Jeffrey Basoah

Jeffrey Basoah

he/him

I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate and GEM Fellow in Human-Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington, specializing in Human-Computer Interaction and AI/ML fairness. In the Tactile and Tactical Design Lab and Wildlab, I research fairness and inclusivity in AI, focusing on how intelligent systems interact with underrepresented communities, especially Black Americans.

Publications

You can also find my articles on my Google Scholar profile.

Articles

When AI Joins the Team: Three Principles for Responsible Agent Design

Published in Microsoft Design

Authors: Hilary Dwyer, Jeffrey Basoah, Jennifer Wang

This article outlines three principles for designing AI agents in enterprise work environments: making agents differentiated from humans through clear naming and visual markers, building them for intent by adapting to specific workplace contexts, and ensuring they are bias resistant by disclosing limitations and preventing over-reliance.

Recommended citation: Dwyer, H., Basoah, J., and Wang, J. 2026. When AI Joins the Team: Three Principles for Responsible Agent Design. Microsoft Design. https://microsoft.design/articles/principles-for-responsible-agent-design/
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Conference Papers

Hopeful Failure: How Collaborative Design Fiction Reimagines AI

Published in ACM SIGCHI Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS '26) [21% acceptance rate]

Authors: Jeffrey Basoah, Katharina Reinecke, Daniela Rosner, Ihudiya Finda Ogbonnaya-Ogburu

In two collaborative design fiction workshops, 10 Black American participants — each with prior experience using AI writing tools — used Exquisite Tellings, a turn-based storytelling method, to co-author speculative narratives about AI. Participants consistently imagined moments of technological failure — not as endpoints, but as openings. These failures surfaced resourcefulness, community, and capacities that automation had obscured. We call this pattern hopeful failure: the idea that where AI falls short, broader social possibilities emerge.

Recommended citation: Basoah, J., Reinecke, K., Rosner, D., and Ogbonnaya-Ogburu, I. F. 2026. Hopeful Failure: How Collaborative Design Fiction Reimagines AI. In Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference (DIS ’26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.1145/3800645.3813092
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Should AI Mimic People? Understanding AI-Supported Writing Technology Among Black Users

Published in 28th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW '25) [journal-style peer review with an effective selectivity of ~15–20%; DEI Award recipient]

Authors: Jeffrey Basoah, Jay L. Cunningham, Erica Adams, Alisha Bose, Aditi Jain, Kaustubh Yadav, Zhengyang Yang, Katharina Reinecke, Daniela Rosner

Black American users experience a tradeoff between the benefits of AI-supported writing technology (AISWT) and feeling excluded by them. Participants reported that AISWT often fails to recognize African American Vernacular English, leading to alienation and concerns about cultural marginalization.

Recommended citation: Basoah, J., Cunningham, J. L., Adams, E., Bose, A., Jain, A., Yadav, K., Yang, Z., Reinecke, K., and Rosner, D. 2025. Should AI Mimic People? Understanding AI-Supported Writing Technology Among Black Users. Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 9, CSCW3, Article 242 (November 2025), 51 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757423
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Toward Responsible ASR for African American English Speakers: A Scoping Review of Bias and Equity in Speech Technology

Published in AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES '25) [34.7% acceptance rate]

Authors: Jay L. Cunningham, Adinawa Adjagbodjou, Jeffrey Basoah, Jainaba Jawara, Kowe Kadoma, Aaleyah Lewis

This paper examines bias and equity challenges in automatic speech recognition for African American English speakers. Through a scoping review, we identify systemic limitations in current ASR systems and propose pathways toward more equitable speech technology.

Recommended citation: Cunningham, J. L., Adjagbodiou, A., Basoah, J., Jawara, J., Kadoma, K., and Lewis, A. 2025. Toward Responsible ASR for African American English Speakers: A Scoping Review of Bias and Equity in Speech Technology. Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society 8, 1 (October 2025), 665–678. https://doi.org/10.1609/aies.v8i1.36580
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Not Like Us, Hunty: Measuring Perceptions and Behavioral Effects of Minoritized Anthropomorphic Cues in LLMs

Published in ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’25) [26.8% acceptance rate]

Authors: Jeffrey Basoah, Daniel Chechelnitsky, Tao Long, Katharina Reinecke, Chrysoula Zerva, Kaitlyn Zhou, Mark Díaz, Maarten Sap

This paper examines how large language models (LLMs) adapting to minoritized sociolects shape user trust, perception, and behavioral reliance. Across studies with African American English and Queer slang speakers, findings reveal that sociolect personalization does not necessarily improve user experience, highlighting the complex cultural and ethical tensions surrounding linguistic adaptation in AI systems.

Recommended citation: Basoah, J., Chechelnitsky, D., Long, T., Reinecke, K., Zerva, C., Zhou, K., Díaz, M., and Sap, M. 2025. Not Like Us, Hunty: Measuring Perceptions and Behavioral Effects of Minoritized Anthropomorphic Cues in LLMs. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT ’25). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 710–745. https://doi.org/10.1145/3715275.3732045
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The SPORT-C Intervention: An Integration of Sports, Case-Based Pedagogy and Systems Thinking Learning

Published in Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Applied Computing (CAC 2026)

Authors: Jeffrey Basoah, William Scherer, Karis Boyd-Sinkler, Reid Bailey

The SPORT-C intervention integrates sports, systems thinking, and case-based learning to make STEM education more engaging and culturally relevant for underrepresented students. A pilot study suggests this approach boosts student motivation and engagement in STEM subjects.

Recommended citation: Basoah, J., Scherer, W., Boyd-Sinkler, K., and Bailey, R. In press. The SPORT-C Intervention: An Integration of Sports, Case-Based Pedagogy, and Systems Thinking Learning. In H. R. Arabia (Ed.), Proceedings of the 2026 International Conference on Applied Computing (CAC 2026). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2307.11755
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Journal Articles

Data as Landed Property

Published in Leonardo

Authors: Daniela K. Rosner, Hanna Barakat, Jeffrey Basoah, Amelia Lee Dogan, Sucheta Ghoshal

Examining emerging forms of Agrotech — the convergence of algorithmic computational systems and farming — this paper investigates tensions between profit-driven technological decision-making and agricultural knowledge grounded in lived, land-based relationships. Drawing on interviews with 10 Agrotech developers and entrepreneurs alongside public-facing marketing materials, we show how Agrotech can transform land-based knowledge into data, reinforcing logics of private property in agricultural contexts.

Recommended citation: Rosner, D. K., Barakat, H., Basoah, J., Dogan, A. L., and Ghoshal, S. 2026. Data as Landed Property. Leonardo. https://doi.org/10.1162/LEON.a.2732
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