An Archive of Their Own: A Case Study of Feminist HCI and Values in Design
Casey Fiesler, Shannon Morrison, Amy S. Bruckman
CHI ‘16: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Session: HCI and Gender
Abstract
Rarely are computing systems developed entirely by members of the communities they serve, particularly when that community is underrepresented in computing. Archive of Our Own (AO3), a fan fiction archive with nearly 750,000 users and over 2 million individual works, was designed and coded primarily by women to meet the needs of the online fandom community. Their design decisions were informed by existing values and norms around issues such as accessibility, inclusivity, and identity. We conducted interviews with 28 users and developers, and with this data we detail the history and design of AO3 using the framework of feminist HCI and focusing on the successful incorporation of values into design. We conclude with considering examples of complexity in values in design work: the use of design to mitigate tensions in values and to influence value formation or change.
DOI:: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2858036.285…
WEB:: https://chi2016.acm.org/
Recorded at the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in San Jose, CA, United States, May 7-12, 2016