Designing for New Forms of Vulnerability Exploring transformation and empowerment in times of COVID-19 David Struzek University of Siegen, Information Systems/IT for the ageing society, Germany david.struzek@uni-siegen.de Sven Bittenbinder University of Siegen, Information Systems/IT for the ageing society, Germany sven.bittenbinder@uni-siegen.de Lydia Stamato Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, United States lydiastamato@umbc.edu Katerina Cerna University of Siegen, Information Systems/IT for the ageing society, Germany, Katerina.Cerna@uni-siegen.de Claudia Müller University of Siegen, Information Systems/IT for the ageing society, Germany; Kalaidos University of Applied Sciences at Careum Hochschule Gesundheit, Switzerland claudia.mueller@uni-siegen.de Özge Subasi College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Koc University, Turkey ozsubasi@ku.edu.tr John Vines University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom john.vines@ed.ac.uk Richard Paluch University of Siegen, Information Systems/IT for the ageing society, Germany richard.palluch@uni-siegen.de Arlind Reuter Open Lab, Newcastle University, United Kingdom a.reuter2@newcastle.ac.uk Foad Hamidi Department of Information Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, United States foadhamidi@umbc.edu ABSTRACT Our workshop will concentrate on vulnerability of specifc social groups due to various reasons, including COVID-19, and the po- tential for technology design to result in empowerment. We want to address issues of what new forms of vulnerabilities emerge and how we can design digital environments in a way that acknowl- edges vulnerability but also has the potential to empower people in ways that are meaningful for them. When planning the workshop, we will also refect on social situations that can result in vulnera- bilities for participants. Therefore, we will ensure that interested participants will experience low barriers to participation include a variety of people with diferent backgrounds and ensure that inter- action happens based on equality principles and in an atmosphere of solidarity. Participants can exchange ideas and thoughts without worrying about being exposed to biased assumptions. The work- shop will allow for non-hierarchical and cooperative discussion and collaboration through interactive online exercises, resulting in a collaboratively developed zine. Finally, the social sustainability of the workshop will be ensured through a website, mailing lists, joint publications and continuous contact. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Human computer interaction (HCI). KEYWORDS New vulnerabilities, COVID-19, Empowerment ACM Reference Format: David Struzek, Katerina Cerna, Richard Paluch, Sven Bittenbinder, Claudia Müller, Arlind Reuter, Lydia Stamato, Özge Subasi, Foad Hamidi, and John Vines. 2021. Designing for New Forms of Vulnerability: Exploring trans- formation and empowerment in times of COVID-19. In CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Extended Abstracts (CHI ’21 Extended Abstracts), May 08–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 5 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3441339 Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for proft or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the frst page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the owner/author(s). CHI ’21 Extended Abstracts, May 08–13, 2021, Yokohama, Japan © 2021 Copyright held by the owner/author(s). ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-8095-9/21/05. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3441339 1 BACKGROUND One of the key focuses of Human-computer interaction (HCI) re- search is the improvement of people’s lives and the assistance in overcoming barriers by building appropriate technological so- lutions. These often aim at universal accessibility [2]. Designing with and for those who become vulnerable in the socio-technical landscape has hence been at the core of many HCI projects. More