in underserved communities that they do not identify with. This suggests that there are inherent
privileges that come with PD that must be attended to and destabilized when design engagements
are situated in communities that are undeserved. Indeed, colonialism is embedded in much of
CSCW and HCI research that happens in the “developed world” although it is rarely accounted for
[55]. Relatedly, O’Leary et al. [62] detail how designers can hide the workings of racism and
demonstrate how, despite community engagement, conventional design practices can be inherently
racialized. These authors suggest HCI recognize practices that make racialization explicit and
decenter the authority of design elitism.
Here, we bring this critical lens to our analysis of design engagements with U.S. based
researchers working with underserved populations in the U.S. Our goal in analyzing these cases is
not to suggest that undertaking such a methodological approach with these communities should
only be seen for community struggles and the challenges researchers face, but that these
engagements require us to hold researchers accountable for the ways in which we insert ourselves
into these communities. We build upon the previous assertations of scholars well-established in
PD methodology [26, 83] and also engage with those looking at equity and social-justice oriented
research practices [18, 19, 21]. Thus, to decolonize research practices associated with the design
workshop, we highlight three key ways researchers can rethink engagement and implement
equitable community-based PD practices with underserved communities.

5.1 Consider History and Context of Research Environment as a Method of Trust-

building
Progressing towards equity in community-based collaborative design engagements requires us to
consider the history of research sites as they relate to barriers of trust and acceptance among
community residents. In order to facilitate meaningful collaborations with underserved
communities we suggest that not only is the community history important as has been established
by La Dantec [26], but the context of association with research institutions is also equally vital to
consider [59]. Understanding this history with an eye toward “research injustice” is beneficial to
collaboratively developing research agendas that do not further marginalize individuals or causes.
The corollary to this is that we must treat each research engagement as making a mark in terms of
how communities perceive the individuals conducting field work, the institution (academic,
government, etc.), and all researchers more broadly. Thus, current actions set the tone for future
collaborative design engagements. If we wish to have accountability in these design engagements,
we must reflexively acknowledge power dynamics between researchers and community partners,
challenges of economic disadvantages in design engagements, and the labor required to build
trust. There is a common myth that researchers who identify with the identities of community
residents have an easier time or a “pass” to access and work with communities of color. While
there is familiarity in race and other identifying factors that may be present, there are other
components that must be considered: 1) Black researchers still face gatekeepers and must answer
to histories of research injustice, and 2) there is considerable emotional labor that comes with

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:18 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

getting into the gate. This reflexivity also requires careful consideration of who is or should be
made visible (i.e., recognition) [19, 37, 62] and whether these individuals are even willing or desire
to affiliate with design practices [6].
Such reflexivity can help reframe the ways in which methods or context of design inquiry are
shaped. It is important to acknowledge that researchers bring the history of their discipline and
sometimes an associated institution (e.g., medical, government) with them to the field. Some of
these histories will undoubtedly hold particular traumas for communities that are oppressed. In
our contexts of study, equity may also mean engaging local community leaders or activists that
are familiar with the area of research interest and know more in-depth the history the
communities have with academic and service institutions. Additionally, collecting stories of the
community environment and its residents does not always have to be a part of ‘data collection’ but
can precede research engagements as a way to better understand the setting being entered.
Implementing preparatory activities, such as encouraging community residents to share their
environment or their current ways of doing things may help to build trust and establish an
understanding among researchers of the community they are working with. Such preparation for
design engagements may help contextualize the specific methods that will work best and how
these methods may be interpreted by community residents. Similarly, what researchers do after
the study is equally important and requires careful consideration, an investment of time, and
emotional labor. This work is time intensive and takes a critical examination of researcher
privilege and the social tensions of what academic researchers represent in these communities.
The notion of ‘being there’ before and after a study becomes increasingly important to
understanding local histories, contexts, and relations.

