The Gendered Nature of Chatbots: Anthropomorphism and Authenticity
2023: Book chapter within Trends, Applications, and Challenges of Chatbot Technology
The majority of chatbots are built, by default, as women. In doing so, dangerous stereotypes and behaviors are perpetuated by those responsible for designing the chatbots, and ultimately the users. It is therefore crucial that gender identity and expression are well understood by all those involved in designing the chatbots. This chapter explores this alongside a literature survey regarding feminist methodologies, anthropomorphism, and authenticity to put forward three recommendations. That those responsible for building chatbots should keep up to date with research, look to widen the diversity of their own team, and to integrate ethics in their design processes. Only in doing so will chatbots that are fit for purpose be built.
Feminist Thematic Discourse Analysis in CS
Jul - ICT 2022: International Conferences ICT, Society, and Human Beings 2022
How conversation takes place is a well-researched area in the field of Linguistics, particularly when it comes to how Feminist Methodologies are applied to this. What remains to be seen, however, is the application of these techniques in the field of Computer Science. Although some research has started to emerge in this area, this paper argues that there needs to be an examination of the subtleties in conversation, through a union of three methodological practices: thematic analysis, feminist methodologies, and discourse analysis. This reflective paper summarises a consideration on discourse and conversation analysis, the existing cross over with feminist research, and presents areas of further research within the field of Computer Science.
I think "Hedging" could be a Feminist Issue in Software Engineering
June - ECSCW 2022: 20th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.
When it comes to software engineering and the development life-cycle, there are a number of opportunities for under-represented groups, gender being the focus of this paper, for decisions to be affected by language. Considering existing linguistics research surrounding gendered language, specifically "Hedging", alongside various stages of the development life-cycle, this paper poses that "Hedging" should be seen as a feminist issue in software engineering, and presents five areas for further research to uncover the potential negative effects it is having, and what can be done to mitigate these. This paper focuses on the subtleties in conversation, and how conversation takes place, building on Feminist Conversation Analysis, Feminist Methodologies, and Software Engineering Methodologies.
Do I Belong Here? An exploration of meeting structure and language, alongside gender and a sense of belonging.
OzCHI ’21, November 30-December 2, 2021, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
This paper discusses to what extent the productivity and creativity of a design meeting can be attributed to meeting structure and various, related, aspects of social interaction including gender, and participants’ sense of belonging. This paper examines the literature on meeting structure, language, gender and sense of belonging and analyses them for overlaps and potential areas of future research. Following a discussion, this paper then considers ‘implications for design’ presenting three possible areas of further research and development; how can meeting structure be designed for equal opportunity, how can a sense of belonging be created in design meetings and what can be done to encourage empathy in design?
Women’s Sense of Belonging in Computer Science Education: The Need for a Collective Response
AUTHORS: Kelly Widdicks, Alice Ashcroft, Emily Winter and Lynne Blair
SEPTEMBER - UKICER '21: United Kingdom and Ireland Computing Education Research conference.
The gender imbalance in Computing education continues to be concerning, with women hugely underrepresented in the field. Prior research on improving gender equality in the discipline discusses the need to improve women’s sense of belonging. However, this has seldom included women’s understanding of what a sense of belonging is for them—nor have solutions for fostering belonging been co-created with women. In this paper, we report on the findings of four innovative focus groups with thirteen women, students and staff, in a university Computer Science department—uncovering their experiences of belonging and their proposed solutions to improving it. Through these focus groups, we present the experiences impacting our participants’ sense of belonging, alongside our participants’ solutions for fostering belonging within Computing. From this, we discuss the need for a collective response to fostering a sense of belonging in Computer Science, specifically through having a collective understanding of the barriers to a sense of belonging, applying a collective of solutions to foster belonging, and taking collective responsibility for improving equality.
Designing Education Applications for Generation Z
JULY 2021 - International Conferences Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2021
This paper discusses how generational differences impact on innovation processes and application design in Higher Education institutions. With both pedagogies and technologies varyingly according to generational divides, the existing literature is examined to uncover what this means for gathering requirements and designing and building educational software. The Covid-19 pandemic has made the limitations of current teaching practices through technology ever more apparent, and this paper recommends that to provide the best learning experience for students, generational research and horizon scanning for upcoming technologies should both be applied to the innovation process carried out by universities.
Gender Differences in Innovation Design: A Thematic Conversation Analysis
December 2020 - OzCHI 2020 32nd Australian Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI)
This study investigates aspects of the role gender plays in participatory design innovation workshops; reflecting on both the process and the output. Often when gender and design are discussed, the problems raised concern a lack of women as designers or developers [26], but there appear to be gaps in addressing full gender representation when it comes to users in the design process. In this study, a design workshop was run where participants, two men and five women were asked initially to identify or generate problems and possible digital solutions concerning their academic studies, and then to design their top self-selected solution. The workshop was recorded and transcribed, and conversation and discourse analysis were carried out which found gender to influence problem raising, language used and group practices. The paper concludes both that gender apparently plays a strong role in group dynamics with regards to design innovation; and that thematic conversation and discourse analysis provides an appropriate and insightful approach to understanding these issues.
“Hedging” and Gender in Participatory Design
July 2020 - Conference Proceedings for 14th International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction
There has been much dispute over the role ‘hedging’ – equivocation in expressing opinions - plays in group conversation as well as the impact of gender on a range of processes including Participatory Design; (Holmes, 1986, Dixon and Foster, 1997, Stokoe and Smithson, 2001, Stokoe and Weatheral, 2002, Brulé, E. and Spiel, K. (2019),). This paper addresses these issues by analysing gender differences and hedging in an Innovation Participatory Design workshop focused around the creation and combination of ideas for app development. Discussions were transcribed and analysed; ‘hedging’ terms seemed an interesting theme for analysis, but no statistical significance was found to prove that ‘hedging’ was gender-biased. This initial, exploratory, short paper reflects on this finding; on the contrast with research that has found gender differences (Holmes, 1986); on the importance of supplementing statistical with contextual forms of analysis; and what effect or implications this may have on the process of Participatory Design, by acknowledging the importance of giving voice and parity, and trying to facilitate group dynamics that properly reflect the views of all participants.
“A Nice Brain Teaser”
May 2018 - GenderIT '18 Proceedings of the 4th Conference on Gender & IT, ACM
Careers in computing seem to be well placed to allow gender parity. The tools of the trade don't require any of the most common gender stereotypes. And yet, talented, educated women avoid going into the field - why? The preliminary research reported in this paper focuses specifically on computer programming since coding is an area that has shown a strong statistical bias towards males with up to 92% of programmers being male. This paper aims to uncover and examine any differences in the coding abilities and approach of males and females.