Towards Designing for Resilience: Community-Centered Deployment of an AI Business Planning Tool in a Small Business Center

TL;DR

This study explores community-centered deployment of BizChat, an AI business planning tool, highlighting its role in fostering resilience and collective AI literacy among entrepreneurs in resource-limited settings.

Contribution

It presents a community-focused design and deployment approach for BizChat, emphasizing collective AI literacy and resilience in small business support.

Findings

BizChat lowered barriers to capital access by translating ideas into business language.

Peer support helped entrepreneurs navigate tensions between AI outputs and sensemaking.

Design implications include fostering productive friction and communal scaffolds.

Abstract

Entrepreneurs in resource-constrained communities often lack 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 AI-powered business planning tool, introduced across four workshops at a feminist makerspace in Pittsburgh. Through log data (N=30) and interviews (N=10), we examine how entrepreneurs build resilience through collective AI literacy development-encompassing adoption, adaptation, and refusal of AI. Our findings reveal that while BizChat lowered barriers to accessing capital by translating ideas into "business language," this ease raised questions about whether instant AI outputs undermine sensemaking essential to planning. We show how peer support helped entrepreneurs navigate this tension. We contribute design implications, including productive friction, communal scaffolds, and co-optability, for strengthening resilience amid technological change.