Logo
ScienceStack
Table of Contents
Fetching ...
Sign In

(Working Paper) Good Faith Design: Religion as a Resource for Technologists

Nina Lutz, Benjamin Olsen, Weishung Liu, E. Glen Weyl

TL;DR

The paper investigates how religion functions as a sociocultural resource within human–computer interaction and digital technology use. It employs a landscape interview study with $48$ religious stakeholders across $11$ faith traditions to document lived experiences, perceived secular biases in technology, and desires from technologists. The analysis yields six design values—Wonder, Humility, Space, Embodiedness, Community, and Eternity—for guiding religiously informed and literate computing, along with a concrete agenda for religious literacy and communities of practice. The work highlights both harms arising from religious exclusion and a practical pathway for including religious perspectives to benefit all users and advance holistic design. This empirically grounded framework offers actionable guidance for designers and policymakers to harmonize technology development with religiously informed human flourishing.

Abstract

Previous work has found a lack of research in HCI on religion, partly driven by misunderstandings of values and practices between religious and technical communities. To bridge this divide in an empirically rigorous way, we conducted an interview study with 48 religious people and/or experts from 11 faiths, and we document how religious people experience, understand, and imagine technologies. We show that religious stakeholders find non-neutral secular embeddings in technologies and the firms and people that design them, and how these manifest in unintended harms for religious and nonreligious users. Our findings reveal how users navigate technoreligious practices with religiously informed mental models and what they desire from technologies. Informed by this, we distill six design values -- wonder, humility, space, embodiedness, community, and eternity -- to guide technologists in considering and leveraging religion as an additional, valid sociocultural resource when designing for a holistic user. We further spell out directions for future research.

(Working Paper) Good Faith Design: Religion as a Resource for Technologists

TL;DR

The paper investigates how religion functions as a sociocultural resource within human–computer interaction and digital technology use. It employs a landscape interview study with religious stakeholders across faith traditions to document lived experiences, perceived secular biases in technology, and desires from technologists. The analysis yields six design values—Wonder, Humility, Space, Embodiedness, Community, and Eternity—for guiding religiously informed and literate computing, along with a concrete agenda for religious literacy and communities of practice. The work highlights both harms arising from religious exclusion and a practical pathway for including religious perspectives to benefit all users and advance holistic design. This empirically grounded framework offers actionable guidance for designers and policymakers to harmonize technology development with religiously informed human flourishing.

Abstract

Previous work has found a lack of research in HCI on religion, partly driven by misunderstandings of values and practices between religious and technical communities. To bridge this divide in an empirically rigorous way, we conducted an interview study with 48 religious people and/or experts from 11 faiths, and we document how religious people experience, understand, and imagine technologies. We show that religious stakeholders find non-neutral secular embeddings in technologies and the firms and people that design them, and how these manifest in unintended harms for religious and nonreligious users. Our findings reveal how users navigate technoreligious practices with religiously informed mental models and what they desire from technologies. Informed by this, we distill six design values -- wonder, humility, space, embodiedness, community, and eternity -- to guide technologists in considering and leveraging religion as an additional, valid sociocultural resource when designing for a holistic user. We further spell out directions for future research.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 33 sections, 1 table.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Key underpinnings and language of this work
  3. Related Work
  4. Religion in society and technological innovation
  5. Sociocultural approaches to HCI
  6. Methods
  7. Interview design and recruitment
  8. Interview analysis
  9. Ethical considerations and positionality
  10. Findings
  11. Secular embeddings and assumptions of technologists and firms influence technology design, development, and use
  12. Secularism leaves religion behind and out of technology
  13. Exclusion has led to a rift between religion and modern technology
  14. Exclusion causes harm, but an inclusive vision is unclear
  15. Religion as a resource that shapes technoreligious practices
  16. ...and 18 more sections