Excavating Awareness and Power in Data Science: A Manifesto for Trustworthy Pervasive Data Research

Frequent public uproar over forms of data science that rely on information about people demonstrates the challenges of defining and demonstrating trustworthy digital data research practices. This paper reviews problems of trustworthiness in what we term pervasive data research: scholarship that relies on the rich information generated about people through digital interaction. We highlight the entwined problems of participant unawareness of such research and the relationship of pervasive data research to corporate datafication and surveillance. We suggest a way forward by drawing from the history of a different methodological approach in which researchers have struggled with trustworthy practice: ethnography. To grapple with the colonial legacy of their methods, ethnographers have developed analytic lenses and researcher practices that foreground relations of awareness and power. These lenses are inspiring but also challenging for pervasive data research, given the flattening of contexts inherent in digital data collection. We propose ways that pervasive data researchers can incorporate reflection on awareness and power within their research to support the development of trustworthy data science

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

Education Technology Design and Deployment in HCI4D:A Nigerian Perspective

The decolonisation of knowledge has shown significant impact in reframing the understanding of technology as a means to the development of African communities. However, post-development narratives in HCI4D have failed to explicate how situated and grassroot alternatives can inform the innovative design of diverse perspectives and experience. As such, this thesis approaches this fundamental gap in our understanding of the practice of technology design and deployment by problematising conventional approaches for understanding, designing, and deploying educational technologies in the context of Nigeria. Through the adoption of a range of indigenous sensitivities, the thesis seeks to develop candidate approaches for analysing diverse cultural perspectives and for designing technologies that embody and extend them. Through the thematic analysis of empirical data, the thesis shows how stereotypical approaches to educational research and technology design presents postcolonial narratives of innovation in Nigeria as neo-colonial design agenda’s that needed to be appropriated in line with emerging conditions and relations in Africa. The interpretive analysis of the perspective of stakeholders in three Universities shows the relevance of developing context-specific pedagogical approach relevant to the politics of decolonialise blended education. The analysis also attempts to revive the arguments about the processes of technology diffusion and acceptance, showing the relevance and limit of traditional models for understanding the acceptance or rejection of technologies in an educational context. Using the Wittgensteinian approach of Winch and a range of Feminist positionalities, I attempted showing how a situated epistemological orientation can bring about envisioning alternative’s ways of articulating and translating transnational encounters and exchange of technological innovation. The sensitization and evaluation of the mundane practice of three software development firm shows the mythology of design innovation in/from Africa. This led to the consideration of how reframing the basic assumption about creativity from Africa could present African culture of innovation not merely as a passive space for the transfer and appropriation of technology but as a transitional space where innovate practices get regenerated and redistributed across already polarised boundaries of innovation. Finally, the thesis argues for an ‘ontological’ framing of designing localised and indigenous technologies. 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 thesis ends by discussing three tactical propositions for ‘remembering’ future identities of African innovation where the values of autonomy are known and acted upon

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