Grainger College of Engineering, All Events

Abstract: Community based participatory research is held together by values and practices that shift decision making power towards those who are impacted by design choices. In HCI, a growing body of work has adopted community based research to sustain and achieve goals that meet social needs. However, there exists a gap between community based research’s theoretical principles and what is practically achievable. In this talk, I will present work that unpacks lessons learned through three case studies of community-based research. First, I will focus on design outcomes in an instance of co-designing sexual communication tools. Next, I will examine the process of partnering with community advisory boards. Finally, I will discuss value misalignments when enacting a participatory Agile development process in a community-industry partnership. Across these lessons, I aim to deconstruct what contributes to the theory-practice divide for researchers invested in community-based research in HCI.

Bio: Calvin Liang is an Assistant Professor in Communication Studies at Northwestern University. His research brings together human-computer interaction, social computing, and public health and focuses on designing for health and intimacy through community-based research. He holds a PhD in Human Centered Design and Engineering from the University of Washington and is a current CRA Trustworthy AI Research Fellow.