As AI and data systems often falter when encountering queer identities and knowledge, reinforcing existing oppressions, queer people have resisted such systems and their normalizing tendencies. This pictorial explores tactics of queering AI through a collaborative zine-making project (i.e. zineography) that challenges generative AI and data systems. We share how we workshopped and materialized queering tactics in zine spreads; analyzed these spreads according to materials, content, and tone; and visualized our analysis as thematic collages. We contribute: (1) tangible characteristics of queering AI and data systems (i.e. materials, tones, and aesthetics); and (2) design opportunities for using zineographies as a radical method for building and collectively sharing knowledge about a marginalized community, including recommendations for enacting queer zineographies. By materializing queering tactics through zine-making, we invite embodied, action-oriented critiques that question dominant techno-solutionist movements and trace queer possibilities outside of their normalizing narratives.

Intimacy is a complex, multifaceted subject of importance within disability rights movements.Disabled individuals are entitled to the same universal human rights (e.g., marriage, sexual and reproductive self-determination) as everyone else.Assistive measures that support equity in their personal lives remain central to these movements.However, the research community's relatively narrow focus of what "intimacy" is (i.e., primarily concerned with sex) combined with factors, such as context, cultural sensitivities, power dynamics and complex ethics, has resulted in its limited exploration in HCI Accessibility Research.Among the relatively small body of HCI literature, most works approach disabled intimacies through a primarily deficit-oriented and heteronormative lens.Notably, ASSETS has featured only two papers on this subject in the past 23 years [53].Moreover, few studies in HCI explore the methodological and ethical considerations of researching disabled intimacies, and even fewer are disability-led and include queer perspectives [53].In this half-day virtual workshop, we invite engineers, technology design and development researchers, industry practitioners, accessibility * These authors contributed equally to this research and share first authorship of this publication.

This paper reports on the evaluation of digital play things that scaffold social play. We have engaged two neurodiverse groups of children in a participatory design process to explore meaningful technologies in their co-located play experiences. The resulting technologies are systems composed of multiple connected artefacts that aim to strike the balance between structure and ambiguity to allow children to interpret social play in their own way, while providing structures that offer a common frame for interaction. We report on the two systems, MusicPads and LightSpaces, and their comparative and participatory evaluation, in which we assessed the impact of these technologies on the playing experience of children, and collected the children’s own reflections. Our results suggest that technologies indeed can play an important supporting role when designed as boundary objects across disparate needs and ideas of play. Building on this, we discuss implications for design and evaluation.

Social stigma negatively impacts the well-being of neurodivergent individuals. Specifically for autistic people, the social isolation and pressure to conform to normative ways of being can take a tremendous toll; such as a thwarted sense of belonging to the point of higher rates of suicide. Yet, few technologies are directly targeting the problem of stigma. Socio-technical systems have tremendous potential to shift public perception of traditionally marginalized populations. However, these systems are not consistently designed to reflect the values and needs of neurodivergent individuals. This work explores the use of design sprints to envision CT– a spectrum of technology that could reduce social stigma by increasing the public’s awareness, accommodations, acceptance, advocacy, and appreciation. This work reports on two design sprints across 25 HCI community members with varying lived experiences with neurodiversity and knowledge of design practice. The resulting design concepts were discussed in the groups and then analyzed to reflect on how they might combat stigma. Results reveal designs that support the freedom to be oneself via (1) safe spaces (2) public understanding, and (3) authentic expression of strengths, challenges, and needs.

In this position paper, we argue for designing autistic social media for thriving neurodiverse online communities. We discuss emerging work in the field of Human-Computer Interaction around autism and social media design, and explore how a Banal Autistic Design approach can lead to a less deficit-focused design paradigm by conducting a Found Footage Autoethnography, a method we introduce as an autoethnography variant suited to autistic embodied ways of knowing. Finally, we juxtapose our design insights with existing design guidelines for autistic social media, and argue for design for customisation, anti-normativity, non-prescripitiveness, granular publics, and interest-centricity.

The effects of social media on our society are heavily researched and discussed, but few insights about the role of aesthetic design therein have been gained to this date, despite research in related areas providing precedent: drawing from existing theory on persuasive design, nudge, dark patterns, and advertising, we suggest the term Aesthetic Design Power to conduct a preliminary critical analysis of the design of four influential social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok) as a foundation for critical discussions about the aesthetic design of social media and its impact. We present salient design attributes and elements shared by these four platforms, speculate about the possible motivations and effects of these design decisions, and argue for an urgent need for further research into, and discussions about, the visual design and connected Aesthetic Design Power of social media.

Leaving the field when conducting research in situated contexts, and finding ways to sustain project outcomes beyond academia, is an ongoing struggle in HCI. In our research project, we co-designed technologies with children in classroom contexts for three years. Nearing the projects’ end, we focused on creating resources that enable teachers to continue our work with their pupils. In collaboration with teachers, we developed socio-material tools that support them in empowering neurodiverse children to engage with technology in creative ways and create their own technologies. While the majority of technology design toolkits are stand-alone artefacts, part of our toolkit is an infrastructure to keep guiding and supporting teachers beyond the project’s end. In this paper, we discuss the teachers expectations and requirements for a toolkit and argue that an infrastructure must be part of a toolkit. We present a set of guidelines for researchers planning for a project’s end.