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Recommending With, Not For: Co-Designing Recommender Systems for Social Good
Journal article   Open access

Recommending With, Not For: Co-Designing Recommender Systems for Social Good

Michael D. Ekstrand, Afsaneh Razi, Aleksandra Sarcevic, Maria Soledad Pera, Robin Burke and Katherine Landau Wright
ACM transactions on recommender systems
06 Aug 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3759261
Featured in Collection :   Research Supported by Drexel Libraries' OA Programs
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https://doi.org/10.1145/3759261View
Published, Version of Record (VoR) Open Access via Drexel Libraries Read and Publish Program 2025 Open CC BY-SA V4.0

Abstract

Evaluation General and reference HCI design and evaluation methods Human-centered computing Information systems Participatory design Recommender systems
Recommender systems are usually designed by engineers, researchers, designers, and other members of development teams. These systems are then evaluated based on goals set by the aforementioned teams and other business units of the platforms operating the recommender systems. This design approach emphasizes the designers’ vision for how the system can best serve the interests of users, providers, businesses, and other stakeholders. Although designers may be well-informed about user needs through user experience and market research, they are still the arbiters of the system’s design and evaluation, with other stakeholders’ interests less emphasized in user-centered design and evaluation. When extended to recommender systems for social good, this approach results in systems that reflect the social objectives as envisioned by the designers and evaluated as the designers understand them. Instead, social goals and operationalizations should be developed through participatory and democratic processes that are accountable to their stakeholders. We argue that recommender systems aimed at improving social good should be designed by and with, not just for, the people who will experience their benefits and harms. That is, they should be designed in collaboration with their users, creators, and other stakeholders as full co-designers, not only as user study participants.

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