Tuesday, 24 June 2025, 08:30 - 12:30 CEST (Central European Summer Time - Sweden)
Dr. Justin Dowdall (short bio)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA
Modality
on-site
Room: TBA
Requirements for participants
Course participants should bring their own laptop or tablet
Target Audience
This course is intended for academics and professionals that seek to collaborate with students and local nonprofit and governmental organizations to facilitate student learning and provide local underfunded projects with engineering support and design services. Lessons gained and be easily integrated into introduction HCI courses at both the graduate and undergraduate level.
Abstract
Community-Engaged Human-Computer Interaction (ECHCI) is an evolving subfield that emphasizes the collaborative design, development, and evaluation of technology with, rather than just for, the communities it serves. Unlike traditional HCI, which often focuses on individual users or specific user groups, community-engaged HCI foregrounds the participatory roles of local communities in shaping technological solutions that address collective needs and values. This approach integrates principles from participatory design, action research, and community development, aiming to empower marginalized or underserved groups by co-creating technologies that are culturally relevant, sustainable, and responsive to local contexts. This course will use as its foci student learning to promote community-engaged collaborations with non-profit and local underserved governmental organizations. Integrating ECHCI insights, this course provides insight on how to onboard student designers and community members within a single semester. It will highlight how to iteratively and participatorily define problems, develop prototypes, and refine solutions. This proposed pedogeological process fosters a more inclusive design paradigm that respects local knowledge and priorities while also incorporating technical expertise while offering real world experiences to students that can lead to post-graduate and internship opportunities. This course also outlines the ways in educators can leverage student experiential learning to help bridge the digital divide by addressing issues such as access to technology, digital literacy, and social equity as part of their HCI curriculum while not putting undue stress on students or community stakeholders. Ethical considerations, such as navigating (IRB) institutional review board expectations, data privacy, and mutual benefit, are central to these collaborations, ensuring that the outcomes reflect both the aspirations and constraints of the community and student participants.
Benefits for attendees
This course will offer practical ways to increase student engagement and offer real world case studies that are easily replicable.
Course Content
Content of the course will include runway and sprint tables, ideas for team organizations, free use in-class activities, worksheets, and advice on how to create a timeline for deliverables. Of primary focus will be a walkthrough of pervious student projects including local soil and water conservation districts, nature preserves, a mycelium-based biotechnology company, organic farms, and an agroforestry start up.
- Measuring and setting expectations
- Onboarding students into project expectations
- Selecting clients
- Team development and workflow (identifying student leaders)
- How to develop technical expertise and student writing skills
- Integrating research methods as praxis
- Dealing with poor responsiveness or over demanding clients
- Understanding the needs of the community
- Labor issues and ethical concerns
- Post-course outreach internships and graduate education preparation
Bio Sketch of Course instructor
Dr. Justin Dowdall is a lecturer at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute where he focuses his teaching and researching community engaged HCI and environmental design. He is currently working on a coauthored new book with Dr. Lorelie Wager titled A Thoery Deep Design, a play on theories of deep listening and empathy driven design processes.