About

Dr. Lynn Dombrowski is an Associate Professor at the College of Computing, specializing in Human-Centered Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, Social Computing, and Design. Her research employs design and empirical methods to explore how computing technologies can address social inequality. She studies the development of designs and prototypes of human-centered computing technologies aimed at intervening in large systemic social issues such as hunger and wage violations. Her work contributes to the fields of human-computer interaction, ubiquitous and social computing, and design, with a focus on understanding the limitations and strengths of applying design methods to contemporary social issues. Her research themes include power, empowerment, politics, ethics, values, advocacy, and social justice within the context of the design and use of sociotechnical systems. Dr. Dombrowski's goal is to deepen the understanding of how information and communication technologies may foster or inhibit social change, producing analytic, theoretic, and pragmatic contributions within HCI. Her work aims to explore how design can influence social inequality and promote social justice.

Research topics

• Computer science
• Public relations
• Sociology
• Political science
• Business

Selected publications

• Embracing Social Justice within a Computing Curriculum to Foster Social Change

  2025-04-24 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Sound to Sight: Enhancing Contextual Awareness for the DHH Community in Public Transportation

  2025-04-23 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Whose, Which, and What Crisis? A Critical Analysis of Crisis in Computing Supply Chains

  2025-07-23 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Improving Public Service Chatbot Design and Civic Impact: Investigation of Citizens’ Perceptions of a Metro City 311 Chatbot

  2025-07-04 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access

  As governments increasingly adopt digital tools, public service chatbots have emerged as a growing communication channel. This paper explores the design considerations and engagement opportunities of public service chatbots, using a 311 chatbot from a metropolitan city as a case study. Our qualitative study consisted of official survey data and 16 interviews examining stakeholder experiences and design preferences for the chatbot. We found two key areas of concern regarding these public chatbots: individual-level and community-level. At the individual level, citizens experience three key challenges: interpretation, transparency, and social contextualization. Moreover, the current chatbot design prioritizes the efficient completion of individual tasks but neglects the broader community perspective. It overlooks how individuals interact and discuss problems collectively within their communities. To address these concerns, we offer design opportunities for creating more intelligent, transparent, community-oriented chatbots that better engage individuals and their communities.

  PublisherDOI

• From Tech Lash to Tech Fash: Strategic Reflections on a Decade of Collective Organizing in Computing

  2025-08-18

  articleOpen access

  Computing is a field plagued with presentism, oriented towards the new in ways that limit our design and research practices -as well as our capacity to understand and collectively respond to emerging crises.To improve our sensemaking and strategizing about today's crises, this workshop explores what Tamara Kneese has deemed the last decade's shift from "techlash" to "tech fash."What have we learned from the era of misinformation and bias, of "surveillance capitalism" and tech worker organizing that can inform our struggle against the increasing power of a techno-fascist oligarchy?We will also look towards previous generations of computing professionals and activists, who likewise sought to address the harms of emerging automated systems and the complicity of computing within violent, imperialist projects.This workshop will create space for participants to explore these questions collectively, bridging past and present moments in an effort to devise strategies moving forward.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Healing Structures: Sociotechnical Mechanisms for Centering Survivors of Domestic Violence within US-Based Marginalized Communities

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2024-11-07 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Domestic violence (DV) survivors from marginalized communities face serious challenges when seeking governmental services and community resources. Current resources often overlook victim-survivors' needs, neglecting their choices and autonomy. Through studying the context of DV within the US-based Muslim community and embracing a Survivor-Centered Transformative Justice approach, we introduce healing structures, structures promoting justice for victim-survivors and their communities, where healing is promoted by tackling harmful practices and discriminatory laws and fostering collective and survivor-centered interventions. Through focus groups, design concepts, and expert evaluations, we unveil three sociotechnical processes that establish healing structures for survivors and their communities when implemented collectively and simultaneously. The processes are: 1) Survivor advocacy, ensuring safety, empowerment, informed decision-making, and care continuity. 2) Community accountability, encouraging reparation and behavioral change of abusers through communal intervention and support. 3) Institutional transformation, reshaping broader conditions perpetuating abuse through preventive measures and structural reform. We conclude by reflecting on healing structures and discussing their design implications and potential tensions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Pro-Labor Design Under Capitalism

  interactions · 2024-02-28

  articleSenior author

  This forum focuses on the conditions and futures of the labor underpinning technology production and maintenance. We welcome standalone articles as well as interviews and conversations about all tech labor within the global supply chain of digital technologies.

