Nassim Parvin

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Georgia Institute of Technology

The discourse around self-driving cars has been dominated by an emphasis on their potential to reduce the number of accidents. At the same time, proponents acknowledge that self-driving cars would inevitably be involved in fatal accidents where moral algorithms would decide the fate of those involved. This is a necessary trade-off, proponents sugge...

Researchers and activists are increasingly drawing on the practice of collecting, archiving, and sharing stories to advance social justice, especially given the low cost and accessibility of digital technologies. These practices differ in their aims and scope yet they share a common conviction: that digital storytelling is empowering especially whe...

Echo Look is one latest product by Amazon built on the artificial intelligence agent Alexa designed to be a virtual fashion assistant. This paper draws on feminist theory to critically engage with the premises and promises of this new technology by introducing the concept of algorithmic gaze. More broadly, I demonstrate how the introduction of Echo...

This paper revisits the term “unintended consequences,” drawing upon an illustrative vignette to show how it is used to dismiss vital ethical and political concerns. Tracing the term to its original introduction by Robert Merton and building on feminist technoscience analyses, we uncover and rethink its widespread usage in popular and scholarly dis...

Reflexivity, as conceived by feminist epistemologies, is essential to advancing social justice design practice. Reflexivity is thus critical for CSCW and HCI scholars and practitioners who seek to build equitable technological futures, as it allows for a critical examination of explicit and implicit values and politics in design and research proces...

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement...

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement...

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement...

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement...

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement...

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In Technocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen, Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of creep that they substantiate through critical engagement...

What are the matters of philosophy? How do they shape how philosophy is practiced, what kinds of knowledge it produces, and who counts as a philosopher? The dominant matters of Western philosophy, or its epistemic companions, are books and journal articles even when dialogic and oral traditions are acknowledged or referenced. In this paper, we argu...

Products and technologies reflect injustices in the world such as racism, sexism, and ableism. And all too often, they exacerbate those injustices in overt and insidious ways. How can we understand and address the harms brought forth by design and technology? Where is the nexus of accountability and justice? This field review begins with provisiona...

We provide an extensive overview of a wide range of quantum games and interactive tools that have been employed by the quantum community in recent years. We present selected tools as described by their developers, including “Hello Quantum, Hello Qiskit, Particle in a Box, Psi and Delta, QPlayLearn, Virtual Lab by Quantum Flytrap, Quantum Odyssey, S...

How do materials and making come to matter in the messy practices of feminist teaching? This Lab Meeting shares examples of interdisciplinary work in feminist making and teaching across a range of contexts (AI portraiture, printmaking, quilting, musical performance, game design, theater, storytelling, and more) to extend the discussion of materials...

In this review, we provide an extensive overview of a wide range of quantum games and interactive tools that have been employed by the community in recent years. The paper presents selected tools, as described by their developers. The list includes: Hello Quantum, Hello Qiskit, Particle in a Box, Psi and Delta, QPlayLearn, Virtual Lab by Quantum Fl...

Describing life after the Ph.D., an academic highlights three aspects (opinion)

Threat moderation on social media has been subject to much public debate and criticism, especially for its broadly permissive approach. In this paper, we focus on Twitter's Violent Threats policy, highlighting its shortcomings by comparing it to linguistic and legal threat assessment frameworks. Specifically, we foreground the importance of account...

Due to the evolving nature of technology and its impact on individuals, communities and society, practitioners and designers in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) are expected to consider ethics in their work. This role has inspired the development of a number of resources for practice, such as tools, frameworks and methods to tackle ethical issues i...

This essay examines the Super Bowl and the smart city as conjoined spectacles. A focused case study on Super Bowl LIII and its staging in Atlanta, Georgia in 2019 allows us to investigate how the use of cutting-edge smart technologies, including cameras, sensors, artificial intelligence, image recognition, and data collection techniques to secure M...

In this forum we highlight innovative thought, design, and research in the area of interaction design and sustainability, illustrating the diversity of approaches across HCI communities. --- Roy Bendor, Editor

The abstract nature of quantum mechanics makes it difficult to visualize. This is one of the reasons it is taught in the language of mathematics. Without an opportunity to directly observe or interact with quantum phenomena, students struggle to develop conceptual understandings of its theories and formulas. In this paper we present the process of...

Essays, photo-essays, interviews, manifestos, diagrams, and a play explore the varied legacies, influences, and futures of the Bauhaus. What would keep the Bauhaus up at night if it were practicing today? A century after its founding by Walter Gropius in Weimar, Germany, as an “experimental laboratory of the future,” who are the pioneering experime...