5.2 Encourage Rich and Full Accounts Rather than Stressing Honest Disclosure
Despite our own efforts to shift power in these design workshops, in both case studies we
observed hesitation among community residents regarding the type of information and which
personal stories will be shared with research teams. Histories of research engagements have led to
participants recognizing that the data, information, and stories collected will tell a narrative over
which they are not in complete control. Therefore, many community residents perceive research
engagements within their communities to be more about concepts of “white gaze” (in which Black
and Brown bodies are a spectacle of performance) [106], an often seen savior complex where
individuals are fixated on “saving” the disenfranchised due to guilt of privilege or even ways of
policing in which their personal narratives are not safe from future consequence. As discussed
earlier, the reluctance to open up may stem from the intergenerational trauma caused by academic
and government institutions that have historically caused harm to these communities.
Additionally, the fear of disclosing illegal or stigmatizing information can be felt deeply.
Researchers must acknowledge the (unintentional) harm that may occur simply by their
presence in these research environments. Following the necessity to understand the historical
injustices of research within these communities, it is also important to understand the
sociocultural and political environment of the communities themselves. As a way to address this
nuance, researchers should look to focus more on the fullness of engagement rather than whether
participants are disclosing ‘honest truths.’ Supporting community residents to engage on their
own terms and share narratives that they deem important in a comfortable environment may push
us closer to design engagements where these individuals feel empowered rather than further
marginalized, while also accepting that there are likely some personal details missing.

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:19

5.3 Challenging “Corporate” Design Thinking within PD

Considering the way economic disadvantage plays out in design also requires understanding that
in some ways, many design activities and the emphasis on ideal solutions actually widens the
equity gaps that we should be bridging. For example, Irani’s work on hackathons in India
highlights how this optimistic, high-velocity social practice prioritizes middle-class politics and
orients towards a Silicon Valley model of change (i.e., quick and forceful action over mass
democracy) [53]. As O’Leary et al. [62] describe, inequities can be felt through researcher
decisions about how to instantiate proposed ideas (e.g. mismatch of sketching from urban designs
using 3D modeling rather than situated objects) and participants needing to adopt the language of
design to be taken seriously. They argue for attending to how design practices can be implicitly
racialized and how the concept of design itself often represents people and institutions located
outside the community. Similarly, the “elite” status of design and associated approaches to design
thinking have become institutionalized as a “corporate” approach to locating opportunities to
address community challenges [52]. Within these approaches, methods of ideation and
prototyping value new ideas, particularly technology-oriented ideas as “good” solutions or
outcomes, which may negate or minimize the relevance of existing resources. In this way, design
thinking has unintentionally shifted PD to devalue existing assets or environments of underserved
communities, and as we see in our case studies, distances community residents from feeling PD is
a useful tool in addressing societal challenges. Another facet of this bias towards novel techno-
centric solutions over existing assets is that much scholarship within CSCW and HCI is funded by
organizations that prioritize computing and engineering research. Thus, we must be cognizant of
potential decentering of community interests due to valorization of technical innovation along
with corporate notions of design.
Encouraging innovation in the way it is conceptualized in the academy may be harmful to
these communities, thus we propose that we instead emphasize solutions that will be considered
successful by community metrics. What are the steps that can be taken immediately following a
design engagement such that the impact is immediately perceived? What are the resources that
already exist and can be leveraged and supported, such that they are able to be maintained and
progressed in the absence of researchers? In moving towards more equitable community design
engagements we should also consider scenarios when a solution does not have the traditional
polished appeal of innovative technology. The democratic underpinning of community-based PD
suggests that collaborative design research engagements center and uplift the voices of individuals
who are typically neglected or do not readily see political power. An emphasis on techno-
solutionism centers the values of the researcher and potential funding agencies rather than the
community of interest. Thus, if we find that technology does not address the challenges
experienced within a community, or is not the most sustainable, we should continue to center
community resident voices as expert by prioritizing feasibility and practicality even among non-
technical solutions. Our approach, which focuses on identifying and leveraging existing
community assets, is a start to transforming traditional PD workshops from “corporate”
approaches to design innovation to creating feasible, sustainable solutions despite the challenges
outlined above. Though an asset-driven design approach eliminates the researchers from solely
focusing on a community’s deficits, researchers must resist the desire that is many times
embedded in our training that recognizes technological innovation as the gold standard that must
be achieved. However, as O’Leary et al., [62] note, “no design approach may in itself hold the
answer.” In fact, they argue a more provocative position of whether we should call these
engagements design at all given design’s elite status and embedded structural racism.

