The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will be hosting the Supporting At-Risk Users Through Responsible Computing workshop from December 9-10 in Washington, DC. Their goal is to create a report summarizing best practices and guidelines to improve the quality of computing research involving at-risk individuals.

Workshop Organizers Pamela Wisniewski (Vanderbilt University), Katie Siek (Indiana University),, Kevin Butler (University of Florida), Tammy Toscos (Parkview Health) and Sunny Consolvo (Google) are here to share the details.

What are you most excited for at this workshop?

Katie: I am excited to learn from researchers from different epistemological and disciplinary perspectives who work with diverse groups of at-risk populations.  

Pam: This is an amazing opportunity to bring researchers who work with diverse groups of at-risk users together to identify unique challenges and synergistic opportunities to universally empower vulnerable users online.

Tammy: As a researcher embedded in a healthcare system, I am excited to translate the learnings from this workshop into ongoing projects in my lab.

Kevin: This workshop represents a unique opportunity to create a nexus for discussing best practices, techniques, and resources to ensure computing researchers are engaging safely and productively with at-risk populations

What key focus areas of the workshop do you identify with and why?

Katie: My work has spanned collaborating with people who have varying literacy levels navigating chronic health conditions to people dealing with stigmatized health conditions in sometimes unsupportive environments – thus I am interested in contributing and learning about how to ensure everyone feels comfortable contributing to sociotechnical innovations while also protecting their safety and privacy.

Pam: My work primarily focuses on adolescent (ages 13-17) online safety and risks, taking a resilience-based approach to empower them as at-risk users. I have also done work to promote the online safety and privacy of older adults, neurodivergent young adults, and LGBTQ+ youth.

Tammy: I am extremely passionate about technology-based approaches to support people living with mental health conditions and those who provide care to these individuals. Stigma and barriers to accessing healthcare continue to prevent people from seeking and getting help. Computing solutions can be part of the solution but must be designed in a manner that mitigates risk to the end user.

Kevin: My work is generally grounded in the security of computer systems and data, so I am particularly interested in how technology can facilitate and potentially mitigate abuse and power dynamics, particularly for marginalized and vulnerable populations, and how we can better design systems to increase autonomy and decrease power asymmetries.

How will participants with different levels of experience with at-risk populations be helped to contribute effectively to the workshop?

Katie: We co-designed the workshop so that we will have a lot of opportunities for everyone to contribute and share their knowledge – from individual brainstorming by contributing to a shared document to collective discussions to identify best practices, gaps in knowledge, and what we need to do. 

Pam: We often work in our own silos, which leads to missed opportunities to abstract across problem-spaces to find common problems to solve, methodological best practices, and paths forward.

Tammy: This workshop brings together academic and industry researchers, all who have a slightly different lens for the needs of vulnerable populations. Thus the sessions have been designed in a way to account for these different voices to be heard – which includes various domain expertise and experience.

Kevin: The combination of expertise and lived experience from a wide range of attendees will bring valuable, diverse perspectives that I believe will enlighten all attendees. I am personally looking forward to hearing about different engagement strategies and methodological approaches and thinking about how my research could benefit from these different viewpoints.

What short-term and long-term outcomes would you like to see from this workshop?

Katie: In the short term, I am excited about co-developing a repository of best practices and frameworks  to help the research community easily find resources before they engage with at-risk populations. In the long term, I hope we can develop an on-going community of professionals and experts that can serve the computing community and society more broadly. 

Pam: I would like the workshop to serve as a first step in assessing the status quo, identifying grand challenges, compiling resources, and creating the community who can work together long-term to tackle these challenges.

Tammy: Stimulating a cross-section of ideas and documenting important resources will be an essential outcome for immediate impact to ongoing research. The optimal long-game outcome would be to create a cultural shift in computing research – one where consideration of vulnerable populations is simply baked into the way we do our work.

Kevin: In the short term, I think it is valuable for the attendees to be aware of just how robust this community of researchers working with at-risk populations is, and hopefully, this will be an opportunity to form connections and potential collaborations. In the longer term, I hope the results from the workshop lead to documentation of best practices and approaches that can be used as a resource for the academic community and other researchers at large.

Keep an eye out for key takeaways from the workshop.