Lindsay Popowski

@popowski.bsky.social

514 Followers 364 Following

phd-ing @ stanford hci online groups, social platform design, and mental models. also books. books books books.

Positech @ CSCW 2026 The Capacity to Care: Designing Social Technology for Sustained Engagement With Societal Challenges Applications due Aug. 3 Website for details: https://positech.github.io/cscw2026
A bar plot of prediction accuracy by ACA criteria. The bar for ACA algorithms is around 85\%, while the bars for all other configurations range around 45-55\%. There is no apparent difference for 2/3 ACA criteria versus 1/3 or 0/3 ACA criteria.
The core proposition: If an algorithm satisfies all three conditions (Available, Compact, Aligned), then a person will be able to accurately predict its behavior, even if the algorithm is complex. Characteristics improving and worsening each characteristic are shown. For available: visible features and concepts users are predisposed to notice help, hidden features and hard-to-extract features hurt. For compact: a single concept or many that can be united into one help, multiple divergent concepts combined hurts. For aligned, high accuracy of the underlying algorithm and unambiguous concepts help, low accuracy or concepts subject to disagreement hurt.
A search for factors for algorithm understanding results in multiple terms displayed as documents, including available, compact, and aligned. These are shown to be necessary and sufficient. Other, similar terms are shown in the background faded, like intuitive, rule-based, grounded, modular, linear, decomposable, accurate, symbolic, causal, and personalized.
Screenshot of the workshop website. Title: Design for Hope: Cultivating Deliberate Hope in the Face of Complex Societal Challenges. Date: Saturday, October 18th, 2025, 9am-5pm (TBU). Overview: Societal challenges, such as those at the heart of CSCW research, are often complex, and responses to them frequently prioritize harm reduction and prevention as immediate goals. While these efforts are essential, they can unintentionally narrow our sense of what is possible, centering our attention on mitigating risks rather than expanding possibilities.