Abstract

The rapid adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across many domains has prompted calls to develop human-centered AI (HCAI). While researchers acknowledge ambiguity in framing, designing, and evaluating HCAI, many turn to fundamental human values and rights to address this challenge. Building on this approach, we argue that community and creativity should be core values in HCAI evaluation and explore zine culture as a possible normative lens through which to articulate how those values might manifest in the design and use of information technologies. Zines, as grassroots publications, have historically been associated with values of community and creativity, making them a productive site for this inquiry. We suggest that examining zine culture alongside AI discourse can help clarify what genuinely human-centered design might require. As an initial exploration, we will introduce student organizations — as active information-sharing communities — to zines as informational tools and observe how they engage with them in relation to their organizational goals. Using an action research approach, we designed a workshop that treats zines as paradigmatically human-centered technologies, employing this framing to examine the values and norms that shape their creation and use. Drawing on interdisciplinary research on zines, community, and creativity, this presentation will outline our action research framework and workshop design. We reflect on community and creativity as essential criteria for assessing humancenteredness in AI systems and consider how zine culture's "small data logics" might cultivate alternative imaginaries for data stewardship beyond the Big Data logic of datafication.

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Presented at the 2026 Spring Purdue Undergraduate Research Conference.

Keywords

Zines; AI; Student Organizations; Information Ethics; Information Technology

Date of this Version

4-2026

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