Resistance as Participation: Queer Theory’s Applications for HIV Health Technology Design

ABSTRACT

This article proposes resistance as a form of participation in user experience settings. It details a study to include people living with HIV in codesigning a health education technology, and it found that participants resisted online education initiatives, citing HIV stigma on social media and privacy concerns. Taken with queer theory, these findings underscore the offline inequities mediating interaction on social media for those living with HIV and open alternative design arrangements reflecting participants’ embodied experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• User experience (UX)
• HIV
• queer theory
• health technology design
• participatory design

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Rebecca Walton and the anonymous reviewers for their detailed and supportive feedback throughout the review process. Additionally, thank you to Pat Bruch, Molly Kessler, Heather Turner, Bree Straayer, and all of my graduate student colleagues at the University of Minnesota, who offered multiple rounds of encouraging and generative feedback on this project. Most importantly, I would like to extend my gratitude to all of the youth living with HIV who made this research possible, as well as the frontline staff at the nonprofit supporting this study for their intelligence, kindness, and dedication to improving healthcare for people living with HIV.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

McKinley Green

McKinley Green (he/him/his) is a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Scientific & Technical Communication at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches classes in technical and professional communication, first-year writing, and visual rhetoric. His interests are located at intersections of technology, cultural rhetorics, and theories of social justice.