ABSTRACT
Research in HCI applied to clinical interventions relies on normative assumptions about which bodies and minds are healthy, valuable, and desirable. To disrupt this normalizing drive in HCI, we define a “counterventional approach” to intervention technology design informed by critical scholarship and community perspectives. This approach is meant to unsettle normative assumptions of intervention as urgent, necessary, and curative. We begin with a historical overview of intervention in HCI and its critics. Then, through reparative readings of past HCI projects in autism intervention, we illustrate the emergent principles of a counterventional approach and how it may manifest research outcomes that are fundamentally divergent from dominant approaches. We then explicate characteristics of “counterventions” – projects that aim to contest dominant sociotechnical paradigms through privileging community and participants in research inquiry, interaction design, and analysis of outcomes. These divergent research imaginaries have transformative implications for how interventionist HCI might be conducted in future.
Supplemental Material
- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 2009. The Danger of a Single Story. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_storyGoogle Scholar
- Kassiane Asasumasu. 2012. AUTISTIFYING MY HABITAT!! Radical Neurodivergence Speaking. Retrieved April 15, 2019 from http://timetolisten.blogspot.com/2012/08/autistifying-my-habitat.htmlGoogle Scholar
- Liam Bannon, Jeffrey Bardzell, and Susanne Bødker. 2018. Reimagining participatory design. Interactions 26, 1: 26–32. https://doi.org/10.1145/3292015Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jeffrey Bardzell and Shaowen Bardzell. 2013. What is “critical” about critical design? In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’13), 3297–3306. https://doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466451Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Shaowen Bardzell. 2010. Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design.Google Scholar
- Shaowen Bardzell. 2014. Utopias of participation: design, criticality, and emancipation. In Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference on Short Papers, Industry Cases, Workshop Descriptions, Doctoral Consortium papers, and Keynote abstracts - PDC ’14 - volume 2, 189–190. https://doi.org/10.1145/2662155.2662213Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Shaowen Bardzell and Jeffrey Bardzell. 2011. Towards a feminist HCI methodology: Social science, feminism, and HCI. In Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings, 675–684. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1979041Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Cynthia L Bennett and Daniela K Rosner. 2019. The Promise of Empathy: Design, Disability, and Knowing the “Other.” In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’19, 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300528Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Monique Botha and David M. Frost. 2020. Extending the Minority Stress Model to Understand Mental Health Problems Experienced by the Autistic Population. Society and Mental Health 10, 1: 20–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/2156869318804297Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- LouAnne E. Boyd, Saumya Gupta, Sagar B. Vikmani, Carlos M. Gutierrez, Junxiang Yang, Erik Linstead, and Gillian R. Hayes. 2018. vrSocial: Toward Immersive Therapeutic VR Systems for Children with Autism. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173778Google Scholar
Digital Library
- LouAnne E. Boyd, Xinlong Jiang, and Gillian R. Hayes. 2017. ProCom: Designing and Evaluating a Mobile and Wearable System to Support Proximity Awareness for People with Autism. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’17, 2865–2877. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3026014Google Scholar
Digital Library
- LouAnne E. Boyd, Alejandro Rangel, Helen Tomimbang, Andrea Conejo-Toledo, Kanika Patel, Monica Tentori, and Gillian R. Hayes. 2016. SayWAT: Augmenting Face-to-Face Conversations for Adults with Autism. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’16, 4872–4883. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858215Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Sarah Cassidy, Louise Bradley, Rebecca Shaw, and Simon Baron-Cohen. 2018. Risk markers for suicidality in autistic adults. Molecular Autism 9, 1: 42. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13229-018-0226-4Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Sarah Cassidy, Paul Bradley, Janine Robinson, Carrie Allison, Meghan McHugh, and Simon Baron-Cohen. 2014. Suicidal ideation and suicide plans or attempts in adults with asperger's syndrome attending a specialist diagnostic clinic: A clinical cohort study. The Lancet Psychiatry 1, 2: 142–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2215-0366(14)70248-2Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Michela Cozza, Linda Tonolli, and Vincenzo D'Andrea. 2016. Subversive participatory design: Reflections on a case study. In Proceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Short Papers, Interactive Exhibitions, Workshops - Volume 2, 53–56. https://doi.org/10.1145/2948076.2948085Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Peter Dalsgaard and Kim Halskov. 2010. Innovation in participatory design. In Proceedings of the 11th Biennial Participatory Design Conference on - PDC ’10, 281. https://doi.org/10.1145/1900441.1900508Google Scholar
