GRACE: Designing Sociomaterial Assemblages Unpacking Gender Equity in Computing

AbstractThis chapter introduces GRACE, a FemTech sociomaterial assemblage that performs concerns related to equity in computing. GRACE is an interactive installation combining IoT, origami paper, and the history of computing performed at three events in Denmark, the USA, and France. Each event was designed to unpack equity in computing through different types of sociomaterial performances, while allowing us to collect data about the lived experiences of equity in computing. GRACE is both reconfigurable and relational. It is reconfigurable because GRACE is malleable and can take different forms (reaching out to people who are committed to the agenda as well as to people who are within the domain but not necessarily committed to the agenda) – even though its core remains the same. GRACE is relational because the nature of the installation emerges in use and thus is shaped by the relational connections created through specific use and people enacting the artefact. Through sociomaterial manifestations, GRACE seamlessly integrates the performance of equity in computing with data collection on equity in computing. We argue that designing GRACE as a sociomaterial assemblage allowed for long-term engagement with a gender-equity agenda across multiple diverse encounters and over several years.