Understanding How to Design a Social Computing System That Helps PhD Students Collectively Navigate Mistreatment or Abuse in Advising Relationships
Jane Im, Kentaro Toyama · 2024
People in power causing harm to those with less power is a long-standing problem across organizations. Academia is no exception. When advisors mistreat or abuse PhD students, how could a digital platform help affected PhD students connect with each other for collectively exploring solutions? To understand if there is a need for such a system, and how to design it, we conducted interviews with 10 PhD students. Our findings showed participants were overall positive about the high-level concept of a system for connecting PhD students to address problematic advising. Participants emphasized various social and technical features needed for comfortably using such a system. Simultaneously, participants had different preferences on how they would use it, based on their risk levels. We conclude by reflecting on the importance of centering users’ consent in nuanced ways when actually building the system.