For trans people seeking gender-affirming surgery, there are barriers to accessing trustworthy information about procedures, surgeons, and the postoperative process. Trans-led online information sharing communities are essential tools for trans people seeking surgery, however, they rely on community knowledge that may not always be accessible, complete, or accurate. To understand how an online communication platform might support both surgeons and trans people seeking surgery, we conducted asynchronous online focus groups with 14 participants (ten trans community members and four gender-affirming surgeons). We found that gender-affirming surgeons and trans community members hold values in tensionvalues in alignment such as shared desires for information accuracy, transparency, and communication efficiency to support the surgical process. We contribute design implications for future online information sharing platforms that balance the needs of both trans patients and gender-affirming surgeons, including surgeon-verified information, surgeon anonymity, credential verification, searchable FAQs, and integrated community knowledge.

Technologies like online support networks and safety apps hold promise for improving personal safety. However, these tools often fail to address the widespread violence against gender-diverse individuals, particularly transgender Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (TBIPOC) in the United States. To better understand technology’s role in managing safety among TBIPOC individuals, we conducted 22 semi-structured interviews. We found that participants engaged in what we call safety labor, the emotional and cognitive work of managing misrecognition, assessing risk, and downplaying discomfort to maintain self-preservation. Visibly-trans participants faced greater vulnerability and tended to feel safer when their trans identity was not visible. Technology enabled sharing locations and rides, and sending coded messages. Findings highlight the need for tailored technologies that protect privacy and help TBIPOC individuals when they experience violence. Our research contributes a deeper understanding of TBIPOC experiences and informs technology development to promote TBIPOCs’ safety.

Peer Reviewed

Peer Reviewed

Extended reality (XR) technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive, and may have capacity to help marginalized groups such as transgender people. Drawing from interviews with n = 18 creators of trans technology, we examined how XR technologies do and can support trans people. We uncovered a number of creative ways that XR technologies support trans experiences. Trans technology creators are designing augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) systems that help people explore trans identity, experience new types of bodies, educate about and display trans stories and curated trans content, manipulate the physical world, and innovate gender-affirming surgical techniques. Additionally, we show how considering XR as an analogy for trans identity helps us to think about the fluidity and fluctuation inherent in trans identity in new ways, which in turn enables envisioning technologies that can better support complex and changing identities. Despite XR's potential for supporting trans people, current AR and VR systems face limitations that restrict their large-scale use, but as access to XR systems increase, so will their capacity to improve trans lives.

Trans technology – technology created to help address challenges that trans people face – is an important area for innovation that can help improve marginalized people’s lives. We conducted 104 interviews with 115 creators of trans technology to understand how they involved trans people and communities in design processes. We describe projects that used human-centered design processes, as well as design processes that involved trans people in smaller ways, including gathering feedback from users, conducting user testing, or the creators being trans themselves. We show how involving trans people and communities in design is vital for trans technologies to realize their potential for addressing trans needs. Yet we highlight a frequent gap between trans technology design and deployment, and discuss ways to bridge this gap. We argue for the importance of involving community in trans technology design to ensure that trans technology achieves its promise of helping address trans needs and challenges.