HCI Seminar: Robots and Opioids: Understanding How Communities Want to Deploy Technologies for their Safety

LIVE STREAM: https://uwmadison.zoom.us/j/98035790457?pwd=VkhvZVBZYzg0T1F2UzdWaDZiUW9EUT09

Abstract: In this talk, I will share two qualitative analyses focused on community perspectives of technological innovations designed for their safety. The first project is a photo elicitation study, in which we interviewed people about their perceptions of and attitudes toward security robots. We learned about what people expect these robots can do, how they would want them to be used, and fears about potential risks and consequences of their use. In the second project, we developed a location-based app to facilitate layperson response to opioid overdoses. In a yearlong field trial within one Philadelphia neighborhood, 112 participants signaled over 200 suspected overdoses, and administered the overdose reversal drug naloxone 74 times. Qualitative findings indicate that a lack of trust in professional response services, and experiences of marginalization, fueled participation in a community-based effort to help one another. Moreover, shared experiences of loss and trauma around the opioid crisis motivated app use that was markedly prosocial. Across both of these projects, I discuss the role of technology in helping people feel safe in their communities, and critical ways in which community input can shape how we design and deploy them. 

Bio: Gabriela Marcu is an Assistant Professor in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She studies the role of digital technology in social connection, mental health, and community wellbeing. With a particular focus on marginalized populations, she works to understand uses and impacts of technologies through qualitative methods, participatory design, community-based approaches, and deployment studies. She champions undergraduate research, and has been the recipient of undergraduate research mentoring awards from the National Center for Women and IT, and the Council on Undergraduate Research. She holds a Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction from Carnegie Mellon University, and a B.S. in Informatics from the University of California, Irvine.