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HCDE researchers recognized with CSCW Awards


October 15, 2020

Caitlin Lustig, Andrew Neang, Will Sutherland, Michael Beach, and Charlotte P. Lee from the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering are recognized with awards for research contributions at CSCW 2020.

CSCW 2020 logoThe ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW) is a premier venue for presenting research in the design and use of technologies that affect groups, organizations, and communities.  The annual conference brings together top researchers and practitioners from academia and industry who are interested in both the technical and social aspects of collaboration. Researchers from the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering regularly submit research papers, posters, and workshop proposals to the annual conference. 

In 2020, the following HCDE researchers are recognized with CSCW awards: PhD students Caitlin Lustig, Andrew Neang, Will Sutherland, Michael Beach, and Associate Professor Charlotte P. Lee. All researchers are members of the Computer Supported Collaboration Lab in HCDE, which Lee directs. 

Best Paper Award

Represents the top 1% of papers submitted

Full paper here »

ABSTRACT

Race and gender have long sociopolitical histories of classification in technical infrastructures—from the passport to social media. Facial analysis technologies are particularly pertinent to understanding how identity is operationalized in new technical systems. What facial analysis technologies can do is determined by the data available to train and evaluate them with. In this study, we specifically focus on this data by examining how race and gender are defined and annotated in image databases used for facial analysis. We found that the majority of image databases rarely contain underlying source material for how those identities are defined. Further, when they are annotated with race and gender information, database authors rarely describe the process of annotation. Instead, classifications of race and gender are portrayed as insignificant, indisputable, and apolitical. We discuss the limitations of these approaches given the sociohistorical nature of race and gender. We posit that the lack of critical engagement with this nature renders databases opaque and less trustworthy. We conclude by encouraging database authors to address both the histories of classification inherently embedded into race and gender, as well as their positionality in embedding such classifications.
Conference presentation details »

 

Lustig and co-authors are also recognized for their contribution to diversity, equity  and inclusion. Their paper is one of 10 papers selected based on nominations from reviewers and an evaluation process from the CSCW Awards Committee and the 2020 Diversity & Inclusion Co-Chairs. 

Honorable Mention Award

Represents the top 5% of papers submitted

Full paper here »

ABSTRACT

Recent CSCW research on the collaborative design and development of research infrastructures for the natural sciences has increasingly focused on the challenges of open data sharing. This qualitative study describes and analyzes how multidisciplinary, geographically distributed ocean scientists are integrating highly diverse data as part of an effort to develop a new research infrastructure to advance science. This paper identifies different kinds of coordination that are necessary to align processes of data collection, production, and analysis. Some of the hard work to integrate data is undertaken before data integration can even become a technical problem. After data integration becomes a technical problem, social and organizational means continue to be critical for resolving differences in assumptions, methods, practices, and priorities. This work calls attention to the diversity of coordinative, social, and organizational practices and concerns that are needed to integrate data and also how, in highly innovative work, the process of integrating data also helps to define scientific problem spaces themselves.
Conference presentation details »

 

This year's CSCW conference will be held virtually between October 17 - October 21, 2020.