Building with, not for: Case Studies of Community-Driven Employment Innovations

Recorded on March 30, 2022

Speaker: Dr. Tawanna Dillahunt, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan’s School of Information (UMSI)

Technology presents a force for positive change; however, technology has perpetuated racism and deepened social inequality and injustice seen in society. There are many reasons for these injustices within our design and development practices alone. Our underlying assumptions about who has access to technology inherently exclude the most negatively impacted. These voices are often missing from the design, development, and evaluation process. Their insight and genius are often missing from the technological narratives that we tell. However, it is unclear what approaches practitioners should take going forward and what steps they might take to integrate these approaches into their existing process. This presentation aims to unpack ways for practitioners to begin combatting the design, development, and deployment of technologies that reinforce and perpetuate racial inequality while designing tools that align with the values and strengths of communities.

In this presentation, I present our process to develop employment tools for and with minoritized job seekers living in Southeastern Michigan. I discuss challenges and missteps when designing for rather than with job seekers, despite taking user-centered design approaches. I discuss what we learned from our missteps, and share a promising approach using a combination of co-design and agile development when designing with job seekers.

[tatumdilley]

I think the job seekers know that you gave them sloppy code. These job seekers know and they are opting out