Towards Designing for Resilience: Community-Centered Deployment of an AI Business Planning Tool in a Feminist Makerspace
Dr. Yasmine Kotturi, Department of Information Systems.
Entrepreneurs in resource-constrained communities often lack the
time and support to translate ideas into actionable business plans.
While generative AI promises assistance, most systems assume
high digital literacy and overlook community infrastructures that
shape adoption. We report on the community-centered design and
deployment of BizChat, an LLM-powered tool for business plan
development, introduced across four workshops at a feminist busi-
ness incubator and makerspace. BizChat was designed to
center entrepreneurs’ knowledge and workflows while providing just-in-time micro-learning and low-floor-high-ceiling accessibility.
Through system log data (N=30) and semi-structured interviews
(N=10) with entrepreneurs, we show how the design and deploy-
ment of BizChat with existing community contexts lowered bar-
riers to accessing capital, encouraged reflection, and empowered
entrepreneurs to support AI-literacy within their own communities.
We contribute insights into how AI tools can be deployed within
local support networks, and implications for design that strengthen
community resilience amid rapid technological change.