5.
Cases Studies of Feminist HCI
2022.12
#CriticalHistory #PaperDraft
When we study design in schools, we often are demanded that our design needs to meet user needs and solve user pain points. And design needs to be inclusive of anyone, no matter what their race, age, or gender. In the neoliberal socio-political context where everything can be commercialized, we use design thinking to try to make design for good, design for all. Today's popular Universal Design, Inclusive Design, Humanitarian Design, etc., all have a beautiful vision of making a difference. Designers set out with the ambition to change the world, using design thinking as a strategy to try to make designs for marginal groups that have been neglected. However, have these design practices that claim to serve marginal groups done what they hope to do, instead of promoting neoliberalism and pushing marginal groups into the dilemma of re-creation with arrogance?
The first thing we need to clarify is what are the marginal groups. Through historical and social changes, human beings have developed a society of white and male supremacy. In such a context, other non-white races such as blacks and yellows, and non-male genders such as women are usually defined as marginal groups. In addition to groups with less social power such as the disabled and the poor. Being a marginal group has nothing to do with the real population size, but rather with social hierarchy.
In previous studies, we could see many critiques of designs that advertise themselves as being made for the marginal. Philip gave us an example of the one laptop per child project that was designed for "creating educational opportunities for the world's poorest children" (The OLPC Wiki 2008), which gave a sense of overwhelming white supremacy and arrogance towards vulnerable groups (Philip et al. 2012). With a feminist perspective that is beyond gender, Bardzell critiqued design practices that simply transplanted designs across regions without considering the actual needs of local users, which fully demonstrated designers' disrespect for the marginal groups to which they did not belong. In the meantime, guided by Feminist HCI that she proposed, she brought forward design approaches that could facilitate design practices that could work better and make a tangible difference in people's lives, including diversity, participation, advocacy, ecosystems, and so on (Bardzell 2010).
Furthermore, many designs for marginal groups have not only ignored actual user needs, but have also become promoters of neoliberalism. Many contemporary design practices have created commercialized user needs using the empathy and sympathy approach in design thinking introduced by IDEO (Stern and Sami 2019). These designs ignore the invisible social causes underlying the user's pain points, and instead induce change on an individual level through elaborate visual design, gamification strategies, etc. (Hepworth 2019), shifting the pressure to solve social problems onto the individual, which further promotes neoliberalism (Williams 2019). In the socio-political context of neoliberalism, guided by design thinking, designers have become accomplices to capitalism. Moreover, because these designs address a social problem from a commercialized and decentralized perspective, what they create does not really get to the core of the problem, but rather a beautiful packaging that conceals it. The marginal groups’ plights are not solved, because social problems are not addressed.
In the following part, I will adopt the design approaches mentioned in Feminist HCI to re-examine design in the neoliberal socio-political context. I will present two design cases for further analysis and reflection with reference to existing case studies.
The first case I would like to discuss is the Breast Pump, a mechanical device used by breastfeeding mothers to extract milk from their breasts. The first breast pump was invented as early as the 19th century. Figure 1 shows us the design of an early breast pump, the main components of which have not changed significantly, and still consist of a horn-shaped collection opening that fits the curve of breasts and a container to collect the milk. The breast pump was designed primarily as a portable milk collection tool for mothers who needed to return to work, regardless of the wishes of mothers and babies (Lepore 2009).
D'Ignazio and her team had done some awesome research. To understand authentic user experiences, they collected stories from mothers about breast pumps on social media, following the participation advocated by Feminist HCI, and held a hackathon, inviting breast pump manufacturers, designers and mothers to engage and share the dilemmas they faced. They ended up with a collection of over 1,000 unique stories, but they all showed some same emotions: dissatisfaction, shame, isolation and powerlessness. As they learned about the entire breast pump ecosystem, they discovered that it was not only the design that was causing mothers to feel these emotions, but more importantly, the lack of social acceptance. Mothers are asked to return to work prematurely, but public spaces do not provide a private place for them to breast pump. Additionally, whenever they try to do breast pumping, others, especially men, look at it in a different way or directly avoided it, despite the fact that they are doing great work of feeding the next generation of humans (D'Ignazio et al. 2016).
