Who is Our Ideal User: Critical Race Theory and Design Justice in Library Online Spaces
Lightning Talk | Wednesday, May 17, 2023 | 1:45pm – 2:45pm EST
Drawing on Design Justice principles, as well as broader conceptions of why our idealized user is coded as white, this presentation aims to start a conversation about what it might look like to redesign our library online access points and spaces with justice in mind. While many of us are unaware of the assumptions built into our online library spaces, these assumptions reflect the broader assumptions in librarianship about an ideal user. Design Injustice can take many forms in library online access points from library jargon to crucial information placed behind many clicks to non-representative images and multimedia. CRT tells us that these affordances, this coding of the idealized user as white, comes with and from certain systematic underpinnings designed to privilege the white experience and allow white ownership over information access spaces. As we become more critical of how we do User Experience research in libraries, Design Justice must be at the forefront of what we do. CRT provides tools that allow us to interrogate the power structures behind our ideal user and consider what we can do to disrupt them.
[This talk will be recorded live.]
Presenter: Anders Tobiason / Presenter slides
Anders Tobiason (he/him) is an Assistant Professor and the Multimedia Development and User Experience Librarian at Boise State University. He holds both a Ph.D. in Music Theory and an M.A. in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Anders has presented and written on many topics including lateral reading, accessible video creation, and uncovering white language supremacy in the ACRL Framework. His research interests include anti-racist library instruction, accessibility, critical discourse analysis of library instructional standards and materials, dis/misinformation studies, and social media use in library instruction.