Lilian Genaro Motti Ader
Jennyfer L. Taylor
ABSTRACT
UX designers and practitioners acknowledge users’ different skills and try to address their needs to design better products and experiences. As HCI educators, we searched for tools to help our students to recognize that they might have different perspectives from the users they will be designing for, generating bias and assumptions in the design process. Positionality refers to the personal and social constructs that define our identity, shaping how we see and interpret the world around us, as well as the way the world sees and interprets us. Practicing positionality in HCI education is a meaningful way to reflect on our teaching approaches, our measures and expectations of students’ performance and engagement. For the students, learning about positionality and reflexivity can have an impact on their design work and research, raising awareness on relationships of power and subjectivity. During this Masterclass, we present tools and methods that can be used for teaching and learning (T&L) activities about positionality. We invite attendees to create their positionality statement and share their experience, facilitating a discussion about the challenges that are common both to T&L and interaction design, such as ethics, privacy, stereotypes and stigmatization.
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Index Terms
- Teaching & Learning Positionality in HCI education: reflecting on our identities as educators and facilitating the discussion in the classroom
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