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:20 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that deeply understanding the lived experiences of

underserved communities in developed contexts is a contribution in itself within HCI.

6 DESTABILIZING NORMS THROUGH EQUITY IN DESIGN

At its inception, research is a product of the cultures in which it was created, including its societal
hierarchies, where positionality (or superiority) of certain people (i.e., researchers) are dominant.
Thus, in a way, participatory design in the context of research has been shaped by the researchers
who make up the environment in the way that it is envisioned. Decolonizing PD and the way it is
implemented through design workshops means changing the way we think about methods and
outcomes, and re-envisioning design as belonging to the people and communities of interest. As
we discuss above, decolonizing participatory and collaborative design also means examining the
ways it has been appropriated to fit the needs of those who have privilege, and considering how it
might be used to transform systemic oppression.
Equitable PD considers and centers those who have been historically underserved,
communities that have not been in positions of power, as the central focus of collaborative design
engagements but may also have serious implications for others. Equity in design allows people to
have the same outcome when inclusive and participatory approaches are not enough. In this way,
an equitable approach to community-based participatory design should question the standards
and expectations that all designers are held to, paralleling the ways in which our field has begun
to hold accountability through feminist HCI scholarship and the consequences of this theoretical
approach [4]. Designers have the capability to be navigators of complexity and ambiguity,
addressing challenges that sit at the intersection of technological advancement and social need,
but only when we consider our own privileges and positions of power and the ways these
constructs work against engagement with underserved communities. Centering equitable
experiences and outcomes, we are able to reconstruct collaborative design as a more collective,
grassroots, and pragmatic method, actualizing the objectives of CBPR and Participatory Action
Research. Towards creating more equitable experiences of PD into our research agendas, we
propose an equity-driven approach, which better situates design engagements with the
Participatory Action Research methods from which they originate. Equity-driven PD then
becomes a catalyst for how we move from awareness to action in our responses to social
inequalities that also appear in our design engagements, calling attention to unchallenged norms
and values embedded in PD.
Pushing towards such an approach also requires that we situate community residents as living
experts of the research areas we explore. They should be considered valuable for their knowledge
and lived experience in the same way that we consider domain experts in design. Finding ways to
eliminate barriers to power sharing and access can help address the imbalance between
researchers and community residents that are evident in our case studies. While in many cases,
participants are compensated for their involvement in design research engagements, we need to
find ways to better consider the value of expertise within these communities. Thinking of ways to
compensate community residents in the same way as co-designers, or even bartering time for the
support of resources are concepts supported among activists working towards research justice and
just design practices [21]. Considering this as a part of decolonizing the participatory design
process, we must prioritize ways in which we should be not just re-centering the margins but
building ethical research experiences.
Aligning with Participatory Action Research, equity-driven participatory design is its own form
of activism and social responsiveness within research. Thinking of design solutions as activism

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:21

has been well-accepted and leveraged among both scholars in academia and design organizations
such as the Design Justice Network [29]. The future of collaborative design engagements that
center community needs must think of design as a catalyst for social change, not simply
technological advancement, particularly in communities situated in societies that are designed
counter to their advancement. Sorting out tensions with commitments to funding agencies may
require seeking funding through alternate sources, such as foundations focused on advocacy and
social justice. Building in ways for researchers to stay in the field after funding ends or without
any funding at all is also critical, particularly given the emotional labor of being there. This may
require reframing the value and academic incentives of pre- and post-study work. Without
reimagining the value proposition of this work and changing the academic culture of publication,
research abandonment seems inevitable.
Community-based design practitioners have begun to implement equity in design to address
issues of health disparities, mass incarceration, poverty, and education by focusing on a
community’s history and culture, and addressing power dynamics (see Equity-Centered
Community Field Guide by Creative Reaction Lab [22]). This method decolonizes research practice
from those who are affluent and privileged and refocuses the community as the authority. Equity
in participatory design dismantles the hierarchies that exist between researcher and participant,
shifting power to coming from the bottom up instead of from the top down. As we continue this
conversation of a more equitable approach to PD, we must consider community history [59],
measures of accountability, and reflexivity. We must define and work towards what it means to
implement equity as a central focus of this process. How do we address barriers of economics and
structural injustices in design and through design? With as much cultural sensitivity that HCI and
CSCW researchers design for, there are still methodological challenges that emerge within
underserved communities because of the structural injustices that exist.

