Sustaining Community-Based Research in Computing: Lessons from Two Tech Capacity Building Initiatives for Local Businesses

DOI

The field of human-computer interaction (HCI) has traditionally focused on the design of information technology artifacts. However, such artifacts have often hindered the populations they aim to support due to the lack of sustainable considerations for tech maintenance and repair over the long term. Drawing on two multi-year programs for small-scale tech capacity building in post-industrial U.S. cities, this article presents a comparative analysis and retrospective ethnography to investigate the challenges and strategies for sustained community-based research in computing. In particular, our work aimed to better understand and contribute the necessary considerations and dynamics among the academic-community partnerships attributed to sustaining the community-based programs over time. We identify three key opportunities for fostering sustainability and being anticipatory rather than surprised by the twists and turns in our community-based research projects: relational (e.g., considerations of care, trust, and responsiveness alongside continual expectation setting), economic (e.g., leveraging research funding to kickstart long-term community programming), and technological (e.g., contextualized guidance on tech investments, embedded training on tech use). While opportunities for sustainability in community-based research have been referenced in prior work, findings from this unique and rare opportunity contribute concrete examples of two community-based engagements that were required to carry out such suggestions in the context of two tech capacity building programs. Such details often go unreported in scholarly articles yet are essential for sustainability considerations. We conclude with a discussion about ongoing challenges from this research and considerations for future work such as rethinking longevity (e.g., when longevity should and should not be the end goal).