The lack of social understanding behind breast pump design is the real problem that needs to be addressed. Instead, today's design practice is more focused on the appearance and function of the breast pump itself. By now, a wide variety of breast pumps have been designed: electric, manual, one-piece breast pumps with bras, breast pumps with massage, etc. It is a reflection of neoliberalism that the additional functions and commercial value of breast pumps are being focused on, while the social problems behind the pump go unnoticed. The responsibility for solving such a social problem where breast pumping is seen as deviant is shifted to mothers in a way that makes them awkward to use a breast pump. Along with improving the design of breast pumps, we need to work to change society's perception and legitimize such a great job as nourishing future generations of humans. The second case I intend to explore is a fan fiction website, the Archive of Our Own (AO3). This website was created because the developers tried to resist the commercialization of everything that neoliberalism brings. Before AO3, there used to be forums, blogs, and other online communities favored by fan-fic lovers. However, these communities were difficult to maintain because of the legal issues involved in fan fiction, such as copyright and intellectual property rights. At the same time, capitalists also had their eyes on this fast-growing field. A website called FanLib emerged, aiming to profit from fan-fic works. It should be noted that while the creators and readers of fan fiction are mainly women who are defined as a marginal group, FanLib was an entirely male-run organization. Not only did they not include any fan-fic authors or readers among their developers, but they also did not even have a woman. They just sought to make money from fan-fic works. This sparked resentment among the authors and readers of fan fiction. They raised the idea of creating their own non-profit platform for fan-fic lovers only, and AO3 was born.
Figure 2. Screenshot of AO3, captured by author on
7 December 2022
Source: https://archiveofourown.org/
Source: https://archiveofourown.org/
The design strategy of AO3 uses many of the methods advocated in the Feminist HCI to avoid ignoring the user's voice (Fiesler et al. 2016). They have been successful in participation. Not only are the board members and development team all fan-fic lovers, but they have also recruited users as volunteers to translate, organize, and archive fan-fic works. The team of user volunteers is efficient. The friendly community atmosphere keeps them working with love. What’s more, because they are insiders, they know what they need and help improve the community. Figure 2 shows the clean and simple design of the website. They have also designed a disabled-friendly version. AO3's most important feature and the value they have always espoused is pluralism. They use tags to categorize fan-fic works and encourage authors to preface their works with reading warnings, rather than ordering them to remove content that is not for everyone. Pluralism influences their design decisions. When deciding which user suggestion should be granted, they would reject it if it doesn't fit their values, even if there are a large number of people who agree with the request. Design that adheres to their values allows their community to remain stable and not be easily collapsed by shifts.
For a non-profit website like AO3, people are definitely concerned about its finances. How does the AO3 team survive? Fan fiction is usually forbidden to make a profit because of intellectual property rights, but that doesn't mean that AO3 as a platform cannot make a profit. But instead of putting any advertisements or introducing a premium membership to earn profits like YouTube, AO3 relies solely on donations and a major fundraising event twice a year to get the money to maintain. They expect their users to enjoy the same privileges equally, including editing, blocking, searching, reading, and more. According to AO3's annual report, AO3 received about $1 million in donations in 2021, while the annual expense to keep the website running is roughly $550 hundred. The board members and the development team receive no money, they labor entirely for love.
I believe that respect, participation and plurality are the reasons why AO3 has been able so far and gained over 5 million users. The design and development team followed the Feminist HCI design principles well and fully respected users' opinions. In a neoliberal socio-political context, where cyberspace is gradually being eroded by capital. FanLib failed not only because they used membership to recreate user classes, but also because they did not respect and listen to users' opinions, replacing them with poor, arrogant design. The development team of AO3 truly thought about their users, respected their opinions, fully engaged them, and adhered to the values of pluralism to make them successful Although this success was not commercial, it still won the applause of everyone and provided a stable autonomous community for lovers of fan fiction. Such effort and dedication is remarkable.
In the neoliberal context, as designers, we may often feel powerless to be used by capitalism when we are trying to use design to make a difference. But the social responsibility of designers as a bridge between capitalism and people tells us that if we cannot make changes in between, then who else will? After conducting exhaustive research on breast pumps, D'Ignazio and her team decided to use the design strategy of advocacy to bring attention to the issue of mothers breastfeeding (D'Ignazio et al. 2016). Design can not only solve problems, but also arouse problems and generate social awareness to accelerate the problem-solving agenda. We may still have a long way to go, but if we set out, sooner or later we will reach the end.
Works Cited
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Lepore, Jill. "Baby Food: If breast is best, why are women bottling their milk?". The New Yorker, 12 January 2009, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/01/19/baby-food.
D’Ignazio, Catherine et al. “A Feminist HCI Approach to Designing Postpartum Technologies: "When I first saw a breast pump I was wondering if it was a joke".” Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, (2016).
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“2021 Annual Report.” Organization for Transformative Works., 2022, https://www.transformativeworks.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/2021-OTW-Annual-Report.pdf
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