7 CONCLUSION
We present a critical analysis of the unique challenges and tensions that surround community-
based collaborative design engagements with underserved communities within the U.S. The
foundation of PD suggests that it is a democratic mechanism to respond to societal challenges, yet
when implemented in the context of underserved communities there are tensions that prevent the
actualization of this opportunity. We posit that the history of injustice that has led to the
inequities these communities face also impacts such research engagements, leading to skepticism
of research agendas, barriers to acceptance of materials and activities, and challenges in full
disclosure of personal narratives. The underlying premise of systemic oppression may have impact
on the ability to truly collaborate with underserved populations through design, and thus must be
acknowledged in such conversations. Our aim has been to revisit design workshops as a method
and through this deconstruct barriers to equitable engagement and further progress PD towards
innovation and social action similar to the congruency seen in CBPR. Considering the historical
context of research environments, the realization of community access and allyship, and centering
practical existing community resources all stand to push community-based PD forward to a truly
equity-driven research engagement. By reconstructing the way in which this method is framed,
we can support a more equitable process which highlights and reflects the needs and values of
these communities without further marginalizing them.

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:22 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The projects in these case studies were sponsored and funded by NSF grant IIS-1551574 and by
City Tech. We extend a gracious thank you to the community partners that engaged in this
research and allowed us into their lives and to tell their stories. We would also like to thank Enid
Montague and Jessa Dickinson for their feedback on early drafts of this paper.

REFERENCES
[1] Aaronson, D. et al. 2019. The Effects of the 1930s HOLC “Redlining” Maps. Technical Report #WP 2017-12.
[2] Asad, M. et al. 2017. Creating a Sociotechnical API. (2017), 2295–2306. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025963.
[3] Bailey, Z.D. et al. 2017. Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: evidence and interventions. The Lancet.
389, 10077 (2017), 1453–1463. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(17)30569-X.
[4] Bardzell, S. 2010. Feminist HCI : Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design. (2010), 1301–1310.
[5] Baumann, K. et al. 2017. Infrastructures of the Imagination: Community Design for Speculative Urban Technologies.
C&T ’17: Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies (Troyes, France, 2017), 1–4.
[6] Bennett, C.L. et al. 2019. Biographical Prototypes : Reimagining Recognition and Disability in Design. DIS ’19
Proceedings of the 2019 on Designing Interactive Systems Conference (San Diego, CA, 2019), 35–47.
[7] Benton, L. et al. 2014. Diversity for design: A Framework for Involving Neurodiverse Children in the Technology
Design Process. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’14). (2014), 3747–
3756. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557244.
[8] Bjerknes, G. et al. 1987. Computers and democracy: A Scandanavian challenge. Gower Pub Co.
