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I run the Creating Ethics Infrastructures Lab in the Digital Media Program at the Georgia Tech School of Literature, Media, and Communication.
Technology design is a social and cultural practice (as well as a technical one). Thus, helping technologists design ethical systems requires more than creating technical ethical design tools; it also requires creating social and cultural infrastructures that can help support technologists to make ethical decisions.
These infrastructures may include new organizational practices, law and policy, supporting worker and community-led actions, or developing tools that consider the social and organizational contexts where technologies are developed.
I draw on perspectives from design, science & technology studies (STS), human-computer interaction (HCI), and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). I use qualitative methods including interviews, participant observation, and discourse analysis. I also use design as a method of inquiry by creating speculative design artifacts, conducting co-design activities, and using design to surface and reflect on ethical issues.
If you're interested in working with me as a PhD student, plese take a look at our Guide to Working in the Creating Ethics Infrastructures Lab.
If you are a Georgia Tech DM MS or MS HCI student and are interested in me supervising your final project, please send me an email to request a current list of project areas I am advising in, along with a short description of your own interests and skills.
Current projects include the following:
This project studies how technology professionals--such as user experience (UX) professionals, product managers, or artificial intelligence (AI) practitioners--attend to values and ethical issues as a part of their professional work. More about this project can be read here. Some research questions here include:
Selected publications:
Seeing Like a Toolkit: How Toolkits Envision the Work of AI Ethics
Richmond Y. Wong, Michael Madaio, Nick Merrill. (2023)
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 7, CSCW1
Honorable Mention Award
Tactics of Soft Resistance in User Experience Professionals’ Values Work
Richmond Y. Wong. (2021)
Proceedings of the ACM Human-Computer Interaction, 5 (CSCW2)
Using Design Fiction Memos to Analyze UX Professionals' Values Work Practices: A Case Study Bridging Ethnographic and Design Futuring Methods
Richmond Y. Wong. (2021)
In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI’21)
This explores how we can exert pressure or enact change toward ethical goals in ways that go beyond directly making changes in technical design? Other social, cultural, legal, and economic practices may be of use. For example:
Selected publications:
Ethics Pathways: A Design Activity for Reflecting on Ethics Engagement in HCI Research
Inha Cha, Ajit G. Pillai, Richmond Y. Wong. (2024)
In Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '24)
Infrastructural Speculations: Tactics for Designing and Interrogating Lifeworlds
Richmond Y. Wong, Vera Khovanskaya, Sarah E. Fox, Nick Merrill and Phoebe Sengers. (2020)
In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI’20)
Privacy Legislation as Business Risks: How GDPR and CCPA are Represented in Technology Companies’ Investment Risk Disclosures
Richmond Y. Wong, Andrew Chong, R. Cooper Aspegren. (2023)
Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction. 7, CSCW1
Technologies are not always used in the ways that their designers intend, particularly when the social values associated with the technology do not match the social values that users and communities want to promote. These projects explore how and why people choose to use technologies in alternate ways (particularly through refusal, non-use, or alternative forms of use), and the conditions that allow or inhibit them from doing so. We also imagine alternate possibilities for design. For instance:
Selected publications:
Broadening Privacy and Surveillance: Eliciting Interconnected Values with a Scenarios Workbook on Smart Home Cameras
Richmond Y. Wong, Jason Caleb Valdez, Ashten Alexander, Ariel Chiang, Olivia Quesada, and James Pierce. (2023)
In Proceedings of the ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS 2023)
Using Design Fiction Memos to Analyze UX Professionals' Values Work Practices: A Case Study Bridging Ethnographic and Design Futuring Methods
Richmond Y. Wong. (2021)
In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (CHI’21)
Co-design Partners as Transformative Learners: Imagining Ideal Technology for Schools by Centering Speculative Relationships
Michael Alan Chang, Richmond Y. Wong, Thomas Breideband, Thomas M. Philip, Ashieda McKoy, Arturo Cortez, Sidney K. D'Mello. (2024)
In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’24)
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