Abstract:
This talk draws on ethnographic research in Tokyo and international interviews with conversation designers and UX professionals to examine how artificial intelligence systems are shaped at the intersection of code, culture, and gender. While engineers often frame conversational AI as a technical problem, designers foreground the cultural and emotional dimensions of human interaction. These negotiations come into sharp relief in the design of embodied conversational agents, where questions of gender and embodiment influence not only usability but also harassment, stereotyping, and trust. By tracing workplace debates over avatar appearance, conversational pacing, and design equity, I argue that UX professionals play a pivotal role in mediating between technical constraints and humanistic concerns. This work highlights how gendered assumptions are reproduced or resisted within AI systems, and why user experience must remain central to the future of conversational AI.

Bio:
Dr. Elizabeth Rodwell is Associate Professor of Digital Media at the University of Houston, where she directs the User Experience program and UX Lab. Her interdisciplinary research examines the intersection of technology and society, with a focus on the human role in technology design. Her recent monograph, Push the Button: Interactive Television and Collaborative Journalism in Japan (Duke University Press, 2024), explores how media professionals respond to technological change, censorship, and misinformation.

Dr. Rodwell is currently conducting fieldwork among designers who shape the voices of conversational AI. She has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Fulbright, and Social Science Research Council.

Dr. Rodwell's talk is co-sponsored by WGS. It will also be streamed over Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/j/98202590975.