[9] Björgvinsson, E. et al. 2010. Participatory design and "democratizing innovation" PDC ’10: Proceedings of
the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference (2010), 41–50.
[10] Bodker, S. et al. 1995. Cooperative design: techniques and experiences from the Scandinavian scene. Morgan Kaufmann
Publishers Inc.
[11] Bossen, C. et al. 2010. User gains and PD aims: Assessment from a participatory design project. PDC ’10: Proceedings
of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference (Sydney, Australia, 2010), 141–150.
[12] Botero, A. and Hyysalo, S. 2013. Ageing together: Steps towards evolutionary co-design in everyday practices.
CoDesign. 9, 1 (2013), 37–54. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/15710882.2012.760608.
[13] Bratteteig, T. et al. 2016. What is a participatory design result? Proceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference
on Full papers - PDC ’16 (2016), 141–150.
[14] Carroll, J.M. 2001. Community computing as human - computer interaction. Behaviour & Information Technology. 20,
5 (2001), 307–314. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290110078941.
[15] Chen, K.-L. et al. 2017. Situated Dissemination through an HCI Workplace. CHI ’17: Proceedings of the 2017 CHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Denver, 2017), 2078–2090.
[16] Christopher Frayling 1AD. Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers.
[17] Clark, M. and Gomez, R. 2011. Cost and other barriers to public access computing in developing countries. (2011),
181–188. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1940761.1940786.
[18] Corbett, E. and Le Dantec, C.A. 2018. The Problem of Community Engagement. CHI ’18 Proceedings of the 2018 CHI
Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Montreal, Quebec, 2018), 1–13.
[19] Corbett, E. and Loukissas, Y. 2019. Engaging Gentrification as a Social Justice Issue in HCI. CHI ’19: Proceedings of the
2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Glasgow, Scotland, 2019), 1–16.
[20] Cornejo, R. et al. 2016. Vulnerability, Sharing, and Privacy: Analyzing Art Therapy for Older Adults with Dementia.
(2016), 1570–1581. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2818048.2819960.
[21] Costanza-Chock, S. 2019. Design Justice: towards an intersectional feminist framework for design theory and
practice. DRS2018: Catalyst. 2, in (2019). DOI:https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2018.679.
[22] Creative Reaction Lab 2018. Equity-Centered Community Design Field Guide a Creative Reaction Lab Publication.
(2018).
[23] Le Dantec, C. and Edwars, K. 2008. Designs on dignity: Perceptions of technology among the homeless. CHI ’08.
Proceedings of the Twenty Sixth Annual SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM.
[24] Le Dantec, C.A. et al. 2010. A tale of two publics. (2010), 11. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1858171.1858174.
[25] Le Dantec, C.A. 2016. Design through collective action / collective action through design. Interactions. 24, 1 (2016),
24–30. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3018005.
[26] Le Dantec, C.A. and Fox, S. 2015. Strangers at the Gate: Gaining Access, Building Rapport, and Co-Constructing
Community-Based Research. CSCW ’15: Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative
Work & Social Computing (Vancouver, BC, Canada, 2015), 1348–1358.
[27] Davidson, J.L. and Jensen, C. 2013. Participatory Design with Older Adults : An Analysis of Creativity in the Design