Given the rise of scientific misinformation, there is a critical need for students to learn the practices of scientific inquiry along with scientific concepts. In this work-in-progress paper, we posit that digital games are conducive to learning both as they enable collaborative virtual scientific experimentation and modeling. We put forward design...

Are Amazon, Google, and Facebook endangering independent thought? The possibility is the central concern of Frank Foer’s recent book, aptly titled World without Mind. The book is a cautionary tale on topical issues such as groupthink and the demise of journalism, issues that have been present in scholarly debates for some time and have recently fou...

Echo chambers, mis-information, online harassment. Dystopian themes such as these have become commonplace in public and scholarly discourses around social media and digital networks. We may, nonetheless, remember the early days of the web when it was dreamt as the liberating force of the future, capable of creating democratic communities that trans...

Ridesharing services have been viewed as heralding the next generation of mobility and recognized for their potential to provide an alternate and more flexible model of work. These services have also been critiqued for their treatment of employees, low wages, and other concerns. In this paper, we present a qualitative investigation of the introduct...

This paper presents the design of a series of experimental data visualizations aimed at reflection and conversation about embodied interactions and physiological data. Taking heart rate as the point of entry, these visualization challenge binaries such as matter/meaning, subjectivity/objectivity, and self/other. More specifically, we present three...

Quantum mechanics (QMs) is a foundational subject in many science and engineering fields. It is difficult to teach, however, as it requires a fundamental revision of the assumptions and laws of classical physics and probability. Furthermore, introductory QM courses and texts predominantly focus on the mathematical formulations of the subject and la...

It is widely accepted within the fields of Design and Human-Computer Interaction that designing products in collaboration with end users can lead to more useful, usable, and desirable products. Less explored is the co-design process's potential to change organizational culture through introduction and illustration of its central principles at work:...

Facilitating and supporting various modes of social interaction has been part of Mixed Reality (MRx)1 design experiments and discourse over the past twenty years. But what vision of social interaction is sought and advanced through Mixed Reality environments? In this paper, I identify two dominant ways that social interaction is envisioned in MRx d...

In this article, we bring together the lenses of media studies, performance studies and social interaction offered in the other essays in this special issue and discuss their collective contribution towards a more nuanced understanding of MRx. We illustrate this capacity by a brief critical review of a recent MRx environment: Mégaphone. We suggest...

We explore design strategies for mixed reality (MR) in relation to Milgram's definition, which has been central to its development in the past 20 years. We argue for the need to rethink the technical focus of this definition in order to capture the experiential dimensions of MR and offer a humanistic framework for a growing class of experiences tha...

This article presents an analysis of participation patterns in an Alternate Reality Game, World Without Oil. This game aims to bring people together in an online environment to reflect on how an oil crisis might affect their lives and communities as a way to both counter such a crisis and to build collective intelligence about responding to it. We...

Work in Progress: The theory of Quantum Mechanics (QM) provides a foundation for many fields of science and engineering; however, its abstract nature and technical difficulty make QM a challenging subject for students to approach and grasp. This is partly because complex mathematical concepts involved in QM are difficult to visualize for students a...

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, then-candidate Barack Obama quipped in a debate-preparation session: "Well, the truth is, Brian, we can't solve global warming because I f-ing changed lightbulbs in my house. It's because of something collective" [1]. This candid quote illustrates the discursive tension around environmental sustainability...

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) is an active field of research. Its applications have been used in many areas, including education. Several studies indicate that mobile AR can help to enhance the educational context. Among those, one of the theories that can be considered as a conceptual base to the development of these applications is situated learn...

This article presents an analysis of participation patterns of an Alternate Reality game World Without Oil. This game aims to bring people together in an online environment to reflect and share insights about oil dependence. We present a series of participation profiles based on a quantitative analysis of 1554 contributions to the game narrative ma...

Demo Hour highlights new prototypes and projects that exemplify innovation and novel forms of interaction.Leah Maestri, Editor

Social media are transforming interpersonal and social interactions, enabling new forms of engagement and participation. However, we know little about how the specific design qualities of social media affect social interaction in these environments. Considering the diversity of social media today, there is a need to engage with specific cases to di...

We present Breakaway, an ambient display that encourages people, whose job requires them to sit for long periods of time, to take breaks more frequently. Breakaway uses the information from sensors placed on an office chair to communicate in a non-obtrusive manner how long the user has been sitting. Breakaway is a small sculpture placed on the desk...