Wicked Solutions: SDGs, Research Design and the “Unfinishedness” of Sustainability

preprint / pre-printThe appearance of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) marked the first time a global body has attempted to manage the planet’s future in its entirety, linking together urgent, overlapping and contradictory existential threats. The goals newly treated the world as an interlinked system, where relations are as important as components, and problems and solutions evolve together, acknowledging a more entangled trajectory for sustainable Development work. Through this lens, it becomes clear that all answers to how we live are provisional and shifting. Thus, we need more than new knowledge, products or policies from our research; we need to consider how different disciplinary efforts combine, take on life of their own, and nurture new configurations in a dynamic system. This paper invites us to rethink the making of viable futures, in the context of this reframed Development discourse, using design theory and approaches to complexity. It seeks to contribute by proposing HCI tools to manage the new uncertainties this introduces into the design of experts’ research work. Using ideas of “unfinishedness” and the concept of “wicked solutions”, it addresses the incommensurability and contingency to be found in knowledge-making and problem-solving, with an agenda of socio-ecological renewal

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationOne out of every six children in sub-Saharan Africa dies from treatable diseases before reaching age 5. Millions of these deaths could be averted if health care providers followed evidence-based protocols, such as the Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses (IMCI), to provide care. IMCI assists providers to diagnose and treat problems for children under 5, and specifies key information for the provider to teach to the child's caretaker. While IMCI has been adopted as official policy throughout Tanzania, the protocol has been neither universally used nor consistently followed. An innovative IMCI-based protocol that runs on a mobile phone, called eIMCI, was designed for this study using user-centered design (UCD) principles to assist provider navigation of the protocol and improve provider-caretaker communication of key information points, including the problem and treatment of the child, and when to return to the clinic. The electronic protocol, eIMCI, was compared to an equivalent paper-based protocol, pIMCI. This study was based on the mHealth Communications Theoretical Framework. The aims of the study were to (1) utilize UCD design principles to develop eIMCI and evaluate its usability, and (2) evaluate the effect of protocol delivery platform on (a) provider communication and (b) caretaker recall of key information points. A randomized cluster trial was conducted in which health care clinics in Tanzania were randomized to implement each platform. Results suggested that electronic protocol use led to improved provider-caretaker communication. Providers who used eIMCI were more likely to give counseling that covered the key information points specified, and caretakers in the eIMCI arm recalled more of these key information points overall. The implications of this work suggested that the eIMCI mobile protocol may lead to improved provider-caretaker communication, which may result in a greater ability for caretakers to carry out treatment plans in the home. When utilizing mobile devices to deliver such interventions, the structure, clarity, and direction enabled by the electronic platform are suggested to promote adoption of the complete sphere of high-quality clinical care. As such adoption is continued, understanding of key health information may become firmly rooted in caretaker health literacy levels

No More ‘Solutionism’ or ‘Saviourism’ in Futuring African HCI:A Manyfesto

Research in HCI4D has continuously advanced a narrative of ‘lacks’ and ‘gaps’ of the African perspective in technoscience. In response to such misguided assumptions, this paper attempts to reformulate the common and perhaps unfortunate thinking about African practices of design in HCI4D – i.e., largely as a function of African societal predicaments and Western technocratic resolutions. Through critical reflection on a range of issues associated with post-colonialism and post-development, I examine the possibilities that various historical tropes might offer to the reinvention of the African perspective on innovation. This leads to the consideration of how engaging in critical discussions about the future dimensions of African HCI can allow for grappling with the effect of the coloniality of being, power and knowledge. Developing on the ideas of futuring as a way of dealing with the complexities of the present – in this case the coloniality of the imagination - the paper ends by discussing three tactical propositions for ‘remembering’ future identities of African innovation where the values of autonomy are known and acted upon