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:23

of Mobile Healthcare Applications. Proceedings of the 9th ACM Conference on Creativity & Cognition - C&C 13
(Sydney, 2013), 114–123.
[28] Davidson, J.L. and Jensen, C. 2013. What health topics older adults want to track. Proceedings of the 15th International
ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - ASSETS ’13 (2013), 1–8.
[29] Design Justice Network Principles: 2018. .
[30] Dillahunt, T.R. et al. 2017. Reflections on Design Methods for Underserved Communities. CSCW ’17 Companion:
Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (Portland,
2017), 409–413.
[31] Dillahunt, T.R. and Malone, A.R. 2015. The Promise of the Sharing Economy among Disadvantaged Communities.
(2015), 2285–2294. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702189.
[32] Dillahunt, T.R. and Veinot, T.C. 2018. Getting There: Barriers and Facilitators to Transportation Access in
Underserved Communities. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 25, 5 (2018), 29:1--29:39.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3233985.
[33] Disalvo, C. et al. 2008. The Neighborhood Networks Project: A Case Study of Critical Engagement and Creative
Expression Through Participatory Design. PDC ’08: Proceedings of the Tenth Anniversary Conference on Participatory
Design 2008 (2008), 41–50.
[34] Duarte, A.M.B. et al. 2018. Participatory Design and Participatory Research: An HCI Case Study with Young Forced
Migrants. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. 25, 1 (2018), 1–39. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3145472.
[35] Erete, S. et al. 2018. An intersectional approach to designing in the margins. Interactions.
[36] Erete, S. and Burrell, J. 2017. Empowered Participation: How Citizens Use Technology in Local Governance. CHI ’17
Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (Denver, 2017), 2307–2319.
[37] Fox, S. et al. 2015. Hacking Culture , Not Devices : Access and Recognition in Feminist Hackerspaces. CSCW ’15
Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (Vancouver,
BC, Canada, 2015), 56–68.
[38] Fox, S. et al. 2017. Social Justice and Design: Power and oppression in collaborative systems. CSCW ’17 Companion:
Companion of the 2017 ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (Portland,
2017), 117–122.
[39] Frauenberger, C. et al. 2017. Blending Methods: Developing Participatory Design Sessions for Autistic Children.
Proceedings of the 2017 Conference on Interaction Design and Children. (2017), 39–49.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3078072.3079727.
[40] Freimuth, V.S. et al. 2001. African Americans ’ views on research and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Social Science &
Medicine. 52, (2001), 797–808.
[41] Garde, J.A. and Van Der Voort, M.C. 2014. Participants’ view on personal gains and PD process. PDC ’14: Proceedings
of the 13th Participatory Design Conference (Windhoek, Nambia, 2014), 79–82.
[42] Del Gaudio, C. et al. 2014. The influence of local powers on Participatory Design processes in marginalized conflict
areas. PDC ’14: Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference (Windhoek, Nambia, 2014), 131–139.
[43] Gautam, A. et al. 2018. Participatory tensions in working with a vulnerable population. Proceedings of the 15th
Participatory Design Conference on Short Papers, Situated Actions, Workshops and Tutorial - PDC ’18 (New York, New
York, USA, 2018), 1–5.
[44] Geronimus, A.T. et al. 2010. Do US Black Women Experience Stress-Related Accelerated Biological Aging? A Novel
Theory and First Population-Based Test of Black-White Differences in Telomere Length. Hum Nat. 21, (2010), 19–38.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-010-9078-0.
[45] Hall, J.M. and Fields, B. 2015. “It’s Killing Us!” Narratives of Black Adults About Microaggression Experiences and
Related Health Stress. Global Qualitative Nursing Research. 2, (2015), 233339361559156.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2333393615591569.
[46] Halskov, K. and Dalsgård, P. 2006. Inspiration card workshops. (2006), 2.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1142405.1142409.
[47] Hamidi, F. et al. 2018. Gender Recognition or Gender Reductionism? (2018), 1–13.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173582.
[48] Harrington, C.N. et al. 2019. Engaging Low-Income African-American Older Adults in Health Discussions through
Community-based Design Workshops. ACM Conference on Human Factors and Computing (Glasgow, Scotland, 2019).
[49] Hayes, G.R. 2011. The relationship of action research to human-computer interaction. ACM Transactions on
Computer-Human Interaction. 18, 3 (2011), 1–20. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1993060.1993065.
[50] Hillier, A.E. 2003. Redlining and the Homeowners’ Loan Corporation Part of the Urban, Community and Regional
Planning Commons. Journal of Urban History. 29, 4 (2003), 394–420. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144203252003.
[51] Hussain, S. et al. 2012. Participatory Design with Marginalized People in Developing Countries : Challenges and
Opportunities Experienced in a Field Study in Cambodia. International Journal of Design. 6, 2 (2012), 91–109.
[52] Irani, L. 2018. “Design Thinking”: Defending Silicon Valley at the Apex of Global Labor Hierarchies. Catalyst:

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
216:24 Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, & Anne Marie Piper

Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. 4, 1 (2018), 1–19.

