Adopting an African Standpoint in HCI4D::A Provocation

While studies in HCI4D have been advanced by the shift of perspective from developmental studies to a range of other discourses, current analytical concepts for understanding the sociality of society in Africa have arguably led to some misinterpretations of the place of technology. This provocation suggests that an ‘African Standpoint’ based on a combination of various standpoint positionalities and the Wittgensteinian approach of Winch can offer conceptual and analytical sensitivities for articulating social relations, transnational engagements and the conceptualisation of technological innovation. This provides an approach for seeing and accounting for things as they are – right here, right there and right now – and not some idealised conception of an African reality

Rethinking Technology Design and Deployment in Africa:Lessons from an African Standpoint

Research in HCI4D has emphasized the need for a critical analysis of how conventional design paradigms and analytical orientations work in non-western contexts. This necessitates an examination of how indigenous modes of knowing could inform the framing and making of technological innovation in Africa. This paper draws on four empirical cases to show how stereotypical (often colonial and neo-colonial) design paradigms might have hastily misrepresented the situated practices of designing and deploying educational technologies in Nigeria. The paper argues that a situated standpoint orientation provides a way of approaching and analysing the plurality of the African context – which in essence relies on indigenous practices and knowledge in designing operational interventions that can be adopted and used to support teaching and learning. Thus, the temporal analysis of the four cases points to the material implications of the interactivity between culture and locale in extending indigenous practices of design

Micro-politics, semiotic power and infrastructural inversion: theoretical lenses for geopolitical HCI

An argument is presented for the use of the concepts of Micro-Politics and Semiotic Power by Bijker, and Infrastructural Inversion by Bowker to understand the geopolitical dynamics of career-building, knowledge and value creation in the field of human computer interaction (HCI). This is illustrated with brief references to examples of HCI academic and professional practice and dissemination in local and global contexts. It is shown how local and global micro-politically dominant groups in the HCI field can construct scripts that define quality, impact and relevance. These scripts in turn have a direct effect in career-building and what is considered valid and useful knowledge and practice. The political leverage of these scripts is therefore embedded in artefacts used for different types of transactions in the HCI field. Infrastructural inversion is finally presented as a possible framework to deconstruct and make visible these scripts and the different types of historical and political tensions inscribed in them at disciplinary, local, national, regional and global level

Understanding Indigenous People’s Information Practices and Internet Use: A Ngarrindjeri Perspective

Little is known about indigenous people’s interactions with the Internet as well as their attitudes, values, and skills in using the Internet and information and communication technologies to retain their knowledge. We present the preliminary results of the research undertaken with Ngarrindjeri people living from the Lower Murray River Lakes and the Coorong areas in South Australia, and then review the implications of these findings for designing interventions. Twenty-one Ngarrindjeri volunteers participated in the questionnaires, interviews and field observation. The results show that, following family members, the Internet was considered to be the second most important source for obtaining various sorts of information. Though having types of hesitation and cultural cautions, the indigenous participants embraced the Internet and online resources with great enthusiasm. The findings suggest that it is critical to adapt Internet technology to incorporate indigenous cultures including their information and social practices when we design and deliver information products and services for indigenous people

Designing temporal ecologies: reframing multispecies temporalities through design

In Western industrialised societies, the times of humans and of other species are often considered as belonging to different realms. While human life is regarded as progressive and accelerated, other species are seen as following cyclical, slow changing timescales. These narratives neglect the multiple interconnections between human and other-than-human times and contribute to increasing temporal mismatches across species, with consequences for environmental and biodiversity loss. In this paper, we use design examples generated through an interdisciplinary workshop to discuss opportunities for design to expand notions of time in more-than-human ecologies. Drawing from the Temporal Design framework and the notion of Designing for Temporal Cohabitation, we discuss how these examples incorporate a call for designers to a) draw attention to multiple ways human and other-than-human temporalities are intrinsically connected, b) expose temporal power asymmetries across ecologies, and c) design interventions that foster care-full ways of reducing impact and promoting temporal reattunements.<br/

Geopolitical issues in human computer interaction

This workshop will explore and discuss geopolitical issues in Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as a field of knowledge and practice. These issues are mainly seen at two levels: (1) on discourses surrounding motivations and value of HCI as a sociotechnical field, and (2) on discourses surrounding concepts of HCI diffusion, maturity and diversity as articulated by global and local knowledge networks. Since the beginning of HCI, discussions of democracy have been around. It may even be fair to say that the key notion of usability aims to support the citizens of a democratic society. Obviously, exactly how HCI should do this remains open for discussion. HCI has several roots deep in military needs from the world wars of the 20th century. It was also born out of the sociotechnical traditions with its emancipatory ambitions, aiming at creating conditions for supporting human agency that facilitates the realization of people’s needs and potential. There’s an inherent contradiction between these traditions. Thus, we’re interested in exploring the following question: how to reconcile such diverse discourses as military power and emancipatory ambitions in a geopolitical analysis of HCI research and associated discourses? Moreover, the diffusion of HCI as field of knowledge and practice is dominated by political and post-colonial discourses that pervade local and global knowledge networks shaping what is considered useful and relevant research and practice. In this workshop we understand these issues as geopolitical in nature and aim to trace the cultural and sociotechnical dynamics that construct the field of HCI

Building digital entrepreneurial platform through local community activity and digital skills in aboriginal Australia