Digital Library
- DART. 2019. Diversity in Social Intelligence: Summer 2019 update. University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh.Google Scholar
- Christian Dindler and Ole Sejer Iversen. 2014. Relational Expertise in Participatory Design. Proceedings of the 13th Participatory Design Conference on Research Papers - PDC ’14. https://doi.org/10.1145/2661435Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Batya Friedman. 1996. Value-Sensitive Design. Interactions of the ACM 3, 6: 17–23.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Colin M. Gray and Shruthi Sai Chivukula. 2019. Ethical Mediation in UX Practice. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300408Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Christina N. Harrington, Sheena Erete, and Anne Marie Piper. 2019. Deconstructing community-based collaborative design: Towards more equitable participatory design engagements. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 3, CSCW. https://doi.org/10.1145/3359318Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Gillian R. Hayes. 2011. The relationship of action research to human-computer interaction. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 18, 3: 15:1-15:20. https://doi.org/10.1145/1993060.1993065Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Brent Hecht, Lauren Wilcox, Jeffrey P. Bigham, Johannes Schöning, Ehsan Hoque, Jason Ernst, Yonatan Bisk, Lana Yarosh, Bushra Amjam, and Cathy Wu. 2018. It's Time to Do Something: Mitigating the Negative Impacts of Computing Through a Change to the Peer Review Process. ACM Future of Computing. Retrieved January 6, 2019 from https://acm-fca.org/2018/03/29/negativeimpacts/Google Scholar
- Liz Jackson, Alex Haagaard, and Rua M. Williams. 2022. Disability Dongle. CASTAC Platypus Blog. Retrieved January 26, 2023 from https://blog.castac.org/2022/04/disability-dongle/Google Scholar
- Alison Kafer. 2013. Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN. Retrieved March 15, 2018 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt16gz79xGoogle Scholar
- F. D. Kennedy, J. C. Wright, M. J. Anderson, and Phillip Cooley. 1969. Simulation in mental health planning. Proceedings of the fourth annual conference on Applications of simulation. https://doi.org/10.5555/800240.807184Google Scholar
Digital Library
- O. George Kennedy. 1973. The use of computer simulation in health care facility design. In Proceedings - Winter Simulation Conference, 172–198. https://doi.org/10.1145/800293.811575Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Eunjung Kim. 2017. Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea. Duke University Press, Durham and London.Google Scholar
- Ann Light. 2011. HCI as heterodoxy: Technologies of identity and the queering of interaction with computers✩. Interacting with Computers 23, 5: 430–438. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2011.02.002Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Kelly Mack and Emma McDonnell. 2021. What do we mean by accessibility research? a literature survey of accessibility papers in chi and assets from 1994 to 2019. Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445412Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jennifer Mankoff, Gillian R. Hayes, and Devva Kasnitz. 2010. Disability studies as a source of critical inquiry for the field of assistive technology. In Proceedings of the 12th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility - ASSETS ’10, 3. https://doi.org/10.1145/1878803.1878807Google Scholar
Digital Library
- J. Milsum, D. Uyeno, I. Vertinsky, and H. Will. 1971. Vancouver regional health planning model. In Proceedings - Winter Simulation Conference, 462–473. https://doi.org/10.1145/800294.811473Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Cal Montgomery. 2019. Little Red Wagons. Cal's Blog. Retrieved February 11, 2022 from https://montgomerycal.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/little-red-wagons/Google Scholar
- Michael J. Muller and Sarah Kuhn. 1993. Participatory design. Communications of the ACM 36, 6: 24–28. https://doi.org/10.1145/153571.255960Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Brenda Smith Myles and Richard L. Simpson. 2001. Understanding the Hidden Curriculum: An Essential Social Skill for Children and Youth with Asperger Syndrome. Intervention in School and Clinic 36, 5: 279–286. https://doi.org/10.1177/105345120103600504Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Ihudiya Finda Ogbonnaya-Ogburu, Angela D.R. Smith, Alexandra To, and Kentaro Toyama. 2020. Critical Race Theory for HCI. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’20), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376392Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Esther O. Ohito and Shenila Khoja-Moolji. 2018. Reparative readings: re-claiming black feminised bodies as sites of somatic pleasures and possibilities. Gender and Education 30, 3: 277–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1225014Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Michael Oliver. 1990. The politics of disablement: A sociological approach. Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved February 15, 2022 from https://lib.ugent.be/catalog/rug01:000362511Google Scholar