  PublisherDOI

• Datafication Dilemmas: Data Governance in the Public Interest

  2024-11-11 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Within CSCW, there is a robust body of literature examining the infrastructures, institutions, and labor processes enabling pervasive processes of datafication. Key public sectors and industries are being increasingly datafied, often in the service of implementing AI tools to improve the efficiency, efficacy, and equity of public goods and services. This panel specifically examines the role of CSCW scholars in advancing public-interest technologies by engaging with datafication through the register of data governance. Each panelist brings perspectives from diverse domains of datafication - including healthcare, education, and agriculture - and state, corporate, and community forms of data governance. We invite panelists and attendees to explore a series of provocations focused on reconceptualizing our role and responsibility as researchers in intervening in processes of datafication and data governance.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Social Justice in HCI: A Systematic Literature Review

  2024-05-11 · 53 citations

  articleOpen access

  Given the renewed attention on politics, values, and ethics within our field and the wider cultural milieu, now is the time to take stock of social justice research in HCI. We surveyed 124 papers explicitly pursuing social justice between 2009 and 2022 to better reflect on the current state of justice-oriented work within our discipline. We identified (1) how researchers understood the social justice-relevant harms and benefits, (2) the approaches researchers used to address harm, and (3) the tools that researchers leveraged to pursue justice. Our analysis highlights gaps in social justice work, such as the need for our community to conceptualize benefits, and identifies concrete steps the HCI community can take to pursue just futures. By providing a comprehensive overview of and reflection on HCI’s current social justice landscape, we seek to help our research community strategize, collaborate, and collectively act toward justice.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Denizen Designer Project: Practices, Relationships, and Principles of Activist-Led Design

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2024-11-07 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Design activism is a way for designers and researchers to negotiate societal inequities and resulting implications for design practices. Within HCI and design, community-based methods are a common way to situate design engagements among those directly impacted by social inequities. Despite its potential for social impact, current approaches to design activism can be extractive and at odds with community-aligned advocacy. Drawing on interviews with 32 individuals who use design to address local, social inequities, we extend the current discourse around design activism by exploring 'activist-led design'. We outline four key considerations of this work: understanding activist-led design practices; relationality and community engagements; challenges of doing this work; and democratizing access to design. Our analysis highlights implications for academia's role in design activism. This paper interrogates design activism's role as a social and communal practice, and considers ways to support activist-led design. We propose considerations that contribute to the larger conversation of academic design having more equitable impact.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• CHS: Small: Collaborative Research: Reconstructing the data-driven workplace

  NSF · $16k · 2019–2022

• CHS: Small: Designing Collaborative and Transparent Work Information Systems

  NSF · $494k · 2017–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Gillian R. Hayes

  University of California, Irvine

  20 shared

• Travis Faas

  Ball State University

  17 shared

• Erin Brady

  14 shared

• Bill Tomlinson

  University of California, Irvine

  13 shared

• Melissa Mazmanian

  University of California, Irvine

  13 shared

• Ankita Raturi

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  13 shared

• Juliet Norton

  Purdue University West Lafayette

  13 shared

• Andrew Miller

  Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

  12 shared

Education

• PhD, Informatics

  University of California, Irvine

  2015

• Human-Computer Interaction/Design M.S. , Informatics

  Indiana University

  2010

• Computer Information Systems and Web and Digital Media Production B.S., Computing and New Media Technologies

  University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

  2008