Feminist HCI
Feminist HCI is the subfield of human-computer interaction that brings feminist theory, critical theory, and standpoint epistemology to bear on how interactive systems are conceived, built, and evaluated. Its founding statement is Shaowen Bardzell’s 2010 CHI paper Feminist HCI: Taking Stock and Outlining an Agenda for Design, which offered both contribution criteria (theory, methodology, user research, evaluation) and a “constellation” of feminist interaction design qualities — pluralism, participation, advocacy, ecology, embodiment, and self-disclosure — meant to guide and assess design as it unfolds. The agenda extends to questions usually left implicit in HCI: scientific objectivity, whose values get encoded, how data is collected and interpreted, designer reflexivity, and the unintended consequences of the systems we ship.
The lineage runs forward into Sasha Costanza-Chock’s Design Justice (2020), which frames design as operating within a “matrix of domination” and argues for processes led by, not merely consulted with, marginalised communities — showing, for example, how normative design erases trans and disabled users. For anti-violence technology, feminist HCI supplies the theoretical backbone of Trauma-Informed Design and Survivor-Centered Design: it names power, insists on participation, and treats embodiment and lived experience as design knowledge. It also grounds critique of Techno-Solutionism and of safety tools that ignore how systems are situated in real relationships of Gender-Based Violence and Coercive Control.
In this vault
- InformsTrauma-Informed Design
- Related toSurvivor-Centered Design
- Critiqued byTechno-Solutionism
- CentresGender-Based Violence