- Sushil K. Oswal. 2014. Participatory design: barriers and possibilities. Communication Design Quarterly 2, 3: 14–19. https://doi.org/10.1145/2644448.2644452Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Lucy Pei and Bonnie Nardi. 2019. We Did It Right, But It Was Still Wrong: Toward Assets-Based Design. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’19), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3310434Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Elizabeth Pellicano, Adam Dinsmore, and Tony Charman. 2014. What should autism research focus upon? Community views and priorities from the United Kingdom. Autism 18, 7: 756–770. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361314529627Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Suvi Pihkala and Helena Karasti. 2016. Reflexive Engagement-Enacting Reflexivity in Design and for “Participation in Plural.” In Proceedings of the 14th Participatory Design Conference: Full papers - Volume 1. Retrieved June 13, 2021 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2940299.2940302Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Donna Riley. 2017. Rigor/Us: Building Boundaries and Disciplining Diversity with Standards of Merit. Engineering Studies 9, 3: 249–265. https://doi.org/10.1080/19378629.2017.1408631Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Camille Robcis. 2020. Frantz Fanon, institutional psychotherapy, and the decolonization of psychiatry. Journal of the History of Ideas 81, 2: 303–325. https://doi.org/10.1353/jhi.2020.0009Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Jennifer A. Rode. 2011. Reflexivity in digital anthropology. In Proceedings of the 2011 annual conference on Human factors in computing systems - CHI ’11, 123–132. https://doi.org/10.1145/1978942.1978961Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jennifer A. Rode. 2011. A theoretical agenda for feminist HCI. Interacting with Computers 23, 5: 393–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2011.04.005Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Claudia M. Roebers. 2017. Executive function and metacognition: Towards a unifying framework of cognitive self-regulation. Developmental Review 45: 31–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.DR.2017.04.001Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Noah J Sasson, Daniel J Faso, Jack Nugent, Sarah Lovell, Daniel P Kennedy, and Ruth B Grossman. 2017. Neurotypical Peers are Less Willing to Interact with Those with Autism based on Thin Slice Judgments. Scientific Reports 7, 1: 40700. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep40700Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Noah J Sasson and Kerrianne E Morrison. 2019. First impressions of adults with autism improve with diagnostic disclosure and increased autism knowledge of peers. Autism 23, 1: 50–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361317729526Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. 1997. Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading; or, You're So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Introduction is About You EVE KOSOFSKY SEDGWICK. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822382478-001Google Scholar
- Paul T. Shattuck, Sarah Carter Narendorf, Benjamin Cooper, Paul R. Sterzing, Mary Wagner, and Julie Lounds Taylor. 2012. Postsecondary Education and Employment Among Youth With an Autism Spectrum Disorder. PEDIATRICS 129, 6: 1042–1049. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2011-2864Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Lawrence D. Shriberg, Rhea Paul, Jane L. McSweeny, Ami Klin, Donald J. Cohen, and Fred R. Volkmar. 2001. Speech and Prosody Characteristics of Adolescents and Adults With High-Functioning Autism and Asperger Syndrome. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 44, 5: 1097–1115. https://doi.org/10.1044/1092-4388(2001/087)Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Katta Spiel, Christopher Frauenberger, Os Keyes, and Geraldine Fitzpatrick. 2019. Agency of Autistic Children in Technology Research—A Critical Literature Review. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction 26, 6: 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1145/3344919Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Katta Spiel and Kathrin Gerling. 2020. The Purpose of Play: How HCI Games Research Fails Neurodivergent Populations. Transactions in Computer Human Interaction preprint. https://doi.org/10.1145/nnnnnnn.nnnnnnnGoogle Scholar
- Katta Spiel, Laura Malinverni, Judith Good, and Christopher Frauenberger. 2017. Participatory Evaluation with Autistic Children. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI ’17, 5755–5766. https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025851Google Scholar
Digital Library
- stinkyzen. 2019. Elements of Executive Function: Road Trip Without a Map. NeuroClastic. Retrieved February 11, 2022 from https://neuroclastic.com/elements-of-executive-functioning-dysfunction/Google Scholar
- Joseph A. Stramondo. 2019. The Distinction Between Curative and Assistive Technology. Science and Engineering Ethics 25, 4: 1125–1145. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-018-0058-9Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Patricia Stuelke. 2021. The Ruse of Repair: US Neoliberal Empire and the Turn from Critique. Duke University Press, Durham, NC.Google Scholar
