A respectful design framework: incorporating indigenous knowledge in the design process

To stay within the planetary boundaries, we have to take responsibility, and this includes designers. This requires new perspectives on design. In this work, we focus on a co-design project with indigenous communities. Within such communities, indigenous knowledge is central. Indigenous knowledge acknowledges that the world is alive and that we, as humans, are merely a small part. Central in our approach is Sheehan’s respectful design, which ensures a central place for indigenous knowledge in the design process. However, Sheehan’s approach does not state in pragmatic terms how such a design approach can be achieved. Some of the co-design processes we engaged in led to respectful design spaces, others did not. This helped us to identify patterns of dynamics that are essential for respectful design. At the core of our findings lies the observation that in order to reach a respectful design space, in which indigenous knowledge is embedded, a shared dialogical space between community and designer is essential

Design and social innovation at the margins: finding and making cultures of plurality

Design has become a global activity dominated by one set of cultural interests to produce a consistency of practice. This essay uses an experience of design for social innovation in northern Finland, inspired by land and place, to speculate upon the dimensions across which plurality in designing could be embraced in an increasingly globalized world. Informed by discussions while helping to run the Design and Social Innovation in Asia-Pacific events of 2016, it uses Kasulis’ analysis of cultural orientation and his insight that a key difference underpinning cultures is how people may orientate towards intimacy and integrity. It then explores what a form of intimate design might look like. In doing so, it uses Ingold’s study of North-ness to challenge totalizing narratives of progress and explore what a marginal view can offer to address site-specific needs and dispense with design orthodoxies

Community participatory design in the information systems development process in Africa: a systemic literature review

Participatory design (PO) pertains to the different ways of incorporating ideas and acts of organisational members in designing, developing and evaluating an Information Systems (IS) artefact. The context of this study is community organisations in African settings participating in the designing and developing of an IS artefact. The study traces and synthesises findings from 95 articles on community PO in Information Systems Development in Africa. It argues that community PO consists of vast diverse constructs and implementations. This produced and reproduced concept is formulated in five major themes of: conceptualisations; ethics; standards; checks and balances and approaches; and perspectives and methodologies of PD. The themes constitute the possible ways of classifying PO research and practice in African settings. The results demonstrate that there is a wide belief that participation is one of the vital ingredients necessary for successful designing of IS artefacts for human development. However, the different elements involved in PO involve much discussion on what is known and needs to be known about PO and how to achieve the desired results by PD. The study uses Critical Research philosophy to pay special attention to the behavioural and attitudinal arguments of the different PO practices on community organisations. The researcher found Design Science (OS) principles that centre on devising an artefact as appropriate to frame this work. In sum, through the use of Critical Research and a OS lens, the researcher found that community participation is important in designing a useful IS artefact, but treacherous if misunderstood and inappropriately implemented

How the healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context shapes maternal health clients' mHealth utilisation in a Kenyan context

