Interactive Fiction Provotypes for Coping with Interpersonal Racism

Title of the Paper

Interactive Fiction Provotypes for Coping with Interpersonal Racism

Paper Information

• Research Domain: Human-Computer Interaction Design and Race-related Issues
• Keywords: Racism, Microaggressions, Interactive Fiction, Provotype, Emotional Coping, Uncertainty

Research Background and Problem Statement

• Identified Problems or Challenges:

  1. Systemic racism and daily microaggressions impose psychosocial stress on Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).
  2. Current technological tools lack effective methods to support BIPOC in reducing uncertainty surrounding racial incidents and providing emotional comfort.
  3. Individuals face uncertainty in racial interactions, struggling to determine whether others' words or actions are racially biased.

• Significance: Implicit forms of racism, such as microaggressions, negatively impact victims' mental, emotional, and physical health. Developing technologies to support victims in coping with and mitigating these effects holds profound importance.

• Research Motivation and Related Work: Researchers aim to explore how social technologies can alleviate emotional stress in racial interactions by employing Provotypes (provocative prototypes) to simulate future technologies, fostering discussion and design improvements.

Solution

• Proposed Solution: The authors introduced three Provotypes (provocative prototype designs): Racism Alarm, Smartwatch Ally, and Comfort Speaker.

  • Racism Alarm: Automatically detects racist speech and issues alerts, providing specific information explaining why the speech is racially discriminatory.
  • Smartwatch Ally: Monitors the wearer's physiological stress and offers real-time intervention suggestions during interactions, such as recording conversations or faking phone calls.
  • Comfort Speaker: Provides emotional support and soothing functions, such as using scents, sounds, and companionship to help users overcome negative emotions.

• Innovative Aspects:

  1. Embedding future technology prototypes into everyday story contexts through interactive fiction, offering users a novel way to experience the technology.
  2. Focusing on emotional support and uncertainty reduction rather than direct intervention in racial issues, while prioritizing user privacy, sensitivity, and safety.

• Implementation Steps:

  1. Screening and integrating design suggestions based on prior participatory design work.
  2. Incorporating these Provotypes into the interactive fiction "They Didn’t Mean That," rewriting the narrative to include racial scenarios and technological intervention scenes.
  3. Collecting user feedback on the Provotypes through offline surveys, including descriptions of the technologies, user experiences, and suggestions.

Research Outcomes

• Specific Outcomes:

  1. Detailed feedback on the three design prototypes was collected, showcasing the acceptance levels and impacts of different technologies in racial interaction contexts.
  2. Qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed new user needs in the designs, such as privacy protection, scenario control, and emotional support.

• Advantages Over Existing Solutions: Offering provocative yet thoughtfully designed technology prototypes to advance understanding and discussion of the role of technology in racial interactions, rather than proposing directly producible technologies.

• Experimental or Evaluation Results:

  1. Racism Alarm received significant negative feedback due to the lack of user control over identifying racist behaviors, leading to feelings of awkwardness and stress.
  2. Smartwatch Ally provided more rational options but still faced challenges related to multitasking burdens and emotional interference.
  3. Comfort Speaker garnered the most positive feedback, with its focus on emotional support and user experience widely appreciated.

• Limitations and Future Directions:

  1. Randomization of participant samples failed, potentially influencing results due to age and background factors.
  2. The interactive fiction format did not fully enable direct discussion or validation of social systems addressing racial issues.
  3. Insufficient exploration of technological needs related to systemic racism.

Conclusion and Insights

Through the interactive fiction approach, the study explored the possibilities and limitations of Provotypes. Suggestions for future work include:

• Enhancing user control and personalization features in technology design.
• Investigating how technology can sensitively address racial issues while avoiding further harm to victims.
• Expanding research into microaggression scenarios to explore how technology can provide emotional comfort and long-term psychological health support.