- Feminist Values in Tech Design

Feminist Values in Tech Design

Any technology created carries the values embedded in its design. Technological innovations from male-dominated teams often result in products that overlook or neglect the perspective, experience and needs of female and non-binary users - as well as that of other non-represented or marginalized user groups. Some of these issues can be traced to the design and development process and practices. In this project, we explore the influence of embedding Feminist Values in technology design and development, focusing on methodology. First step approaches the exploration of the current field of methodology and applications, while the goal is to explore and potentially develop effective approach to designing technology with Feminist Values in focus from idea and requirements exploration up to product design, test and launch.
This is the PhD project of M.Sc. Margarita Osipova supervised by Prof. Eva Hornecker. Current project members: B.Sc. Konstantina Marra.  Publications:

  • Osipova, Hornecker. Exploring the potential for Smart City technology for Women’s Safety. Proc. of Academic Mindtrek Conference (Mindtrek ’23),  ACM NY 2023, 17 pages.
  • Sarkar, Marra, Osipova. Exit Violence: Comparing Usability of Physical and Visual Alarm Buttons in SOS App in the Context of Domestic Violence. Mensch und Computer 2023 - Workshopband. GI e.V.
  • Jeon, Ebeling, Osipova: Empowering Safety Technology for Women’s Solo Journeys: Insights from a Story Completion Study. Mensch und Computer 2023 - Workshopband. GI e.V.

Participation Call for December23/January-March24:

We invite experts working with Feminist Values in research and industry (our focus is not limited to just gender-related, gender specific or FemTech, as long as your work – ongoing or former – covers at least a perspective or practical use of Feminism or Feminist Values in relation to technology). Contact us for participating via email to margarita.osipova[at]uni-weimar.de with a topic “Feminism and Technology”. You can also email her with questions, ideas and recommendations, or collaboration proposals.