Problem Statement: Many developing countries are still grappling with poor health as a result of strained healthcare systems. Top among health inequalities is maternal care with maternal mortality rates being almost 19 times higher in developing countries than in their developed counterparts. mHealth presents the potential for developing countries to overcome some of the traditional healthcare challenges. However, despite the compelling evidence for the potential of maternal mHealth from the plethora of effectiveness studies, why when and how interventions work/do not work in different contexts are not fully understood. Socio-cultural factors are one of the most cited reasons for variance in uptake and utilisation of such technologies. To date, research explaining how socio-cultural factors shape mHealth utilisation is sparse. Purpose of the study: The main objective of the study was to explain how mHealth utilisation behaviour emerges within the healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context. To achieve the objective, the study identified the socio-cultural characteristics of the maternal healthcareseeking context and analysed the user-technology interaction within this context. Research methodology: Building on the foundation that human experiences are best understood in situ, the study adopted explanatory methods guided by an interpretivist paradigm. The study drew upon Activity Theory as a lens to understand the maternal mHealth utilisation phenomenon. Hence, we theorised healthcare-seeking as an activity whose cultural aspects were further understood using Hofstede typology of culture. The study used a Kenyan maternal mHealth intervention to elucidate the phenomenon. We employed semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, observations, informal discussions, and document review to gather data. The sample was purposively selected and comprised various maternal health stakeholders: maternal health clients, their partners, project implementers and healthcare professionals. Key findings: The results of the study show that the healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context which is characterised by socio-cultural attributes such as high-power distance, high uncertainty avoidance, gendered relations, and collectivism shapes mHealth utilisation behaviour in a dialectical process. This process takes place as maternal health clients shape and are shaped by mHealth within their healthcare-seeking socio-cultural context through a process of internalisation and externalisation. From an internalisation perspective, uncertainties and risks in the maternal healthcare-seeking context resulted in hesitated adoption. Contextual perceptions of usefulness of the intervention resulted in the use of mHealth to substitute other healthcare structures while having different perceptions of the role of mHealth created dissonance among the maternal health clients. With regards to externalisation, maternal health clients adopted legitimisation strategies to reduce uncertainties and to develop trust required for initial and continued use of the intervention. They legitimised both the intervention artifact, and the information. Since the mHealth intervention presented appropriate social cues, being accompanied by the expected health provider's persona, maternal health clients readily humanised the intervention. The contextual social norms around pregnancy also presented a need for the maternal health clients to make their mHealth use an ‘appropriate behaviour' by negotiating use with relevant stakeholders in the context. Finally, in response to mHealth technology paradoxes that challenged the very motive of healthcare-seeking, maternal health clients coped by abandoning mHealth, or otherwise accommodating it. Originality/contribution: This study contributed to knowledge, theory, and practice. First, the study suggests theoretical propositions that explain how mHealth utilisation behaviour emerges. These findings may be useful to similar developing-country contexts. A further contribution to theory emerges from the use of Activity Theory to understand the phenomenon. The study helps to operationalise Activity Theory concepts in Information Systems research. Second, the study provides recommendations to practise with regard to the design and implementation of mHealth interventions. These insights may be useful to mHealth designers and implementers in designing mHealth solutions that are contextually relevant. Here, we propose the consideration of mHealth intervention characteristics that will aid utilisation, involving healthcare professionals and other community stakeholders in mHealth implementation and integrating mHealth into existing healthcare structures

Social media, elections, and democracy in West Africa

Today is an exciting time to be a political activist in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly for the technically inclined. New media technologies including the mobile phone, the Internet, and social media are proliferating rapidly and their potential as potent political tools is being realized. While 2012's Arab Spring in North Africa captivated the world, similar campaigns have been occurring south of the Sahara both before and since. But the embrace of social media for political ends raises the question of how, if at all, these new media actually perturb the political landscape. These questions have been well-studied in Western contexts, but remain virtually unexplored in developing regions where traditional media are scarcer, democracies are younger, and the effect of social media on politics has the potential to be quite distinct. This dissertation explores these questions by focusing on social media use during elections in Nigeria and Liberia in 2011. It asks how social media impacted the democratic process during these key events, and compares social media discourse to formal election monitoring operations. The findings suggest that given sufficient civil-society coordination, social media can be an effective tool for electoral scrutiny. Furthermore, for this and other reasons, it appears that social media has the potential to emerge as a key influence on public faith in electoral processes. Based on these results, it is further argued that social media's true disruptive power in developing world contexts lies in its ability to transcend the economics of scarcity that have dominated traditional media in such contexts. This observation is offered as an extension to the networked public sphere theory of Yochai Benkler that frames this work.Ph.D

FROM NEEDS TO STRENGTHS: DEVISING ASSETS-BASED PARENT-EDUCATION ICTS FOR LATINX/A/O IMMIGRANT PARENTS IN THE UNITED STATES