© 2018 Pradhan, Beetson & Kutay. This research is situated in the Ngemba community which includes the township known as Brewarrina. It is located approximately 900 kms north west of Sydney and classified ‘Very Remote Australia’. Brewarrina’s recorded Aboriginal population in 2016 was 71.09% contrasted with the total Indigenous Australian population being 2.8%. The Australian Government have identified Brewarrina in the ‘Digital Divide’ category. Closing the gap on socio-economic disadvantage and the digital divide is directly related to economic development and national priorities include Aboriginal peoples’ employment as an identified target under the banner of the 'Close the Gap' initiative. The Australian government stated the national broadband network (NBN) initiative and ICTs would assist in achieving such priorities. Despite such strategies and initiatives, direct action has yet to be realised. This raises opportunities for targeted networking interactions within and beyond community, offering innovative approaches to countering these priorities. This research will implement and verify an innovative model that facilitates community digital entrepreneurship. The model proposes several practical applications, including community members' ability to promote community entrepreneurship and community members’ skills development

Toward an Afro-Centric indigenous HCI paradigm

Current HCI paradigms are deeply rooted in a western epistemology which attests its partiality and bias of its embedded assumptions, values, definitions, techniques and derived frameworks and models.Thus tensions created between local cultures and HCI principles require us to pursue a more critical research agenda within an indigenous epistemology. In this paper we present an Afro-centric paradigm, as promoted by African scholars, as an alternative perspective to guide interaction design in a situated context in Africa and promote the reframing of HCI. We illustrate a practical realization of this paradigm shift within our own community driven designin Southern Africa.http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hihc20hb2016Informatic

Reframing space for ubiquitous computing: a study of a national park

Since the late-1980’s, researchers have been working on a “post-desktop” agenda for human-computer interaction known as ubiquitous computing. Visions for ubiquitous computing have been based around notions of embeddedness and invisibility: where mobile, networked and context-aware technologies are incorporated into the environments and objects of our everyday lives, and where the infrastructures required to operate them remain largely invisible. As this vision becomes partially realised, the focus of ubiquitous computing research has begun to shift towards considering the broader social and cultural aspects and implications of these developments. In addition to conceiving of their technologies as embedded and embeddable within built environments and objects, researchers are therefore beginning to recognise that they are equally embedded within social and cultural practices, interactions and productions. Particularly, as technologies find themselves in diverse environmental and social contexts, researchers are being asked to critically assess the role and potential their technologies have in both defining and shaping the spaces of our everyday lives, and the ways in which we understand them. This research provides one such critical account of ubiquitous computing, approached through the frame (and reframing) of space. Whereas human-computer interaction has long sought to learn from and mimic physical interactions with the world, where spatial metaphors and conventions have been exploited in the design and implementation of interactive systems, critical accounts of the ways in which technologies reside in and help create spaces remain relatively under explored. As such, this research examines the relationship between ubiquitous technologies, the spaces of our everyday lives and the understandings we have of them. It does so through a cross-disciplinary engagement with cultural geography and the ethnographic practices of sociology and anthropology. It reframes the notion of space inherent in ubiquitous technologies away from one that equates it to a Cartesian representation of the world, or a source of metaphors, towards one that positions it as a social and cultural production. Building on this foundation, two multi-sited ethnographic studies with a state government organisation, Parks Victoria, are presented that demonstrate various productions of space in practice. Based on analysis of these studies, a series of design inspirations are presented that reframe space as emergent and seasonal processes. Drawing on these design inspirations, two design concepts are presented that are envisioned for use within Parks Victoria: Habitat, a location-based platform for tacit knowledge, and Wayfarer, a visualisation and narrative tool for situated understandings. A reflection on these related pieces of research will then serve to highlight new, practical directions for further work in ubiquitous computing that incorporates perspectives from the social sciences, and moves beyond the typical divides between ‘work’ and ‘non-work’, ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ contexts

Identifying and transforming sites of power in collaborative community-based research

For this dissertation, I analyzed collaboration practices and power structures within three community-based participatory research (CBPR) studies I conducted for my Ph.D. I ask: 1) How do dominant power structures, epistemologies, and narratives manifest in HCI research and praxis? 2) How can we structure research to support our community partners\u27 goals while resisting dominating and extractive practices in academic research? To respond to these questions, I conducted member checking interviews with my collaborators and a duoethnography with my dissertation advisor, Dr. Sheena Erete, about our experiences in the studies as a Black female professor and a white female graduate student. I grounded my findings in Black feminist thought by employing the intersectional analysis method developed by Erete, Rankin, and Thomas (2022). Through my intersectional analysis, I identified how systems of power and disciplinary norms influenced Dr. Erete\u27s and my decisions about how to structure our collaborations and organize our time and labor. These decisions impacted the distribution of benefit and harm within our collaborations. Systems of power also manifested in cultural narratives imbued within the studies; these narratives informed our methods and interactions with our collaborators and community members. I organize these findings into five saturated sites of power (a term developed by Collins, 2019) within CBPR. These are sites where intersecting systems of power acutely impact collaborators\u27 experiences and study outcomes. To support researchers in developing a non-extractive and mutually beneficial CBPR practice, I offer a set of reflexive prompts that address three themes: 1) evaluating researchers’ capacity for the work; 2) distributing resources through CBPR; and 3) using narratives as a reflexive tool. This dissertation contributes to critical human-computer interaction (HCI) literature and offers recommendations that researchers can use to intentionally co-design studies that mitigate harm and advance community-defined goals