Two Ph.D. Research Presentations

Two presentations of I School Ph.D. dissertation research:

Scoring Space: How Real Estate Platform Users Make Sense of Place, Platforms, and Metrics

Elizabeth Resor

Real estate platforms, like Zillow, Redfin, and Apartments.com, have transformed real estate information access in the U.S. since they launched in the early 2000s. They assemble information about real estate listings from various sources, including public information (sales and tax history), information from other platforms (Google Maps, Yelp), and listing information that was previously only accessible to real estate agents (through the Multiple Listing Service). On the real estate platforms, home-seekers encounter a range of neighborhood scores – numerical rating and basic heatmaps that rank the schools, walkability, transit, crime and noise of a neighborhood. While some scholars and policymakers praised the platforms and these metrics for making information more universally accessible and potentially correcting historical inequalities in access to housing, others raised concerns that platforms would continue consolidating power for a few actors in housing. Both perspectives fail to consider the multiplicity of the user interactions with the platforms. By contrast, this dissertation takes an interpretivist approach to investigating the platforms and their users. I draw on 32 in-depth interviews with home-seekers from Las Vegas, NV or Oakland, CA, additional interviews with housing experts and activists, and online and in-person participant observation as I recruited interview participants and conducted my own online housing search. Instead of treating information as self-evident, my research shows that people interpreted the platforms’ metrics in considerably varied ways. Different users, for example, could draw opposing conclusions from the same neighborhood score. I also present evidence of online housing search activities that extend beyond real estate platforms and analyze user folk theories about the price-estimating algorithm, the Zestimate, that challenge media narratives that hype its influence. This research reveals key gaps in current policy framing of both housing search and platform use.

Designing for Action: Centering Youth in Participatory Technology Design

Liza Gak

This dissertation examines how Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) can more meaningfully engage teens and young adults (ages 13–22) as full participants in the research and design of sociotechnical systems. While participatory design methods have long been used with children under 12, HCI has struggled to support deeper youth engagement across all stages of the research process -- particularly with teens who bring greater independence, critical awareness, and lived experience of digital systems. In response, I introduce an "action-taker" role that positions youth not only as testers or informants, but as researchers, designers, and agents of change. Drawing on Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and radical traditions of participatory design, I offer new frameworks and methods for deepening youth engagement, skill-building, and collective action around issues that matter to them.

The dissertation is grounded in four empirical projects that explore how participatory methods can help youth reflect on and reshape the sociotechnical systems that structure their lives. These include: a year-long virtual PAR project in which youth learned to research and act on social media issues of their choice; a design fiction workshop series that surfaced teens’ values through speculative storytelling; a qualitative study of location-sharing technologies revealing privacy as a relational norm; and a scenario-based investigation of algorithmic harm in targeted weight-loss advertising. Across these studies, I demonstrate how creative, reflective, and community-based methods can support youth in reframing everyday technologies -- not as neutral tools, but as sites of power, negotiation, and meaning-making.

By redefining participation and action in HCI, this work contributes to a growing movement toward justice-oriented, youth-centered design. It offers both theoretical and practical guidance for researchers seeking to engage youth as co-creators of more equitable sociotechnical futures.

This event will be live streamed on Zoom. You are welcome to join us either in South Hall or via Zoom. If this is your first time using Zoom, please allow a few extra minutes to download and install the browser plugin or mobile app.

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