[53] Irani, L. 2015. Hackathons and the Making of Entrepreneurial Citizenship. Science, Technology, & Human Values. 40, 5
(2015), 799–824. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243915578486.
[54] Irani, L. et al. 2010. Postcolonial Computing: A Lens on Design and Development. ACM Conference on Human Factors
and Computing (Atlanta, 2010).
[55] Irani, L. et al. 2009. Postcolonial Computing: A Lens on Design and Development. Chi 2009. Volume 1, (2009), 1311–
1320.
[56] Irani, L.C. and Dourish, P. 2009. Postcolonial interculturality. (2009), 249.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1499224.1499268.
[57] Jan, T. 2018. Redlining was banned 50 years ago. It’s still hurting minorities today. Washington Post.
[58] Joshi, S.G. and Bratteteig, T. 2016. Designing for Prolonged Mastery. On involving old people in Participatory Design.
Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems. 28, 1 (2016).
[59] Khovanskaya, V. et al. 2018. Designing against the status quo. Interactions. 25, 2 (2018), 64–67.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3178560.
[60] Law, J. 2004. After Method: Mess in Social Science Research. Routledge.
[61] Lazar, A. et al. 2018. Making as Expression: Informing Design with People with Complex Communication Needs
through Art Therapy. CHI ’18: Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
(Montreal, 2018).
[62] Leary, J.T.O. et al. Who Gets to Future ? Race , Representation , and Design Methods in Africatown.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300791.
[63] Leong, T. and Robertson, T. 2016. Voicing values: laying foundations for ageing people to participate in design.
Participatory Design Conference. (2016), 31–40. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2940299.2940301.
[64] Lucero, A. and Mattelmäki, T. 2011. Good to See You Again: Engaging Users in Design. Proceedings of the 2011
Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces - DPPI ’11. (2011), 1.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2347504.2347517.
[65] Mainsah, H. and Morrison, A. 2014. Participatory design through a cultural lens: insights from postcolonial theory.
PDC ’14: Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference (Windhoek, Nambia, 2014), 83–86.
[66] Martin-Hammond, A. et al. 2018. Engaging Older Adults in the Participatory Design of Intelligent Health Search
Tools. (2018), 280–284. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3240925.3240972.
[67] Masters, J. 1995. The history of action research. Action research electronic reader. 22, (1995).
[68] McEwan, C. 2008. Postcolonialism and development. Routledge.
[69] Merritt, S. and Stolterman, E. 2012. Cultural hybridity in participatory design. (2012), 73.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2348144.2348168.
[70] Mitchell, B. et al. 2018. HOLC “redlininig” maps: a persistent structure of segregation and economic inequality. HOLC
“redlining” maps: The persistent structure of segregation and economic inequality » NCRC. 202 (2018), 464–2709.
[71] Muller, M.J. and Druin, A. 2002. Hybridity and Participatory Design-1-DRAFT: Publisher has final version
Participatory Design: The Third Space in HCI. The Human Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving
Technologies and Emerging Applications. 1051–1068.
[72] Muller, M.J. and Kuhn, S. 1993. Participatory Design. Communications of the ACM - Special issue Participatory Design.
36, 6 (1993), 24–28.
[73] Okeke, F. et al. 2019. Opportunities and challenges in connecting care recipients to the community health feedback
loop. (2019), 1–11. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3287098.3287111.
[74] Orsi, J.M. et al. 2010. Black-White health disparities in the United States and Chicago: a 15-year progress analysis.
American journal of public health. 100, 2 (Feb. 2010), 349–56. DOI:https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.165407.
[75] Parker, A.G. and Grinter, R.E. 2014. Collectivistic health promotion tools: Accounting for the relationship between
culture, food and nutrition. International Journal of Human Computer Studies. 72, 2 (2014), 185–206.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2013.08.008.
[76] Pedell, S. et al. 2014. Tools for participation: Intergenerational technology design for the home. International Journal
of Design. 8, 2 (2014), 1–14.
[77] Perrier, T. et al. 2015. Engaging Pregnant Women in Kenya with a Hybrid Computer-Human SMS Communication
System. (2015), 1429–1438. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702124.
[78] Pommeranz, A. et al. 2012. Exploration of facilitation, materials and group composition in participatory design
sessions. ECCE ’12: Proceedings of the 30th European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics (Edinburgh, United Kingdom,
2012), 124–130.
[79] Racadio, R. et al. 2014. Research at the Margin: Participatory Design and Community Based Participatory Research.
PDC ’14: Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Industry Cases, Workshop Descriptions,
Doctoral Consortium papers, and Keynote abstracts - Volume 2 (Windhoek, 2014), 49–52.
[80] Racadio, R. et al. 2014. Research at the Margin: Participatory Design and Community Based Participatory Research. In

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.
Deconstructing Community-Based Collaborative Design 216:25

Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference (2014), 49–52.

