Meaningful connections formed between people and robots are a key factor in sustaining long-term interaction. Yet while onboarding experiences for social robot products are often carefully designed to cultivate these bonds, offboarding receives far less attention. This imbalance can result in abrupt disruptions in human-robot bonds when products reach end-of-life. In this paper, we examine a case study describing the shutdown of Moxie, a social robot designed to support children’s socio-emotional learning. Through a qualitative analysis of the company’s public communications and users’ online reactions to the shutdown, we identify key missed opportunities to prepare and support users throughout the robot’s final interactions. In the absence of a structured offboarding experience, the emotional, technical, and communicative burdens were shifted to parents. Drawing from these findings, we introduce ethical sunsetting recommendations for social robots and offer a reimagined offboarding experience aimed at supporting healthy emotional detachment during product end-of-life.

While rural-urban approaches to digital divide research are common, less attention is paid to intra-rural digital divides occurring within rural areas. Hidden intra-rural digital divides can persist as rural-urban divides close, furthering digital inequity. Through six months of multi-sited ethnography in a rural Appalachian county, I highlight the presence and impacts of intra-rural digital divides. Analyzing these findings alongside existing literature on intra-rural digital divides, I contribute a framework of dimensions by which intra-rural digital divides can be defined. Drawing upon assets-based approaches in rural HCI and CSCW research, I identify rural public libraries as an important asset to be leveraged in closing intra-rural digital divides and advocating for intra-rural digital equity and inclusion.

Open government data initiatives have the potential to improve civic participation and trust in government by making government data more transparent to and inclusive of citizens. However, it remains under debate if and how open data initiatives can meet these goals. Through a case study of a state-level government open data initiative with rural hunters, we explore the impact that open data had on citizen-government relations and citizen perspectives on data more broadly. Interviews with 14 hunters led to findings that the open data initiative improved feelings of trust and respect between hunters and the government agency behind the open data initiative. Additionally, hunters' involvement with data collection and consumption led them to stake a role in the open data ecosystem and develop critical perspectives on data. We suggest that open data initiatives could better achieve these benefits by valuing citizen expertise in open data contributions and involving citizens more holistically in the open data ecosystem.

Fat liberation is a social movement advocating for equal treatment of fat people, who are currently subjected to harmful stereotypes, harassment, discrimination at school and work, and medical mistreatment, and is an understudied movement in HCI research. Due to the social and legal acceptability of anti-fatness, many physical spaces, such as businesses and healthcare providers, are unsafe or inaccessible for fat people. We conducted three in-person and virtual participatory design workshops with fat liberationist organizers and community members (N = 15) to imagine fat positive technologies. Participants designed a system to help them find size-inclusive resources, services, and healthcare providers in the offline world with design features centered around intersectionality, and participants’ desire for technologies that recognized their diverse identities and characteristics. We present features and values for a fat-positive information-seeking system and synthesize present and historical HCI theories into a design framework for intersectional fat-positive HCI.

Recent prevalence of values-inclusive design research introduces the potential of conducting research with those whose values conflict with researchers' own values. This is the scenario we have found ourselves in as we conduct values-inclusive participatory design to develop and deploy critical digital literacy education in a rural Appalachian community. We present provocations which outline the ethical concerns we have grappled with in pursuit of conducting fair and responsible research for our participants, indirect stakeholders, and ourselves. Through consideration of these provocations, we have developed a preliminary approach for managing a research relationship with those with whom we disagree which we call Designing for Shared Values. This approach is a conflict-avoidant method for negotiating values in values-inclusive design. It centers around reflexivity as a mechanism to account for one's own values and potential impacts of design research outcomes on indirect stakeholders, while maintaining responsibility to prioritize beneficial outcomes to research participants.

As we built and deployed a digital storytelling system to teach digital literacy skills to rural Appalachians, we discovered key opportunities and challenges to promoting digital literacy in this region. We identified that the importance of storytelling in Appalachian culture made digital storytelling an effective means of teaching these skills to residents. However, the poor technology infrastructure at our study site posed challenges to our participants' ability to use technology and learn new skills. We found that poor infrastructure reinforces low self-efficacy, discouraging participants from using technology. In environments where computers are often slow and unreliable, it is not possible to form realistic expectations of how a computer should act. Therefore, it becomes difficult for users to untangle if the issues they encounter are because of usage errors or the technology. These findings highlight how infrastructure and self-efficacy should be accounted for together when conducting rural HCI research.