“Freedom Dreams”: Imagining Inclusive Technology Futures through Co-Design with Black Americans

  • Dr. Christina N. Harrington | Assistant Professor in the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and Director of the Equity and Health Innovations Design Research Lab
  • Race and Technology: A Research Lecture Series

In Robin D.G. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination, he details a history of Black feminist movements that interrogate what is “normal”, while also envisioning new ways of living and interacting that constitute a total transformation of our society, indicating a notion of “freedom dreams” stemming from feminism and queer movements. Similar approaches such as Afrofuturist feminism offer an ideology which places Blackness, queerness, and those with varying abilities at the center of our collective futuring. These frameworks stand to inform a more equity-centered approach to considering technology and the design of the world around us by not only imagining different futures but dismantling the concepts of “otherness” that is often associated with futuring among historically marginalized groups. In this presentation I’ll present case studies of projects that center Black, older, and disabled individuals in our considerations of what makes technology inclusive, equitable, and transformative. I discuss what I’ve learned in co-design projects with various communities and paths to drive more equitable and liberatory research and development practices.

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Speaker Details

Dr. Christina N. Harrington (she/her) is a designer and qualitative researcher who works at the intersection of interaction design and health and racial equity. She combines her background in electrical engineering and industrial design to focus on the areas of universal, accessible, and inclusive design. Specifically, she looks at how to use design in the development of products to support historically excluded groups such as Black communities, older adults, and individuals with differing abilities in maintaining their health, wellness, and autonomy in defining their future. Christina is passionate about using design to center communities that have historically been at the margins of mainstream design. She looks to methods such as design justice and community collectivism to broaden and amplify participation in design by addressing the barriers that corporate approaches to design have placed on our ability to see design as a universal language of communication and knowledge. Dr. Harrington is currently an assistant professor in the HCI Institute at Carnegie Mellon University where she is also the Director of the Equity and Health Innovations Design Research Lab.

Series: Race and Technology: A Research Lecture Series