Play and Resistance: Intersecting Identities and Implicit Biases in Gamified Educational Tools

gamification, educational tools, intersectionality, representation, norms, biases, narrative

As Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers, we can create digital tools which facilitate growth, liberate, and heal, or create tools for trauma, discrimination, and increasing social power divides. Thus, it is extremely important to follow intersectionally grounded, qualitatively sound approaches with a diversity of participants situated across different axes of oppression, not only to improve the effectiveness of our explicit interfaces, but also to change the implicit messages and power structures we encode in them. The outcome of this paper, which represents a middle step between several larger studies, is twofold: a definition of the research methodology used to more accurately study bias in gamification in education, and outreach to potential study participants for the followup study. From current literature on the effects of (mis)representation, inaccessible and harmful designs, and oppressive technologies in HCI, we see that a crucial step in HCI research around gamified education tools is missing: the experiences, stories, and design input of marginalised students.