Date: 03/29/2023

Time: 08:30 AM EST – 10:30 AM EST

Location: (Hybrid) TSRB 223 https://gatech.zoom.us/j/93611791149

Anh-Ton Tran

Human-Centered Computing

School of Interactive Computing

College of Computing

Georgia Institute of Technology

Committee:

Dr. Carl Disalvo (advisor), School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech

Dr. Amy Bruckman, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech

Dr. Chris LeDantec, School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech

Dr. Elora Raymond, School of City and Regional Planning, Georgia Tech

Dr. Katta Spiel, HCI Group, TU Wien

Abstract:

In this proposal I detail my completed research with a community-based organization (CBO) that works to dismantle the commodification of housing. My research pieces together a framework of doing social-justice oriented HCI research under the guise of dismantling. I argue that dismantling is a more useful term than justice to describe forms of technical labor and community organizing work in the context of abolitionist-oriented CBOs. My work draws heavily on Participatory Action Research (PAR), Ethnography, Participatory Design (PD), and Critical Design as methodologies. Organized into two parts, my site-based research draws from my participant observation working with grassroots collected community data on eviction (a view from below). It also details my work making institutionally collected data useful to the organization (a view from the top). Methods-wise, I draw from critical theories in the vein of Humanistic HCI. Specifically, I use queer theory as a source to produce Critical Design briefs to provide other ways of approaching civic data. I conclude by offering a final study: community-based tenant court watching of eviction court. In this study I aim to answer how we can build counter efforts to count up with data, echoing the shift in anthropology in the 1970s to study contexts of power instead of only contexts of the marginalized.