- Yngve Sundblad. 2011. UTOPIA: Participatory design from Scandinavia to the world. In HiNC3, IFIP AICT 350. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg, 176–186. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-23315-9_20Google Scholar
- Tanya Titchkosky. 2007. Reading and Writing Disability Differently: The Textured Life of Embodiment. University of Toronto Press. https://doi.org/10.3138/9781442683839Google Scholar
- Tanya Titchkosky. 2011. The Question of Access: Disability, Space, Meaning. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, CA.Google Scholar
- Ben Wasserman, Derek Prate, Bryce Purnell, Alex Muse, Kaitlyn Abdo, Kendra Day, and LouAnne Boyd. 2019. vrSensory: Designing Inclusive Virtual Games with Neurodiverse Children. In Extended Abstracts of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play Companion Extended Abstracts (CHI PLAY ’19 Extended Abstracts), 755–761. https://doi.org/10.1145/3341215.3356277Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Susan W. White, Angela Scarpa, Caitlin M. Conner, Brenna B. Maddox, and Saray Bonete. 2015. Evaluating Change in Social Skills in High-Functioning Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorder Using a Laboratory-Based Observational Measure. Focus on Autism and Other Developmental Disabilities 30, 1: 3–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088357614539836Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Rua M. Williams and LouAnne E. Boyd. 2019. Prefigurative Politics and Passionate Witnessing. In The 21st International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - ASSETS ’19, 262–266. https://doi.org/10.1145/3308561.3355617Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Rua M. Williams and Juan E. Gilbert. 2019. “Nothing about us without us”: Transforming participatory research and ethics in human systems engineering. In Advancing Diversity Inclusion and Social Justice Through Human Systems Engineering, Rod Roscoe and Erin Chiou (eds.). Taylor & Francis Group.Google Scholar
- Rua M. Williams and Juan E. Gilbert. 2019. Cyborg Perspectives on Computing Research Reform. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI EA ’19, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3310421Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Rua M. Williams and Juan E. Gilbert. 2020. Perseverations of the academy: A survey of wearable technologies applied to autism intervention. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 143: 102485. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102485Google Scholar
Cross Ref
- Rua M. Williams, Kathryn E. Ringland, Amelia Gibson, Mahender Mandala, Arne Maibaum, and Tiago Guerreiro. 2021. Articulations toward a Crip HCI. Interactions 28, 28–37.Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Rua M. Williams, Simone Smarr, Diandra Prioleau, and Juan E. Gilbert. 2021. Oh No, Not Another Trolley! On the Need for a Co-Liberative Consciousness in CS Pedagogy. IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society: 1–1. https://doi.org/10.1109/TTS.2021.3084913Google Scholar
- Rua Mae Williams. 2019. Metaeugenics and Metaresistance: from manufacturing the ‘includeable body’ to walking away from the broom closet. Canadian Journal of Children's Rights / Revue canadienne des droits des enfants 6, 1: 60–77. https://doi.org/10.22215/cjcr.v6i1.1976Google Scholar
- Jacob O. Wobbrock, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, Shaun K. Kane, and Gregg C. Vanderheiden. 2018. Ability-based design. Communications of the ACM 61, 6: 62–71. https://doi.org/10.1145/3148051Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Jacob O. Wobbrock, Shaun K. Kane, Krzysztof Z. Gajos, Susumu Harada, and Jon Froehlich. 2011. Ability-Based Design: Concept, Principles and Examples. ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing 3, 3: 9:1-9:27. https://doi.org/10.1145/1952383.1952384Google Scholar
Digital Library
- Anon Ymous, Os Keyes, Rua M Williams, Judith Good, Eva Hornecker, and Cynthia L Bennett. 2020. “I am just terrified of my future”-Epistemic Violence in Disability Related Technology Research. In Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1145/3334480.3381828Google Scholar
Digital Library
Index Terms
Counterventions: a reparative reflection on interventionist HCI
Recommendations
Cyborg Assemblages: How autistic adults construct sociotechnical networks to support cognitive function
Autism has become a popular context for accessible technology researchers, yet a majority of HCI projects for autism and ADHD do not engage in participatory methods or otherwise involve disabled stakeholders in the project and research design. Prior ...
Exploring Nuanced Gender Perspectives within the HCI Community
With the increasing spread and pervasiveness of technologies, the role of gender in the design of these technologies is a topic of growing importance. Several conference panels and journal issues have focused on the contributions feminism, gender theory,...
Expanding and Refining Design and Criticality in HCI
The term 'critical design' is on the upswing in HCI. We analyze how discourses around 'critical design' are diverging in Design and HCI. We argue that this divergence undermines HCI's ability to learn from and appropriate the design approaches signaled ...





Comments