1.     Is the subject matter relevant?

Yes, the subject matter is highly relevant to the Special Issue on Feminist (Un)Hacking as a case study around a hackathon about breast pumps.

2.     Is the treatment of the subject matter intellectually interesting? Are there citations or bodies of literature you think are essential to which the author has not referred?

The treatment of the subject matter, while interesting, needs to be much further developed and analyzed in light of relevant literature including science and technology studies, the social construction of preganancy/breastfeeding and/or health/medicine more generally, innovation and feminist new materialism.

3.     Are there any noticeable problems with the author’s means of validating assumptions or making judgments?

The article is quite positive overall about the contributions and evaluations of the hackathon. At times, it reads more as a descriptive press-release about the event rather than a critical, scholarly analysis. In order to bridge this gap, it is recommended that a more reflective and nuanced assessment of the hackathon be incorporated throughout the article. The article does not challenge any of our current assumptions about hackathons or reflect more deeply on issues of labor, diversity and representation. Perhaps the authors could think more deeply about the demographics of who attended the hackathon and who was included/excluded? The authors mention that two scholarships were given for low-income participants but 2 out of 150 seems woefully inadequate in order to incorporate these perspectives. What did not work well? Where are the gaps, breakdowns and frictions? Were there groups that did not succeed in producing anything at all? Why or why not? These are likely the more interesting areas to pursue in a reflective discussion of the event rather than focusing only on the successful teams.

4. Is the article well written?

The article is written in a very colloquial tone. It needs to be heavily revised to be written in a more critical and scholarly tone in order to be appropriate as a full journal article. However, the article could potentially be shortened and featured more as a case study of feminist (un)hacking as one possibility.

5. Are there portions of the article that you recommend be shortened, excised or expanded?

The methodology section is currently insufficient and should include a more in-depth discussion of the relevant methodologies including critical design, human-centered design and artistic intervention as well as a more in-depth discussion of hackathons as a participatory design methodology. The discussion section requires a great deal more analysis and links with the relevant theories and literature. At present, it is not contributing substantially to our scholarly understanding of theories or methodologies relevant to feminist (un)hacking, which is essential in order to be included as a full journal article.

Review: Hacking the Hackathon With Breast Pumps and Babies

Decision: Major Revision

The paper presents a lively account of a feminist hackathon organized by students and researchers at MIT Media Lab. The purpose of the event was aimed at social change around the design and use of the breast pump for breast-feeding mothers. The authors point to the limited impact hackathons can have in relation to social change as described in recent literature. In response, the event was focused around a number of goals to address the socio-technical challenges of the breast-pump more holistically, including prototyping, public policy, scientific advancement, social norms and localised change. The paper discusses an evaluation of the impact the event had on the intended goals and makes recommendations for future hackathons attempting to make social change.

The paper is of significant relevance to the fields of critical making and feminist HCI firstly through the particular treatment of the hackathon in attempting to address a number of social issues relating to the design and use of the breast-pump and secondly in trying to evaluate the success of the hackathon. Through focusing on this particular artefact, the public discourse and the practices around motherhood and work, the paper extends what can often be a limited view of the technical objects that are made as part of such events. Furthermore there is an interesting weaving together of interventionist art, HCI and critical making, in order to position the work and the interdisciplinary backgrounds of the authors and how this influenced the planning and promotion of the event.

The work is well situated within current literature and the paper is well written in both demonstrating the current discord around what can be achieved through hackathon events and the often invisible work of building, maintaining and sustaining communities around hackathons, particularly when giving voice to often unreported social and political issues. The design goals and description of the organization and what happened at the event are very clear and straightforward, and also make for compelling reading. The discussion of impact that the event had was also impressive in the reach beyond the intended design goals. There are, however, a number of areas where the paper could be improved to make the contribution and learning clearer, particularly in the latter parts of the paper in relation to the evaluation and the discussion.

In outlining the measures of success in the Evaluation, the authors are unclear of how these measures were organized. It is unclear, for instance, how the measures relate to the original design goals and how this relates to earlier literature and the position described. The evaluation of the event and the subsequent perceived changes seem to draw from a range of observations, interviews and analysis of media, but it is unclear how this was organized or how analysis was conducted across these different accounts. Because of this it was sometimes hard to follow where the authors were coming from in presenting particular quotes or examples and many of these appeared to be more anecdotal. What is described suggests the evaluation might have been overwhelming in response to the kinds of attention the event received, especially from media sources. How was this managed and what methods were used to make sense of such large quantities of data? Is there something important that other researchers could learn from this aspect of media attention in particular to this kind of research? How did this process of making sense of the data relate to the clear feminist agenda of the paper?

The Discussion felt somewhat short in comparison to the earlier sections of the paper, which presented a clear argument on the motivation and positioning. The Discussion in particular did not really connect explicitly to the earlier argumentation and so felt somewhat disconnected from the literature. As with the Evaluation material presented, this sometimes made it difficult to make sense of in relation to the overall argument of the paper. The logical flow of the argument at the beginning of the paper is easy to follow, but as the paper progresses, to the Evaluation and Discussion, these sections appeared to be less clearly associated with the earlier positioning of the paper.

The timeline for the project suggests that there were immediate changes and advances as a result to the event. But how much of the initial interest has led to sustained change and how could this be measured? It would be useful if the authors considered the longitudinal aspects of the work and be more critical about the limits and challenges of sustainability of such events in relation to different scales of community and scales of change for instance.

The research successes and paper overall is enjoyable to read and provides a strong contribution to understanding the value and the work involved in hackathons and ways of bringing critical making to productive use for social change.