Immigration to higher-income countries such as the United States (U.S.) is a worldwide, growing phenomenon. As the number of people moving across the world increases, so does the number of children of immigrants needing support to succeed academically. While a growing number of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) offer parent-education support, these rarely respond to the complex reality of parents from nondominant backgrounds, such as immigrants. When ICTs cater to these groups, they tend to do this via patches to help these parents catch up with mainstream society. By disregarding immigrant parents' strengths and capacities—or assets—to contribute solutions to their own problems, most parent-education ICTs end up perpetuating information inequities. In response, my dissertation works with low-income, Spanish-speaking Latinx/a/o immigrant parents to explore design pathways for parent-education ICTs to better respond to parents from nondominant groups. I approach this problem through an assets-based approach to design, which fosters technology-supported transformations that build on and amplify users' strengths. Through ethnographic fieldwork and Participatory Design (PD) engagements, this dissertation offers two contributions to existing Human-Computer Interaction research on the role of technology in learning, education, and families. First, it contributes a holistic understanding of how information channels in the educational system operate as assets for parents. Second, it proposes assets-based design pathways for parent-education ICTs to support Latinx/a/o immigrant parents. This research also contributes to HCI's growing interest in an assets-based design process by advancing analytical approaches and methodological considerations for working with assets in a large-scale system. These contributions can significantly inform critical transformations for technology in educational systems and illuminate a design process that supports vulnerable groups in attaining sustainable, emancipatory changes.Ph.D

The influence of social context on co-design practice between Indonesia and the UK

Co-design has its roots in the participatory design tradition in Scandinavia. The participatory root emphasises the active engagement of the user in the design process. The Scandinavian context and in general Western societies, especially with their democratic traditions, are deemed appropriate for the application of co-design methods. When co-design is applied outside the Western context, adjustments have to be done to respond to different contexts. Comparison between the context of Indonesia and the UK is employed as case studies in this study. Indonesia is considered to have a different context from the UK, where the value of democracy is still in the development stage, and the influence of the authoritarian regime is still strong. This study seeks to understand better how the influence of the different social contexts might inform the application of co-design. Furthermore, this study also uses those different characteristics of the co-design to develop recommendations for an alternative framework of co-design methods that are appropriate for the Indonesian context. The case study research was conducted on co-design projects both in Indonesia and the UK. In Indonesia, field research was conducted in Jakarta, Solo and Malang. While in the UK, field research was held in Lancaster, London and Worthing. The field research involved the member of the community, designers and other stakeholders involved in the co-design process. Field studies were conducted to determine the effectiveness of co-design based on four criteria: decision-making power, collaboration, flexibility and outcome-focused. Furthermore, the study also seeks on how the influence of contextual factors on the effectiveness of the co-design process. This study found that the most influenced criterion by different context are decision-making power. The UK case studies have indicated the shifting of the designer's power in the decision-making process. In contrary, in Indonesia, the decision still led by the designer. Moreover, the findings of the other criteria in both contexts are equally effective. Even so, there are differences in contextual factors that influence the effectiveness of each of these criteria. Furthermore, from the comparative analysis of the two contexts, a co-design method framework for Indonesia was developed. The lesson learned process from the advantages and disadvantages of implementing co-design in both contexts resulted in an 8 point co-design framework recommendation

Beyond game worlds: Story-ing storied space & the hope-full endeavour

This thesis explores the entangled stories in software artefacts and design. An apparently simple problem of participation in a digital approach to telling cross-cultural stories and communicating identity through use of game making software reveals potential dilemmas in the wider fields of participatory culture and new literacies, participatory design and contemporary approaches to designing. The thesis weaves a research narrative around six publications. By questioning the possibilities of crafting digital environments, that genuinely keep, tell, and reflect the experience of diverse cultural groups, the research demonstrates that the way design tells stories about itself is an increasingly important object of study