Anxiety and depression are among the most common mental health conditions that affect black women (BW) living in the US. Nevertheless, BW with anxiety and/or depression (BWA/D) are under-diagnosed and under-treated, resulting in severe and prolonged somatic symptoms. Although technology research suggests the potential of social robots for mental health, these works rarely highlight the needs of BWA/D or how their lived experiences can shape these technologies. We contribute a relational and somatic speculative approach – rooted in Black Feminist and decolonial praxis – to designing social robots for and with BWA/D. Our work illustrates how self-reflexive and dialogic processes situated in BWs’ lived experiences can reshape the design of social robot-mediated mental well-being.

AI-supported writing technologies (AISWT) that provide grammatical suggestions, autocomplete sentences, or generate and rewrite text are now a regular feature integrated into many people's workflows. However, little is known about how people perceive the suggestions these tools provide. In this paper, we investigate how Black American users perceive AISWT, motivated by prior findings in natural language processing that highlight how the underlying large language models can contain racial biases. Using interviews and observational user studies with 13 Black American users of AISWT, we found a strong tradeoff between the perceived benefits of using AISWT to enhance their writing style and feeling like ''it wasn't built for us'''. Specifically, participants reported AISWT's failure to recognize commonly used names and expressions in African American Vernacular English, experiencing its corrections as hurtful and alienating and fearing it might further minoritize their culture. We end with a reflection on the tension between AISWT that fail to include Black American culture and language, and AISWT that attempt to mimic it, with attention to accuracy, authenticity, and the production of social difference.

Community-based partnerships are essential to creating inclusive and equitable technologies and design practices. Though recent scholarship in HCI focuses on equitable design practices, there is less focus on understanding the experiences of community-based nonprofit organizations (CBOs) when partnering with technology companies. In this paper, we focus on understanding the perspectives of CBOs by answering the following research question: What are the experiences of CBOs that have collaborated with technology companies? Through a series of design workshops with 18 participants who work at community-based nonprofits that have collaborated with technology firms, we identified four elements of community-industry collaborations that collectively shape the overall experience: divergences in cultural and organizational norms, ''setting the table,'' project relationship dynamics, and affective qualities. We conclude by discussing the power structures that impact community-industry collaboration and suggest reflective practices to guide equitable collaborations between CBOs and tech companies.

Why is the solution the end point to a problem? While many in HCI and design have examined the impulse to solve problems–the solutionist or techno-solutionist mindset–we examine the logic that binds the solution and the problem together as a pair. Focusing on the timely and consequential problem of systemic racial injustice, we think through the paradoxical possibility that the pairing of the problem and solution (so often treated as the default in design and HCI) perpetuates the very conditions we seek to improve. With Calvin Warren’s profound Afro-pessimism, we recognize how the tools used to solve structural inequities around Black life are constructed with inequities themselves. The problem-solution, therefore, is a dead end. We use this paradox as an invitation to rethink ongoing efforts to seek equity and justice more broadly, setting out a fragile but hopeful path for HCI and design.

Mobile banking applications have become a primary mode of sharing and managing financial resources. However, prior work has questioned its role in serving Black communities amid legacies of structural racial inequity. To investigate this critical topic, we conducted a 30-day diary study with 21 participants and an interview study with 15 participants, all Black American users of the mobile payment platform Cash App. We observed that addressing hurdles to financial inclusion requires the navigation of institutional distrust, banking barriers, and financial literacy disparities. Our findings suggest that Black Americans persist and navigate contemporary financial systems through legacies of social and cultural capacities. We offer grounded-truth considerations for the continued design of fin-tech that could have equitable impact among historically marginalized communities. Reflecting on the tenor of financial services to lack empathy, we urge designers and scholars of financial technology to reflect on their power to promote racial justice and financial inclusion.

Co-design methods have involved older adults in the design process to fill the knowledge gap that younger adult designers might encounter when designing for an aging population. A focus of co-design means establishing equal and equitable relationships between users and designers. To understand the factors that contribute to equal collaborations between older adults and student designers, we conducted 12 co-design sessions with 16 older adults and 11 student designers. We examined their interactions by adapting a framework initially aimed to understand the child-adult design partnership. We also analyzed student designers' reflections to understand their experiences and learnings from designing with older adults. Our findings demonstrate that developing a design partnership is complex. The framework helped surface factors like sharing life experiences and role ownership that influenced balanced or unbalanced interactions. Through the student designers' reflections, we found that student designers identified challenges they encountered and the assumptions they had about the older adult population. We believe that immersing students in a co-design experience with older adults and leveraging reflection activities provides an educational and meaningful experience to the design students.