jonathan zong 🍊🥄 PHD

how can participatory science improve safety and accountability in our digital environments?

last week, i helped host @natematias@social.coop at @bkc@social.cyber.harvard.edu and attended his public talk at MIT's data + feminism lab.

check out my post about the talk below:

https://data-and-design.org/blog/2024/10/25/improving-our-digital-environments/

interested in accessibility, visualization, and data ethics? i'm recruiting phd students to join the Data & Design Group at CU Boulder.

we're building a collaborative and inclusive space for people to grow into interdisciplinary researchers of technology and society.

https://data-and-design.org/recruiting

person having degree

hi! i will be presenting this work at #chi2024 next week.

i'm also pleased to share that i will be joining the faculty at
CU Boulder Information Science in 2025, and intend to recruit students soon.

please get in touch if you'd like to chat at the conference. thanks!

@jzong@hci.social

For blind and low-vision (BLV) people to equally participate in data analysis, they must be able to not only consume data representations created by others, but also create their own.

Unfortunately, existing accessible tools assume the existence of a visualization that can then be converted into an accessible representation.

Introducing Umwelt, a tool for interactive data analysis that de-centers visualization by treating visuals, text, and sound as equal modalities:

https://news.mit.edu/2024/umwelt-enables-interactive-accessible-charts-creation-blind-low-vision-users-0327

i, and two of my masters student mentees, each had first-author papers accepted at chi. i will have more to say about the projects later but for now i am simply very proud of my student collaborators and happy to be finishing my PhD on a high note ☺️

a new interview about my work on data refusal as design:

https://design.mit.edu/news/refusal-is-an-act-of-design-rethinking-data-ethics

can saying "no" be a creative act?

new in acm journal on responsible computing, my article with @natematias@social.coop

Data Refusal From Below: A Framework for Understanding, Evaluating, and Envisioning Refusal as Design

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3630107

i will be attending #AoIR2023 and #ASSETS2023 this year. it's my first time at both conferences, and i would love to meet you!

i'm interested in designing multi-modal systems for making data analysis more accessible to blind/low-vision users, and in systems and frameworks for consent and refusal in socio-technical systems.

you can read more about my research here: https://jonathanzong.com/research

a new spotlight article and video interview about my work in data visualization accessibility for MIT CSAIL:

https://cap.csail.mit.edu/engage/spotlights/jonathan-zong

how can cross-disciplinary conversations on consent advance safe, equitable computing?

"Consent: A Research and Design Lens for Human-Computer Interaction"

#cscw2022 panel on 11/14 with @dougzytko@hci.social @imjane@hci.social @eredmil1@hci.social @amyadele@mastodon.lol Tomomi Tanaka

ask q's on discord!

link to session: https://programs.sigchi.org/cscw/2022/program/session/88400