Aakash Gautam

schoolVirginia Techbar_chart#1065 Global Rank

Total Papers

HCI Rank

#1065

Research Areas

Years Active

Recent Publications

A Tale of Many Futures: Children in Finland and India Envision the Future of Education

While conversations around the future of education focus on AI, robots and VR, they often overlook how children imagine futures within their own educational worlds. We conducted participatory speculative design workshops with 92 students (ages 12–14) in two contrasting settings: an autonomy-oriented international scho…

CHI '263rd AuthorField Studies +2

Following Primates: Approaching Conflict in Contested Regions

When conducting research in community-based settings, it is natural for conflict to arise as the practices, motivations, and imaginaries of researchers and local stakeholders converge. As designers, the question, then, is: ``In what ways can we engage with conflict to arrive at constructive outcomes?" In this paper, w…

CHI '262nd AuthorGenerative AI (Text, Image, Music, Video) +4

Towards Designing for Resilience: Community-Centered Deployment of an AI Business Planning Tool in a Pittsburgh Small Business Center

Entrepreneurs in resource-constrained communities often lack time and support to translate ideas into actionable business plans. While generative AI promises assistance, most systems assume high digital literacy and overlook community infrastructures that shape adoption. We report on the community-centered design and…

CSCW '25CorrespondingReflecting on Methodology

Conflict in Community-Based Design: A Case Study of a Relationship Breakdown

Community-based design efforts rightly seek to reduce the power differences between researchers and community participants by aligning with community values and furthering their priorities. However, what should designers do when key community members' practices seem to enact an oppressive and harmful structure? We ref…

CSCW '254th AuthorGoverning Platforms / Technology's Role in Governance

Regulating Social Media: Surveying the Impact of Nepali Government’s TikTok Ban

Social media platforms have transformed global communication and interaction, with TikTok emerging as a critical tool for education, connection, and social impact, including in contexts where infrastructural resources are limited. Amid growing political discussions about banning platforms like TikTok, such actions can…

CSCW '225th+ AuthorParenting and Families; Parenting and Families

Intimate Narratives: An Assets-Based Approach To Develop Holistic Perspectives of Student Mothers’ Lives and Their Use of Technology in Parenting

This paper details our collaborative approach in capturing a holistic understanding of parental technology use through an assets-based framework. We steer the focus away from the design of technology as the central force of technological innovation, and instead support participants to reflect and describe intimate de…

CSCW '212nd AuthorMethods and Design Approaches

Reflections on Assets-Based Design: A Journey Towards A Collective of Assets-Based Thinkers

The field of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) has long recognized a socio-technical gap complicating the design of technologies that can sustainably meet social needs. In response, a growing body of research advocates for assets-based design, an approach that seeks to build upon what the individuals and comm…

CHI '201st AuthorEmpowerment of Marginalized Groups +1

Crafting, Communality, and Computing: Building on Existing Strengths To Support a Vulnerable Population

In Nepal, sex-trafficking survivors and the organizations that support them have limited resources to assist the survivors in their on-going journey towards reintegration. We take an asset-based approach wherein we identify and build on the strengths possessed by such groups. In this work, we present reflections from…

CSCW '181st AuthorFeminist Perspectives

Social Photo-Elicitation: The Use of Communal Production of Meaning to Hear a Vulnerable Population

We report on an initial ethnographic exploration of the situation of sex-trafficking survivors in Nepal. In the course of studying trafficking survivors in a protected-living situation created by a non-governmental organization in Nepal, we adapted photo-elicitation to hear the voices of the survivors by making the te…

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