Dissertation Proposal by Joy M.
The following is a textual description of the visual summary.
Technology & Caregiving
[Image of a robot]
Technology solutions have been proposed to address the caregiving crisis, as the demand for home and community-based services quickly outpaces the supply. However, a lot of the proposed solutions further burden, invisibilize, and surveil these workers that provide essential care for older adults and people with disabilities.
[Image of a caregiver with brown skin and curly black hair with an older adult with white skin, glasses, and a grey bun.]
My research challenges this dynamic by exploring the design of technology that can be used to advocate for the workers — amplifying their voices and highlighting their contributions.
My research question is:
How might we use technology and data to make the realities of home care more visible in advocacy efforts?
Visibility & Care Work
Technology and data have the potential to address these issues. Prior literature shows examples of technology as a mobilizing structure for social movements.
My research explores what visibility means and how it should be achieved, contributing to work on:
- how care can be operationalized
- how legitimacy could be balanced with scrutiny
- how to account for added burden.
[Image of a person with light brown skin, curly brown hair holding a protest sign that says “Fair Pay for Home Care”]
Sociotechnical Mechanisms of Invisibility
[Image of a hierarchical tree framework]
Through interviews with 13 workers in NYC thorugh the 1199 SEIU union, we saw how technology design could reinforce power dynamics to enable additional invisible work learning how to use/deal with technology or filling in training gaps left by their employers. Thus we add the sociotechnial to the mechanisms of invisiblity.
Hatton 2017:
- Cultural (Who counts as a worker? [Image of a worker]),
- Spatial (Where is work done? [Image of a home]),
- Legal (How is work protected? [Image of a gavel])
Ming et al 2023:
- Technical (What tools are used? [Image of a cell phone])
Designing for Questions of Visibility
[Image of a pencil drawing an eye]
I collaborated with a grassroots organization to explore how technology could be designed to identify and address wage theft for home care workers. First, I conducted interviews with workers & experts to understand context and then I held focus group discussions using design provocations as starting points. Even though technology cannot impact all of the sociopolitical factors that lead to wage theft, it could contribute with consideration of questions of visibility.
- Worker burden: spreading responsibility cross stakeholders [Image of a worker holding a large stone]
- Data privacy: avoiding retaliation and surveillance [Image of a lock]
- Collective impact: aggregating voice for long-term impact [Image of a group of three people and a shared chat bubble]
Collecting & Sharing Data for Change
[Image of a chat bubble with a bar graph in it]
In the next stage of my research, I will redesign and deploy a tool to help worker advocates collect evidence of unpaid work and additional costs. This research can help build solidarity, expose employer violations, and challenge existing narratives of care.
- Design & build: How might we collect evidence in a way that balances the priorities of different stakeholders? [Image of a pencil and wrench]
- Collect & share: How might we use numbers and stories to support existing advocacy campaigns? [Image of a chat bubble with a line graph in it]
