DISCUSSION

Alexandra Staub: Thank you very much, Catherine. That was such a thought-provoking talk! I’d like to start the discussion with an idea by Ursula Le Guin that was brought up in an earlier talk: the concept of gathering something and putting it into a vessel as opposed to a more forceful idea of hunting. The big picture was a type of research that “listens” to its sources in a way different from what is typically done.

With your work on data feminism, you’re showing how data and our attention to it is a manifestation of power: who has the power to decide what data is important and what data should be considered. We tend to think that the built environment is very neutral. Anyone who has worked with a feminist lens knows it’s not the case, but I’d be super interested to hear where you see the data gaps in built environment research.

Catherine D’Ignazio: That’s a great question. I was speaking about data feminism to a mobilities group earlier today, and we were talking about some of these things. For example, what are the data, what information sources inform what gets built, and what flaws does that data have?

As an example, I’d like to refer to the work of Inés Sánchez de Madariaga, who has developed the concept of mobilities of care. She examines the gendered uses of the city and the ways in which women’s needs around mobility have been neglected. In particular, she studies how women as a group use the city. Often, it’s in the context of care work, either for younger people or for elders. In the context of mobility these folks are making more trips. They do more “trip-chaining” – they go to work, then stop at a store to get some food to make dinner, or they stop at the daycare center to pick up the child, etc. Sánchez shows how when we apply a gendered lens, it reveals data patterns that were previously neglected. I think we need to consider gender, race, ability, not just individually, but also in combination, to see what kinds of insights they reveal. A lot of design methods don’t use large datasets. It’s important, however, to have data concepts at the forefront of one’s mind. It’s important to ask, “Who you are designing for?” In any given space, it’s important to consider who might be margin- alized by the space, and how to bring them into the conversation. To ask questions like, “How do I understand what their needs are and how do I work in partnership with them?” We can partner with community and advocacy groups, where people already have really great ideas, but don’t always have the ability to realize them.

We live in a society that pretends to be raceblind, gender-blind, and so on, as if this were a way toward gender and race equality. In fact, this prevents us from being able to adequately recognize these forces of oppression when they show up, and thereby we end up perpetuating those forces, whether that’s in datasets or in our designs. We need to build our skills to better be able to use race, gender, etc. as analytic categories. This will allow us to form new collaborations and work in of new sorts of ways.

Alexandra Staub: That’s something we’ve been hearing over and over throughout the course of this symposium. We’ve also been hearing that there are a lot of so-called non-experts who are, in reality, very expert when it comes to issues of equity. These people can give us so much more insight than we’re trained to take from the academy. The academy trains us to conduct research a certain way, and we need to think of alternatives. I would like to ask one final question that’s come in through the chat. Could you comment on your own background as a software developer, a designer, and an artist? It’s a wonderful combination of backgrounds – how has this helped you in your work?

HTML, they’d say, “Okay, you’re a Java developer”. That’s how I fell into programming, but it always intersected with my interests in art and design. As I’ve come more and more into the academy, I’ve realized I love theory, I love scholarly ideas and academic research, yet I also feel very propelled by action in the real world.

Catherine D’Ignazio: My background experiences came together a bit serendipitously.

I did my undergraduate degree in a liberal arts tradition, but at the same time I worked for my dad, who was in educational technology. During summers, I helped him run educational technology workshops to teach teachers how to build web pages, etc. I graduated with my undergraduate degree during the first dotcom boom. I was excited by technology, and decided I wanted to be a programmer. It was very easy to get a programming job in those days because there were just not enough people. If you knew

This is another reason I appreciate feminism and intersectionality, because I think there’s a unique commitment to action. You have to be very precise about your ideas. When you’re trying to realize ideas through a design or in code or something like that, you often have to compromise. You can’t just sit back in your academic chair and claim that everything is bad. You have to navigate some of the complexity, and I appreciate the impetus to do that. I also appreciate the vibrancy of design artifacts and I think there’s something unique about that.

Alexandra Staub: Thank you so much, Catherine, for your compelling talk and for this discussion!