[81] Reason, P. 2007. The SAGE handbook of action research: Participative inquiry and research. ousand Oaks.
[82] Roberson, J. and Nardi, B. 2010. Survival needs and social inclusion. (2010), 445.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/1718918.1718993.
[83] Rosner, D.K. et al. 2016. Out of Time, Out of Place: Reflections on Design Workshops as a Research Method.
Proceedings of the 19th ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing - CSCW ’16
(2016), 1129–1139.
[84] Rothstein, R. 2017. The color of law: A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright
Publishing.
[85] Sabiescu, A.G. et al. 2014. Emerging spaces in community-based participatory design. Proceedings of the 13th
Participatory Design Conference on Research Papers - PDC ’14.
[86] Sabiescu, A.G. and Memarovic, N. 2013. Participatory Design for Cultural Representation: A Cultural Transparency
Perspective. IFIP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (Berlin, 2013), 611–618.
[87] Scheuerman, M.K. et al. 2018. Safe Spaces and Safe Places: Unpacking Technology-Mediated Experiences of Safety
and Harm with Transgender People. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 2, November (2018), 29.
[88] Schlesinger, A. et al. 2017. Intersectional HCI: Engaging Identity through Gender, Race, and Class. Proceedings of the
2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’17.
[89] Siek, K.A. et al. 2009. Bridging the Information Gap: Collaborative Technology Design with Low-Income At-Risk
Families to Engender Healthy Behaviors. OZCHI ’09: Proceedings of the 21st Annual Conference of the Australian
Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group: Design (Melbourne, Australia, 2009), 89–96.
[90] Skogan, W. 2006. Police and Community in Chicago: A Tale of Three Cities - Wesley G. Skogan - Google Books. Oxford.
[91] Spiel, K. et al. 2017. Participatory Evaluation with Autistic Children. (2017), 5755–5766.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025851.
[92] Stowell, E. et al. 2018. Designing and Evaluating mHealth Interventions for Vulnerable Populations. Proceedings of the
2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’18 (2018), 1–17.
[93] Strohmayer, A. et al. 2015. Exploring Learning Ecologies among People Experiencing Homelessness. (2015), 2275–
2284. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702157.
[94] Tatar, D. 2007. The Design Tensions Framework. Human-Computer Interaction. 22, (2007), 413–451.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/3125429.
[95] Teli, M. et al. 2016. Computing and the Common: An Empirical Case of Participatory Design Today. Proceedings of
the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Full Papers - Volume 1. (2016), 1–10.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2940299.2940312.
[96] The Economist 2018. Racial resentment - It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard enough [Dataset].
[97] Unertl, K.M. et al. 2016. Integrating community-based participatory research and informatics approaches to improve
the engagement and health of underserved populations. Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. 23,
(2016), 60–73. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocv094.
[98] Wallerstein, N.B. and Duran, B. 2006. Using Community-Based Participatory Research to Address Health Disparities.
Health Promotion Practice. 7, 3 (2006), 312–323. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/1524839906289376.
[99] Waycott, J. et al. 2015. The Challenge of Technology Research in Sensitive Settings. (2015), 240–249.
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2838739.2838773.
[100] Weitzer, R. et al. 2008. Police-Community Relations in a Majority-Black City. Journal of Research in Crime and
Delinquincy. 45, 4 (2008), 398–428. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427808322617.
[101] White, C.C.R. 2018. How African Americans Have Influenced Style and Culture. TIME.
[102] Wilson, W.J. 2012. The truly disadvantaged: The inner city, the underclass, and public policy.
[103] Winschiers-Theophilus, H. et al. 2010. Being Participated-A Community Approach. In Proceedings of the 11th Biennial
Participatory Design Conference (Sydney, Australia, 2010), 1–10.
[104] Wong- Villacres, M. et al. 2018. Designing for Intersections. In Proceedings of the 2018 on Designing Interactive Systems
Conference 2018 (Hong Kong, 2018), 45–58.
[105] Xie, B. et al. 2012. Co-designing an e-health tutorial for older adults. Proceedings of the 2012 iConference on -
iConference ’12 (2012), 240–247.
[106] Yancy, G. 2008. Black Bodies, White Gaze. Rowman & Littlefield.

Received April 2019; revised June 2019; accepted August 2019

PACM on Human-Computer Interaction, Vol. 3, No. CSCW, Article 216. Publication date: November 2019.